Hate to say I told you so...

The blogs are alive with the sound of facepalms this morning, as the Daily Express looks like this:

I pointed out a while ago that the Express is fond of applying results of its self-selecting reader polls to the wider population. So, following that logic, that's 61,174,080* people who want us out of Europe. Only 617,920 people in the whole country either want the UK to stay in the EU, or are agnostic on the matter.

Which brings me again to the vexed issue of babies. There are 784,200 under-ones in the UK. That means that there are at least 166,280 babies who have developed the language skills and mental agility (or lack of) to agree with the Express. Plus, of course, every single man, woman and child over 12 months in the whole of the UK. Every politician, every foreign EU citizen (who, we are told, love nothing more than exploiting the UK's membership of the EU for their own financial gain), every sectioned mental patient, every serial killer - we all agree with the Express.

The Express hasn't, on this occasion, chosen to multiply its poll results by the population of the UK. But it did a few weeks ago, when the results were less overwhelmingly in its favour. The anomalies and absurdities above show just how little regard the Express has for its readers' intelligence. But somehow, I doubt they'll notice.

Hat-tips: Enemies Of Reason and Minority Thought and doubtless many others.

*2009 figures

What babies think

The Express has finally lost the plot. Its idiotic CRUSADE FOR CHANGE campaign to stop the clocks going back has been well covered by Atomic Spin and Tabloid Watch, doubtless among others, but I wanted to focus on one particular aspect of the coverage - namely, the brazen misuse of mathematics.

"29 MILLION SUPPORT" screams the headline. What a lot of people. This Crusade certainly has captured the  public's eye - a number of people many, many times higher than the Daily Express readership supports it. But of course, that's not actually the true number of people who responded positively to the poll. No, what they've done is take the 'yes' percentage - 58% - and multiply it by 50,000,000 - roughly the population of England.

Why England? Well, the Scottish Express isn't so enamoured with the campaign. And Welsh people don't count. Regardless of this, is it reasonable to assume that support for the Crusade really runs at 29 million people?

No, of course not. Here's a few reasons why:

• The article itself admits that 58% of respondents said the government should 'look at the system', which falls some way short of the unequivocal support hinted at in the headline.
• The survey was of Daily Express readers. In general, if the Daily Express runs a poll asking readers 'would you like a large man to stamp on your testicles until you vomit?' then the 'yes' vote would be in the upper 80s at least, provided it was linked in with an article headlined NOW SPONGING EU MIGRANT BRIGADE SAY NO TO BRITISH BOLLOCK STAMPING. In context, a meagre 58% is something of a snub.
• You simply cannot extrapolate a poll about political opinions to the whole population like that. Look at that picture, for example. What do you see? That's right - babies. Babies don't care about politics. They don't care about immigration, the NHS or the deficit. Things might affect them, but they don't care about the issues as long as the milk keeps flowing. They certainly don't care about the clocks going back. (Well, the one on the left might, because he lives in Scotland, but he doesn't count.) And yet the Express included them in its data, because they multiplied 58% by the WHOLE population of England, not just the non-baby population*. The fallacy involved here becomes more obvious when the next Express poll comes back with a 97% 'yes' result - such a figure would account for everyone in England over the age of nine.

I simply do not buy the idea that this mathematical incompetence was an honest mistake. When they get a 90%+ poll result, they don't multiply that by 50 million because the answer would look ridiculous. Just because the 29 million figure isn't actually impossible, doesn't mean that the methods used to obtain it weren't a complete crock of shit.

Add this to the usual cherry-picking of data, bold assertions and the odd truly mystifying claim (including that 'a third of us will oversleep' when the clocks go back - think about it), this whole campaign is a masterclass in pointless newspaper rubbish.

* 2009 figures here. If you're anything like me, that's you done for the day.

Name shame

The Office of National Statistics has released its annual list of the most popular baby names. And the big news is that, after 14 years at the top, Jack is no longer the most common boy's name! Isn't it?

No, it's not. The big news is that Mohammed is now the most popular name for baby boys ahead of Jack and Harry. Kind of, if you combine all the different spellings of Mohammed but fail to combine all the different spellings of, say, Oliver. This bullshit comes back every year. The Daily Mail (among others) wants to tell the story of SCARY MUSLIMS COMING OVER HERE TAKING OUR JOBS AND OUR WOMEN AND NOW THEY'RE NAMING OUR BABIES TOO!!!!!!!!


It's beautifully summarised by Jonathan at No Sleep 'Til Brooklands here... no, hang on a minute, here. The Mail, Express and Telegraph are cherry-picking their data and twisting it to fit their narrative. We're all used to that.


But the BBC... surely you can rely on good old Auntie. Far from the liberal-biased monster some would have you believe, the Beeb is the closest thing we have to a neutral media organisation. And how has the Beeb reported the baby names report? With a flashy graph and the headline Oliver and Olivia top names' list. Not sure about that apostrophe (actually, I am sure - it shouldn't be there) but at least it sticks to the facts.


But what's this... after mentioning the clean sweep for olive-based names, and Jack's slide to second spot, and the lack of new entries in the top 10, the story reads:

Mohammed was at number 16 nationally...

What sort of chart rundown is that? 1, 2, 16. No wonder Top Of The Pops got axed. At least the BBC didn't mash the figures to make it number one... but in a way, that makes it even odder that they've mentioned it at all. Without wishing to sound crude, it doesn't mention where Hardeep charted, or Stavros or Sergio or Vladimir, or any other foreign names for no reason other than that they're... you know... foreign.

What's happened is that the Mail et al have won. Their narrative - invading armies of super-virile Muslims colonising our white and pleasant land - has poisoned even the most innocuous of stories. So much so that even the BBC, which doesn't even attempt to gerrymander the results so Mohammed is top, feels it has to mention it. Simply because, if it didn't, it would be accused of being part of the conspiracy.

Scandalous

'BRITAIN'S FOREIGN AID BILL SCANDAL' screamed the Express on Tuesday.

Scandal (n): 1. A publicized incident that brings about disgrace or offends the moral sensibilities of society: a drug scandal that forced the mayor's resignation.
2. A person, thing, or circumstance that causes or ought to cause disgrace or outrage: a politician whose dishonesty is a scandal; considered the housing shortage a scandal.
3. Damage to reputation or character caused by public disclosure of immoral or grossly improper behavior; disgrace.
4. Talk that is damaging to one's character; malicious gossip.


Hmm. Definitions 3 and 4 certainly don't fit... so what the Express is saying is that Britain's foreign aid bill either 'offends the moral sensibilities of society' or 'ought to cause disgrace or outrage'. And what is so offensive, immoral, disgraceful and outrageous about Britain's foreign aid bill?


It's the largest in the EU.


Good on us, you might think. There's a recession on, sure, but at least in this country there's not a famine on, or an AIDS epidemic on, or a civil war on. That's the kind of namby-pamby liberal-lefty thinking which the Express simply will not tolerate.


How scandalous.