Illuminati-R-Us

Loud-mouthed arse Ian Botham says:“Personally, I think that England is an island” and “I think that England should be England. And I think that we should keep that.”

That settles it, then. Dig a moat around England, charge admittance.

Where is that gif of Bugs Bunny with the saw?

There's it! I lack the photoshop skills (and, indeed, software) to amend it appropriately.

Rather than start another "Fuck the BBC" thread, I'll just leave this here.

Short version: BBC Headline: "Ships to be built in Scotland! Woohoo!" Actual story: Fewer ships to be built than we were promised before the referenda and they'll pull out if we don't behave.

BBC mis-reporting a protest about them mis-reporting.

I won't look for it online but the Sunday Express front page yesterday was a piece about how Russia somehow was backing Scottish independence as a way of something, our brave lads, something, Moslems, something, darkies stealing jobs, it's an outrage!

Check this report of a major event in Scotland yesterday. It didn't make their TV or radio news. Compare it with this coverage from a newspaper - and notice the details the BBC missed out.

Incidentally, that's two days in a row that unionists have sent suspicious packages. But you won't know about either incident from the BBC.

Aye, funny that.

Can any of the resident mathematicians help? In the council elections in 2012, the SNP won 425 seats. In the 2017 council elections, counted today, they won 431 seats.

The BBC are claiming that 431 - 425 = -7, but I'm pretty sure that's not right.

The Guardian newspaper seem to be under the impression that 431 - 425 = 31, which is certainly more encouraging but also doesn't seem right to me.

Hey, conversion to the metric system has been hard on all of us.

Some boundaries were redrawn so it all depends on how you allocate the old seats. Bollocks in other words. At various times the gains and losses didn't come close to matching up.

At least BBC Scotland admitted that the SNP were the winners since they won most seats, which surprised me.

Heid the Ba' wrote:Some boundaries were redrawn so it all depends on how you allocate the old seats. Bollocks in other words. At various times the gains and losses didn't come close to matching up.

At least BBC Scotland admitted that the SNP were the winners since they won most seats, which surprised me.

Indeed, I know about the boundary changes. What scrutiny has been applied to the BBC calculations, I wonder. Also, I notice the Wikipedia article quotes 431 seats (2017) vs 425 seats (2012) but uses the BBC's -7 figure for the change. Quite strange, really, as the SNP would seem to have increased their share of seats overall from 425 out of 1223 to 431 out of 1219.

Plus, of course, there's this:

Scotland Elects twitter wrote:Scotland #LE2017 results by largest party in each council

SNP 19 (+10)
CON 4 (+2)
IND 4 (-1)
LAB 3 (-13)
(+ 2 ties w/ SNP-IND and SNP-LAB)

..and although the SNP won 31 seats more than next party (Lab) in 2012 and 155 seats more than next party (Con) in 2017, the BBC tweeted "Sturgeon claims victory despite Tory surge". Very curious.

<sigh> - ignoring the strict rules about airtime being given to candidates during elections, of which one of the key ones is that candidates must not be allowed to discuss their own seat uncontested. Promoting a Lib Dem general election candidates in this case.

From last night, who is the ordinary member of the public in the Question Time audience who was allowed to ask a question, and comment on the panel responses? Why, it's Conservative councillor Eric Holford of course. He's commented elsewhere that he doesn't approve of penicillin because it saves too many lives, so you know he's a good sort.

This is quite a funny one. BBC, including all over their news website, claim the police are advising people not to travel to Skye on account of it being too busy.

Skye police respond.

The Sunday Express front page yesterday was about the new Forth crossing, describing it as a £1.5 billion SNP vanity exercise. 18 months ago when the old bridge needed repairs they complained the SNP weren't spending enough on infrastructure and why wasn't there a new bridge being built?

Yeah, you Scots get nothing right, he? Why did they give you a parliament and government in the first place?

A tale of two news agencies, reporting the same homicide levels:

BBC: Homicide figures increase in Scotland

STV:Number of people killed in Scotland halves in a decade.

The BBC, though, do grudgingly admit that "Despite the rise, killings remain at historically low levels."

Aye, we're all living in fear of our lives. Apropos nothing much, there was one person killed with a firearm in a country of six million in a year, and I would bet that was a drugs/gangland killing.

We had a local headline once that the homicide rate had doubled in the city in the previous year. Yep, went from 2 to 4.

Enzo wrote:We had a local headline once that the homicide rate had doubled in the city in the previous year. Yep, went from 2 to 4.

If it keeps doing that every year, you'll be in serious trouble real soon!

Like pennies on a chessboard...

Good old BBC again. Breaking news yesterday - thousands of ambulances dispatched with single crew.

But they knew this in August, and actually the figures are hugely improved.

Now you see it, now you don't. Story that was on the BBC news website for a few minutes.




It's still on the website, but isn't nearly as prominent.

Why am I not surprised?