The non-story so far 67
Posted on
August 13, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
A quick update on how mainstream media coverage of our poll is going.
Poll-tergeists 90
Posted on
August 13, 2013 by
Greg Moodie and Rose Garnett
The personal touch 253
Posted on
August 13, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We have a stalker. It’s a long story, pre-dating Wings Over Scotland and involving creepy, highly detailed rape/murder threats, sustained harassment over a period of months, a dedicated blog many tens of thousands of words long (including all manner of truly vile sexual stuff involving family members and ex-girlfriends), abusive phone calls to our home and far too much more to describe.
It eventually resulted in an arrest, and a report by Glasgow police to the Procurator Fiscal recommending prosecution, which to everyone’s surprise was declined, after a very long delay and for unclear reasons.
The main perpetrator, although several people were involved, was a virulent Unionist and Rangers supporter (he’s a proud advocate of “The Famine Song” and a big fan of Loyalist multiple-murderer Michael Stone) in his 20s called Murray Brady. He continued with the campaign even after he’d been arrested and questioned, but eventually went to ground after the discovery of a revived version of the forum on which he made some of the comments. It was all a pretty ugly business.
Official: Scotsman now a joke paper 106
Posted on
August 13, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Sweet mercy. We’ve been pretty scathing about the Scottish media over the last few days, but we had no idea that our jibes about the Scotsman in particular now being a spoof site were so literally true.
The image above comes from the Scotsman’s editorial leader accompanying its ridiculous Nate Silver decoy story this morning. We’ve highlighted a line for you.
Tendentious tendencies 60
Posted on
August 13, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
In so far as there’s any actual reasoning or hard data supporting the Scotsman’s front-page lead story today at all, it’s when the American pundit Nate Silver claims that “Historically, in any Yes or No vote in a referendum, it’s actually the No side that tends to grow over time, people tend not to default to changing the status quo.”
Shall we just check whether that does indeed “tend” to be true, readers?
Tiny cracks in the silence 33
Posted on
August 13, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We had a listen to Radio Scotland this morning again. We only caught the end of Good Morning Scotland, but we were still in time to catch them cramming in a piece on today’s comedy Scotsman headline about American psephologist Nate Silver and his vague, generalised comments about polling.
With an absolutely straight face (so far as you can tell on radio, anyway), the GMS presenter asked Silver for his view on “how well the media handles statistics”, while carefully steering the discussion in such a way that neither Silver nor fellow live guest Professor John Curtice had any opportunity to refer to the Panelbase poll commissioned by this site and published last week.
(We have no idea if either of them would have had any desire to, but the presenter’s questions carefully closed off any avenues which might have offered the chance.)
Spot the bawbags 146
Posted on
August 12, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
(No, that’s not a reference to David McLetchie, who was by all accounts a very decent chap and a sad loss to the world of Scottish politics, whatever your persuasion.)
We’ve made a couple of slight changes to this front cover from tomorrow’s Scotsman. Amazingly, neither of them is the headline story. That one, hilariously, is all real.
Quoted for truth #28 58
Posted on
August 12, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Simon Jenkins in the Guardian, 12 August 2013:
It is hard to see the British Labour party as a leftwing party at all.”
The last Home International 142
Posted on
August 12, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
There’s one last bit of data from our poll that we haven’t revealed the results of yet. That’s because, unlike the rest of the survey, this one absolutely WAS a leading question. We asked it partly to satirise the ridiculously slanted nature of those used in some “Better Together” polls, such as this one, but also to make a more serious point.
If you’re looking forward to Wednesday’s game at Wembley, this one’s for you.
It’s not enough to spectate 163
Posted on
August 12, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Scottish media has adopted a uniform silence over the results of last week’s Panelbase poll. We can simply accept that, or we can stand up and challenge it.
The BBC is funded by a compulsory tax, enforced by law. You pay for it to serve you. If you think it’s been abdicating its duty, why not ring BBC Radio Scotland’s phone-in show “Call Kaye” (presented by stand-in Louise Smith) this morning from 8.50am – lines actually open at 8am – and let them know how you feel about it?
By phone: 0500 92 95 00
By text: 80295
By email: callkaye@bbc.co.uk
Please be polite. If you call but don’t get on, or your text or email isn’t used, please tell us in the comments section below. (In the case of text or email, include a copy.)
Bullet points 26
Posted on
August 12, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The crowdfunded opinion poll this site commissioned from Panelbase last week was a wide-ranging one which covered numerous aspects of the independence debate in some depth. We had to break up our reporting into several pieces to keep it a manageable read. Here, however, is a quick summary of the top ten major findings.
The full data tables can be downloaded directly from Panelbase via this link.
Quoted for truth #27 117
Posted on
August 11, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
