Don’t sell the bike shop, Orville
Bless ’em, they’re getting closer. After some nagging, the Herald has now finally changed the story about jobs at Faslane that it printed a correction for earlier this week. And credit to them, the new version is a good 5% less wrong than the original.
Rather more distressingly, though, the newly-edited story still doesn’t match up even to the Herald’s own correction, never mind any kind of reality.
To be fair to the paper, it’s genuinely not that easy to ascertain what Labour’s notoriously factually-challenged Jackie Baillie actually claims about jobs supported by the submarine base. We trawled through story after story after story in which the health spokeswoman trotted out her “11,000” figure without ever specifying whether she was including actual jobs at the installation itself, or whether that was the number of support workers and local people whose jobs depended indirectly on it.
Eventually, though, we managed to nail it down, thanks to a Daily Record piece which quoted Baillie slipping up and actually putting some specifics on her claim:
“There are 11,000 people employed as a result of HMNB Clyde at Faslane – 6500 directly by the MoD and the other 4500 as a result of supply chain and local economic spending.”
So that’s that sorted out. And it also helpfully tallies with the Herald’s correction on Friday, which said “According to Labour MSP Jackie Baillie, 11,000 jobs would be at risk, directly and indirectly, under independence” (our emphasis).
So quite why the paper reversed its position again in the online version amended on Saturday afternoon – well, your guess is as good as ours. (Our emphasis again.)
“Some 6700 military and civilian jobs are at Faslane, and a further 1500 posts are due to be created by 2022. Labour calculate a further 11,000 people are also directly and indirectly reliant on the base for their livelihoods.”
It’s not just a careless slip of the keyboard. The brand-new headline of the piece is “Labour claims 19,000 Scottish jobs depend on Faslane”, a figure which depends on the 11,000 being additional to those employed at the base (and those who will theoretically be employed at it in the future) – something we’ve just established Labour isn’t claiming. The Herald has somehow managed to rewrite the piece without actually changing the falsehood it apologised for.
Of course, in the paper’s defence it’s hard to keep track of the torrent of random and wildly contradictory numbers that Scottish Labour pulls out of its backside about Faslane jobs on a near-daily basis. But the Herald has even less excuse for airing the party’s old tripe than it would initially appear.
While Googling to try to get to the bottom of Baillie’s scattergun statmongering, we stumbled across a fascinating piece in Channel 4’s “Fact Check” blog, dating all the way back to April 2007. Sure enough, there was Baillie still honking on about “11,000 jobs”, with her customary vagueness about where they’d come from. The channel’s researchers got to work on the claim, and awarded it a “Fact Check rating” of 4. We’ll let them explain to you what that means (our emphasis once more):
“Every time a FactCheck article is published we’ll give it a rating from zero to five. The lower end of the scale indicates that the claim in question largely checks out, while the upper end of the scale suggests misrepresentation, exaggeration, a massaging of statistics and/or language.
In the unlikely event that we award a 5 out of 5, our factcheckers have concluded that the claim under examination has absolutely no basis in fact.”
In other words, Baillie’s claims were just about as untruthful as they could possibly be, just a single degree below “completely and utterly fabricated out of thin air”.
That was almost six years ago. It’s amazing enough that Baillie is still pushing the same lie. Yet the Herald has not only repeated the lie in 2013, but exaggerated it by an additional 72% on Labour’s behalf without even being asked to – and despite having published just 24 hours earlier that that very same exaggeration was rubbish.
That’s apparently what passes for quality journalism in Scotland these days, even after two attempts. Pull your damn socks up, boys.
TBH I am still left in wonderment as to why anyone actually believes anything Jackie Baillie says anyway. She lies even more than I did since I walked backwards round the world playing the bagpipes with my left nostril and pleasuring Angelina Jolie with the right…
That is really disappointing. I have felt that The Herald was trying to be a bit more even handed in the last few weeks. I hoped they were taking their position of responsibility in our country a bit more seriously. Maybe moving from totally biased and corrupt to fair minded takes more than a few weeks.
Its a fantastic byproduct of the Cold War that we can maintain one of the most hideous pieces of weaponry ever devised and use it to justify a socialist, anti nuclear party’s attack on a democratically elected Government using completely fabricated job figures.
Now, if only we had proper journalists…
So? What were you expecting from Magnus? He’s great = Par for the labour course.
Seasick Dave says:
20 January, 2013 at 10:32 am
Its a fantastic byproduct of the Cold War that we can maintain one of the most hideous pieces of weaponry ever devised and use it to justify a socialist, anti nuclear party’s attack on a democratically elected Government using completely fabricated job figures.
Now, if only we had proper journalists…
I have just noticed that A Sair Fecht has returned. He has a superb comment on Davidson’s comments about celebrating Bannockburn.
You’ve noticed it a bit slower than we did, then…
http://wingsland.podgamer.com/britannia-rules-the-graves/
Keep up! 😀
The Herald has unfortunately become rather sad. I told their customer service department that recently, when I unsubscribed after some other terrible drivel.
The Herald has gone all Chinese they are looking to move from their present position of Labours Press Release Tool, to a more honest platform in the real world of Scotland, but they need to save face in doing so, maybe we have to give them the space to make this journey and not gloat when they finally arrive in Damascus. They are after all circulating in an area of Scotland that the Yes camp needs to crack. We could do with at least one news paper batting for the truth!
On another subject I have seen audio clips extracted and posted on blogs, but lack the necessary skills to do so, can any one extract and post the excellent comments by Professor David Scheffer on GMS. He starts around 1hr 35minutes in. It really is a good summary of Scotlands position in the independence journey. There is only a few days left for it on the iPlayer.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01prbls
Just read Kevin McKenna’s piece in the Guardian. I think it is a very significant staw in a strengthening wind of self determination starting to blow throughout Scotland.
More evidence that SLab STILL don’t understand why they lost so badly in 2011.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/political-news/labour-u-turn-on-deadwood-msps.19962647
Their much vaunted organisational reforms have been ditched by the very bunch of “just rubbish” MSPs, that the plan wanted to dump.
About 9 months ago I stopped buying the Gaurdian and visiting the website, this decision was not arrived at lightly but I realised I had had my fill of reading a left wing paper that seemingly only actually supported progressive policy and democracy as long as it wasnt in Scotland. One article, which implied Donald Dewar died of a “Scottish diet” and not the tragic accident which claimed his life, became the final straw for me.
However, after it being recommended, I’ve just this minute read Mr McKenna’s piece on the Gaurdian it was good to read an honest article on Scotland for once and to read the comments of the same familiar names BTL once more.
While the rampant cynic that sits inside my head is currently crying caution I cant help but feel optimistic today after reading this article and others recently like it, that perhaps we have turned a corner in the debate?
All I need now is Scottish Skier predicting a 90% yes vote and I might even begin whistling.
The Herald made a similar grudging and incomplete correction a few weeks ago to a simiar load of headline front page tripe about wind farms in Scotland. It was so bizarre that it got a mention in “Private Eye”.
Has anybody got the links to the headline story and the correction?
The (Glasgow)Herald had a long history as a national insitutution and icon. It is now reduced to a regional (ie local)rag printing rubbish which the Daily Record would balk at. The Daily Record inf act is giving us a fair crack of the whip now and should be further encouraged (if not least in its own future interest). to continue on this path.
A strange contrast can be found a the Sunday Herald. It is the only serious Scottish paper publishing genuine, intelligent and honest political discourse.
We should all buy it every Sunday if only to wonder how long it will take for Mcwhirter to plant his flag in the place his logic invariably carries him to
Dave: This was the original story:
http://wingsland.podgamer.com/the-small-print/
And here’s the correction:
http://wingsland.podgamer.com/to-be-caught-lying-once/
Dave:
We should all buy it every Sunday if only to wonder how long it will take for Mcwhirter to plant his flag in the place his logic invariably carries him to.
I’m going to give them a wee while yet before I start to buy the paper again.
Ian McWhirter reminds me of Velma Dinkley, the girl in Scooby Doo, when her glasses fall off. She’s clever, right on the scene, but just can’t see what’s right under her nose.
If you accept the 11,000 figure – yes, I know, but let’s go with that – then the 19,000 figure can be made to make sense.
There was an MoD claim that 8,200 jobs would be added at Faslane – see https://twitter.com/MorayMP/status/291891935713587200 – subsequently corrected back to the usual claim that jobs would be increased to 8.200 (from 6,700).
So, 11,000 + 8,200 ~= 19,000, QED. That should have been something over 12,500 – 11,000 + (1,500 more jobs + some extra induced employment) – but any big fat liar, or slipshod journalist, who needed to could hide behind the MoD’s mistake.
This all gets even more depressing when you realise that the Herald has known the truth since October last year: that only 520 civillian jobs are reliant on Trident, and only 413 of them are known to be sited in Scotland.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/political-news/labour-and-tories-under-fire-for-inflating-trident-job-losses.19262922
“Figures released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) under freedom of information law reveal that only 520 civilian jobs at Faslane and Coulport near Helensburgh are directly dependent on Trident. This contrasts with the 6000-11,000 jobs that pro-Trident politicians claim are at risk.
Predicted job losses are central to the arguments about Scottish independence, which could see Scotland refuse to allow nuclear warheads on its soil. Now the MoD has disclosed the number of staff who actually work on Trident. “There are 520 civilian jobs at HM Naval Base Clyde, including Coulport and Faslane, that directly rely upon the Trident programme,” it said.
Of them, 159 are employed by the MoD and 361 by the MoD’s contractors, Babcock Marine and Lockheed Martin. Most of the workers – 310 – live in West Dumbartonshire or Argyll and Bute, with the rest living elsewhere in Scotland (103) or at unknown locations (107).
Labour MSP for Dumbarton, Jackie Baillie, said: “To remove nuclear weapons from HM Naval Base Clyde would wipe out the 11,000 jobs that are dependent on the base.””