Going forth and multiplying 62
Posted on
June 12, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Full marks for persistence 100
Posted on
May 11, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
If there’s one area where you really have to hand it to “Better Together”, it’s sheer shamelessness. Despite having been humiliatingly exposed for inflating attendance figures at their events by at least 100% twice on this site alone, to the great merriment of Yes campaigners, they just keep right on going without a hint of embarrassment.
We can’t help starting to wonder if this might all be one of those sort of “When I was going to St Ives…” trick riddle things. How many Darling Youth kids make 70?
And I would ask 500 more 691
Posted on
May 06, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It’s indescribably beautiful that the No camp’s much-trailed “500 questions” PDF about independence actually features 507. At least they’re getting their arithmetic wrong downwards for a change. When all those are answered they promise hundreds and hundreds more, so we thought we’d give them a head start on Volume 2.
Health and safety bulletin 76
Posted on
May 04, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Alert readers may recall the anti-independence “Better Together” campaign’s rather, shall we say, enthusiastic approach to statistics. Earlier today we noticed them excitedly tweeting “Head count just done! About 600 at the launch of #bettertogether Edinburgh!”, and wondered if they might have once again been so kind as to provide a picture for purposes of verification. And bless them, they had.
If you’re looking at that shot and thinking that it’s certainly full but doesn’t look much like “about 600” people, you’re not alone. So we did a quick bit of investigating.
Counting with Unionists 91
Posted on
April 26, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We already know that the No camp has, shall we say, a bit of difficulty when it comes to basic arithmetic. But rarely do they demonstrate it so eagerly as they did last night.
We very much appreciate their helping to make our job easier.
Binoculars on backwards 155
Posted on
April 11, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This is “Better Together” campaign director Blair McDougall looking comfortable and confident on last night’s edition of Scotland Tonight as the recently-controversial subject of campaign donations was discussed.
Not for the first time, his comments seemed a little at odds with the truth.
The nest of lies 132
Posted on
March 03, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
When someone sent us the image below on Twitter, we actually went to the “Better Together” Facebook page to verify it was real, because it can be hard to tell the No campaign’s real leaflets and posters from satire. But it’s totally genuine.
When no means yes 34
Posted on
January 24, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Poor old “Better Together”. We already knew they had some difficulty with basic counting, but today it seems their reading isn’t up to much either. Desperate to deflect attention from the hideous hole they’ve dug themselves into over Europe, they’ve seized on the latest Scottish Social Attitudes Survey showing (depending how you spin it) almost three-quarters of Scots in favour of devolution rather than independence.
There’s only one problem: the cited source for those figures doesn’t say that at all.
They think you’re stupid 64
Posted on
January 21, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
(We suspect this might become a regular series.) We try not to take any notice of the often-ludicrous propaganda churned out by the official “Better Together” campaign, but today’s was too utterly ridiculous to ignore. We’re not going to deface our nice pages with the image, though you can see it here if you want to without giving them any hits.
The graphic claimed, mind-bogglingly, that the award of £2.3bn in grants to good causes in Scotland by the National Lottery since its advent in 1993 was “another reason we are better together”, as if the figure represented some great largesse towards Scotland on the part of the UK. This, as any reader with an IQ higher than the number on a lottery ball will immediately realise, is such a monumental and obvious misrepresentation of how the lottery works that we can only concur with the Twitter user who enquired “When will the glue-sniffing stop at BT strategy HQ?”
Keeping it honest 47
Posted on
January 08, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This site’s primary purpose is the provision of facts. We want to persuade people of the merits of independence, but we want to do it with the truth, which is why we have a conspicuous policy of providing links whenever we make factual assertions. That often means criticising other media when it adopts a more lax approach to upholding proper journalistic standards, whether we like that media or not.
Last night’s Scotland Tonight repeatedly made a casual assertion about opinion polls on independence which, as we’ll see in a moment, was simply untrue. We make, and intend, no suggestion that they did so from malice or bias. We’re just pointing out that they got it wrong, so that people will be armed with the correct facts.
Inflation running at 800% 84
Posted on
October 24, 2012 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
“Bruised Salmond denies lying as rows engulf SNP” (Magnus Gardham, the Herald):
“Salmond’s darkest day in government” (Herald View, also in today’s Herald):
Our emphasis in both cases. Crikey, that must have been an expensive taxi ride.
(We did, of course, post a comment asking which of the figures was correct. The Herald has so far declined to publish it for some unknown reason.)
