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Nature versus nurture 249

Posted on July 10, 2015 by

Because our recent Panelbase poll shared a sample with one for the Sunday Times, there was an unasked-for bonus in the data. The ST had asked Panelbase to divide the 1002 Scottish residents into those born in Scotland, those born in England and those born elsewhere (including the rest of the UK).

The paper has a slightly unsavoury track record for doing so, and it did it this time for the sake of running a deeply statistically-iffy question aiming to prove that a lot of Yes voters were anti-English, but we’ll get to that in another article.

What that meant was that we were able to cross-reference the “ethnicity” data against all of our questions, and that resulted in a couple of interesting findings.

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The magic number 205

Posted on June 15, 2015 by

For the last month or so, the Unionist parties have briefly enjoyed the opportunity to taunt the SNP in the Commons over Full Fiscal Autonomy, challenging the party to bring forward proposals and accusing it of being afraid of the policy it campaigned and won on in the election. The Nats called the bluff, and today got the unsurprising result.

bbcffa

The reason given by Secretary of State David Mundell – who declined to appear on today’s edition of “Good Morning Scotland” to defend or explain the decision – was that FFA “would cost every family in Scotland £5,000”.

And we thought that figure had a rather familiar ring to it.

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Pick a card, any card 161

Posted on June 13, 2015 by

Let’s start with a nice simple flat-out lie, from the Daily Record:

record35bn

The imaginary figures for future UK oil revenues released yesterday by the Office for Budget Responsibility (which is amusingly pretending it has some sort of idea what the proceeds from the world’s most infamously volatile industry will be 25 years from now when it can’t get anywhere close to accurate three-MONTH predictions) saw the OBR downgrade its OWN previous figure of £37bn – not the SNP’s – to just £2bn.

Let’s just say that again – despite the lie in the Record’s headline that the SNP had been predicting a figure of £37bn, that number was actually a projection by the OBR.

(In fairness to the UK government-funded organisation, at least the report does include a disclaimer saying basically “Look, nobody can actually predict oil revenues, we’re essentially just pulling figures out of our arse here”.)

A reasonable person might at this point wonder why anyone would still bother listening to a body that had just slashed its own previous guess by an eye-watering 94% in the space of a year, when you could simply buy a dartboard and a blindfold, get drunk and produce your own “projections” that were every bit as likely to be accurate, but that’s not even the half of it.

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If we could turn back time 286

Posted on June 08, 2015 by

The Daily Record’s conscience is evidently still bothering it.

morevowshite

Having sold Scotland a pup back in September, the paper has spent much of the time since then frantically trying to present itself as the doughty and fearless champion of home rule. But it’s hard to see what it’s getting itself so worked up about.

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Fury as new hospital is too amazing 136

Posted on April 28, 2015 by

The Daily Mail evidently decided the first headline wasn’t mad enough.

newhospitsl

First and second versions here.

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The sixth stage of grief 127

Posted on April 20, 2015 by

Our alert readers will probably be aware of the psychological phenomenon commonly known as the five stages of grief. If not, there’s a rather good piece by Andrew Nicoll in today’s Scottish Sun about it in the context of Scottish Labour.

But while perceptive, Nicoll is a little behind the times, because it appears that the party’s branch office manager Jim Murphy has invented a sixth.

grief6

Welcome, viewers, to the new final stage of grief: delusion.

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Short changed 107

Posted on April 13, 2015 by

We’ve been quiet today because we’ve been wading through the 80-odd painfully-dry pages of the Labour 2015 election manifesto, folks. It’s a deeply tedious read – screeds and screeds of waffly text about how nice things are nice and good things are good but bad things are bad. A couple of things did jump out, though. Here’s one.

nurses20

Alert readers will of course recall that the party’s solemn pledge in Scotland is to provide 1000 more nurses (hastily revised from the comical “1000 more than whatever the SNP say”) from the proceeds of the Mansion Tax, even though NHS Scotland is devolved and no Westminster government can in fact hire a single Scottish nurse.

But hang on. Something’s not right about those numbers.

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If you still weren’t sure 118

Posted on April 06, 2015 by

…after this, then there’s always this:

skinnermuirton

Aneurin Bevan’s heart would have swelled with pride.

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New friends 165

Posted on April 03, 2015 by

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Is there a doctor in the house? 266

Posted on March 21, 2015 by

Our dear old pal Blair McDougall tweeted this at a minute past midnight today:

brokenleg

Maybe someone can explain it to us.

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A close call 201

Posted on March 18, 2015 by

The Daily Record, five days before the independence referendum:

recordnhs

The Times, earlier this month:

timesnhs

Phew! Thank goodness for that No vote, eh readers?

Putting [INSERT NAME HERE] first 134

Posted on March 16, 2015 by

When someone sent us a link last week to a picture of an Anas Sarwar election leaflet, we were immediately struck by the fact that it had the weird characteristic of being ostensibly handwritten but underlining every word in a sentence individually, which reminded us of one we’d seen from Douglas Alexander back in January.

So after a busy weekend of saving stray cats from going blind, we went to dig the two leaflets out, in the modest hope of getting a quick cheap joke about them both using the same fake-handwriting font. But instead we got a bit of a surprise.

puttingxfirst

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