Thursday, 10 October 2019

The Merry Mystery of the Missing Marchers

Another month another march. The group calling itself AUOB (All Under One Banner) that has been organising marches in support of independence recently held an event in Edinburgh. Claims for attendance have been all over the place from those taking part but with one common theme, they are rather ridiculously high.

The Background
It is pretty much standard practice for people organising marches, particularly political ones, to overstate attendance as it makes their cause seem more important and probably massages their ego too, but AUOB seem to be taking this approach to extremes. Often their numbers are quoted by the press as if they are factual accounts rather than pure guesswork, grossly over-optimistic delusion or indeed intentional big fibs (pick your interpretation) This rather unquestioning acceptance of the exaggerated figures seems to have emboldened AUOB to increase the estimates to new and ridiculous levels.

AUOB have been around a while, for much of the last year or so they seemed to be a slightly chaotic group of debatable competence.  There were questions being raised by people from both outside and within about how they operated, in particular where donations from marchers went and what they were used for (Refs 1,2,3). But after a split between some of the main players things seem to be running slightly less chaotically (although not completely, as a recent 'see you in court’ response to a bill from Aberdeen council shows! [Ref 4]).

Attendance figures at most of their marches have been questioned at some point, in 2018 they claimed 100,000 in Edinburgh but the Council later estimated that there was around 20,000 (Ref 5). More recently those who oppose their separatist message have started to look a bit more closely at the marches and indicate where observations and evidence don’t seem to support the supposed attendance figures. The two most recent examples being the March in Aberdeen in August 2019, as examined by Roger White (Ref 6), and the March in Perth where a couple of videos of the whole March passing through the city  suggested it to be much smaller than the organisers would have had you believe (Ref 7).

The Edinburgh March
Saturday the 5th October 2019, AUOB have been trailing this event well in advance suggesting that 100,000 were expected to attend, and then as if that wasn’t enough upping their predictions as high as 250,000! Newspapers gladly repeated the predictions (Refs 9 & 10).
AUOB also told of another plan by some activists, to do something ‘record breaking’; “the worlds biggest human saltire” no less! All it required, apparently, was 44,000 folk to gather in Holyrood park and stand in a formation marked on the grass (Ref 11). This was going to be interesting….
The result was somewhat underwhelming given the amount of promotion it had received on social media, one couldn’t help but be unimpressed. It was also perhaps the first real sign that actual attendance might be far short of what had been touted.

The 'people's saltire'  not exactly a record breaker...


Saltire aside, eventually they were all lined up on the road and ready to go. The bikers all came down Queens Drive from the west and cruised off up Horse Wynd past the parliament,and not long after the crowd sets off behind a pipe band and a couple of transit vans.

There are plenty of videos doing the rounds taken at street level but images or footage that show the extent of the march are few and far between, the best of them is probably one taken by Twitter user Derrick Farnell which was also shown on the BBC website (Ref 12, also SEE NOTE 1 AT END). It is taken from Salisbury Crags overlooking Holyrood and clearly shows the march progressing towards the parliament as it starts off, you can see the two transit vans at the head of the procession appear from behind the trees on Horses Wynd showing where the march (fronted by pipe band) begins and the video also shows the back of the march further along Queens’s Drive almost, but not quite, to the trees west of St Margarets Loch; a length of around 600m. However there are also a large number of people standing around the parliament, many of whom probably join the march and no doubt some people also join on route so while the video probably shows the bulk of the march it is unlikely to show everyone.

UPDATE: Derrick's video was mysteriously deleted (Note 1), however there is some drone footage showing the march just about to start that shows the same view, i.e. Horse Wind/ Qeens Drive Roundabout back to the trees West of the Loch (Ref 20)

My first glance estimate was that there was probably around 10k of people lined up, and allowing for maybe another 5k joining on route and same again going straight to The Meadows that might equate to around 20k attending.

Other people ffered estimates based on some pictures taken from the same vantage point, some were much lower. While reading one of these I discovered a website called Mapchecking.com that has a crowd size estimator, so I had a go. However the difficulty is in choosing the appropriate crowd density, it’s difficult and has to be a guesstimate, although you can use various figures as a guide and there are some helpful websites from experts that explain crowd density in different situations (eg. Ref 13). On reflection the crowd density in Holyrood park is probably reasonably high as most folk are standing waiting to move, however the people who are moving  (i.e. on Horse Wynd) are likely to be at a lower density as they are moving and will naturally spread out causing the crowd to slowly stretch as it sets out, and in fact you can see this clearly in the video (Ref 12 , also SEE NOTE AT END). Hence what begins as a crowd of length 450-500 meters could easily stretch out to double or much more and end up being a kilometre or more long, plus add ons.

Taking a conservative estimate of 2 people per square meter average across the whole area in Derrick’s video (i.e. slightly higher in the stationary crowd, but lower in the moving segment) Mapchecking.com calculated around 16k.  If we allow for the extras seen milling about on the crags and in Holyrood park and around the parliament plus a few late arrivers maybe that would rise closer to 20k actually marching 
I would also assume a good few people joining the march while it’s underway, counterbalanced by a few peeling off, However I suspect a net gain, probably adding a few thousand at any rate, if we generously suggest an extra 20% we get to an estimate of around 24k marchers.

Certainly by the time the march is heading up the Royal Mile the density has dropped considerably. A video shot from above shows the crowd density at this point (Ref 14):  It looks dense when seeing the crowd coming towards or walking away but when you see it straight down from above you realise that it’s actually reasonably loose as most moving crowds usually are.

Now perhaps the static crowd at Holyrood was more dense than 2 per sq m, but realistically maybe not much more, however even if we doubled the density we’d be looking at 32k which with add ons en route might reach 40k of marchers. That still leaves us massively short of the 200k being claimed by many.

Others have tried to calculate the size of the crowd by other quantitative means, such as how long the march took to pass and the sped at which they would have to move, and many of them come out with conclusions in the same ball park as mine (I.e. 15-30k)

However the more optimistic claims for supporters of the marchers tend to revolve around those of the organisers who after the event said there was over 200k in attendance (Ref 5), or was it just 100k (ref 15)? The reports are confused, but perhaps not as confused as MP Joanna Cherry at the front of the march who Tweeted that there was 250k behind her (Ref 16).

Of course maybe the other 60-210k (depending on who you believe) just showed up at the Meadows, interestingly I haven’t seen any pics of the Meadows once they all arrived, more people than Glastonbury, that’d be impressive. (Actually I have seen some Meadows footage now, and it's not very conclusive, but in the high four figures or low five figures at best.

It might also be worth noting that a few days later Scotrail Tweeted that they had 8000 passengers go through Haymarket and Waverley between 11am and 2pm. So it sure looks like most of the alleged 200k didn't come by train! (Ref 18).

All aboard the bandwagon
For what it’s worth I don’t think that the organisers or Joanna Cherry can’t count, instead what is going on here is a deliberate attempt to overstate support for independence to try and encourage the bandwagon effect to do its thing.
The bandwagon effect is a phenomena whereby people are inclined to join a particular group or cause simply because they believe everyone else is. There are a number of psychological explanations for this that you can read about elsewhere but it is a real effect and has been widely studied by social scientists. It has it’s origins in 19th century US politics and the context of this march is almost exactly the situation from which the effect got its name (Ref 17).
It's one reason that political parties get so animated about opinion polls, particularly changing ones, they'll either vehemently deny their accuracy or laud over them depending what the polls say. A rise in our poll rating is portrayed as evidence that people are starting to come to us, and you should too. A falling one is evidence that the polling company got it wrong. It's all about claiming 'momentum'. Political activists always like to portray their support as on the rise and it's in this context that we should view exaggerated march numbers. A march no bigger than last time shows no momentum, and even if there are more folk than last year why not say there's even more, because it makes you look like you've got even greater momentum, and if you've got away with it a few times and the media are reporting your exaggerated figures then hell why not just keep inflating them? Also if you’ve been making ridiculous predictions before the event, to admit you had fewer turn up is going to be embarrassing so in some way AUOB may have painted themselves into a corner.

These numbers matter, if people lie and exaggerate it can have real world effects, which is why they need to be called out and rationally examined. After all, lies and exaggeration are not a good thing to base any momentous and essentially irreversible decision on (look at Brexit!), even if both sides claim that's always what the other side does. So yeah lots of people marched and it was impressive, but nowhere near as many as some would like you believe. 




Note 1: 
When I was finishing off this post I discovered that Derrick Farnell's Twieet  had disappeared, along with his video! how bizarre... Perhaps he was a supporter of independence and suddenly realised that his video exposed the exaggerations around attendance at the March so removed it (and all of his tweets it seems). The embedded tweet on the BBC website also disappeared. Maybe there's nothing sinister going on, but it sure seems like an attempt to erase the evidence. You can see that the tweet with video was still appearing in Google's Cache, but clicking on the link just resulted in a "that page does not exist". 



Note2:
Roger White has also written about the exaggerated numbers, but has used a different method calculate a broadly similar figure. He published his while I was writing this. (Ref 19)


Ref 7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fheK-hCAyU (AFFG video of Perth March)
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Saturday, 31 August 2019

In Denial

Its the tail end of August, the kids are back at school, the evenings are drawing in, there’s a wee chill in the air of a morning and the GERS deniers are in full flow.

For the last few years we’ve witnessed the publication of GERS (Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland) and then seen the nationalist twitterati go into overdrive to rubbish it. Meanwhile Scottish ministers under whose governance these statistics are complied, calculated and published remain uncharacteristically quiet, and disappointingly undefensive when even their own MP’s discredit the work, and smear the SG employees who compile the data.
GERS was of course fine when the figures played into nationalist hands but as soon as they didn't they apparently were all part of a grand conspiracy.

One particularly idiotic meme spread this year by a number of GERS deniers was the idea that somehow the GERS figures showed that Scotland's share of defence spending was so ridiculously high that therefore the figures must be rubbish, this spread across Twitter and even made it into the letter pages of the Courier, the Tayside regional paper (ref1), but unfortunately it appears to have originated with someone unable to use Scotlands actual GDP figures (or do arithmetic) and thus coming up with completely the wrong answer, see example:







As it happens Scotlands GDP is approx £180 billion (ref 2), and thus a defence spend of £3.2 billion is equivalent to just under 1.8%, in other words pretty much exactly the same as the UK as a whole. You'll note that the letter in the Courier also then veers off into the 'port of export fallacy' something which has been proven false numerous times but keeps reappearing as a nationalist meme because it's easy to repeat and simple to grasp and fits right in with the nationalist world view, kind of along the lines of "who cares if it's wrong, it sounds like it must be right"!

However the SNP can usually scrape up something positive to spin about, but this year's spin was particularly poor as this tweet from the SNP official account (and retweeted by the First Minister) shows:



But actually when you look at the figures for the entire accounts (excluding oil, i.e. the 'onshore revenue the SNP are talking about) (Ref 3) you'll see for example that the UK's 'net fiscal balance' decreased from -2% to -1.1% a decline of 45% between the two figures. Whereas Scotlands fell from -9.6% to -8.5% a decline of 11.5%. In other words the UK overspend almost halved whereas Scottish overspend decreased by less than 1/8th. Why did the SNP claim this was "faster" well because the percentage of GDP fall was 0.9% in UK but 1.1% for Scotland, that's more right, so it's "faster"?. But the speed of deficit reduction is actually relative to the size of the deficit. Think about it, if I reduce my borrowings by 45% of the original starting amount per year then I'll be borrowing free by the early part of year three, if I reduce it by 11.5% a year it will be well into year eight; who is borrowing free the quickest?

Meanwhile esteemed nationalist rant-mag 'The National' really tried to confuse it's readers as it both promoted the positive spin, and trashed the figures in the same week:


Apparently the figures both made the case for independence, and were 'mince', mind you if they'd actually meant that the figures made the case for independence out to be mince they might be on to something, perhaps that's why Angus B MacNeil, SNP MP for the Western Isles tweeted it, who knows...

Ref 1 https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/opinion/readers-letters/966132/gers-dont-reflect-real-economic-position/ (letter from an economically confused independence supporter)

Ref 2: https://www2.gov.scot/Resource/0054/00548034.pdf GDP Quarterly National Accounts Scotland 2019 Quarter 1  (Published by Scottish Government)

Ref 3: https://www.gov.scot/publications/government-expenditure-revenue-scotland-gers/pages/1/ (Page two table S1. of .pdf)

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Saturday, 27 April 2019

Political Sleaze and Scottish (SNP) exceptionalism

Politicians, what are they like, eh?
We hear often enough about how corrupt and self serving our politicians are, how mired in sleaze and scandal they are; liars, cheats and scoundrels the lot of ‘em. Well maybe not quite all, but certainly a fair number of them.
There’s a bit of truth in it, politics like a few other professions seems to attract a bit more than its fair share of dodgy characters, some of whom later get found out, and although many seem to brush it off, a few occasionally get their comeuppance.

In the run up to the 2014 independence referendum, chief Yes-man Alex Salmond frequently intimated that Westminster was full of sleaze and scandal but that an Independent Scotland a would allow us to escape that and would offer some kind of more honest and decent alternative. It’s a meme that still has legs on Twitter and elsewhere to this day among those who oppose the Union. The implication being made is often that British politics is corrupt but Scottish politics is not, and certainly won’t be in the bright new future they promise. It’s just another form of Scottish exceptionalism as frequently practiced by the SNP and some others who campaign for independence. I put it to you that the reality is somewhat different.

Corruption and dishonesty in UK politics
Some of us may remember the big stories of those lying and cheating British politicians such as Tories Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer both of whom were convicted of perjury. Or more recently Lib Dem Chris Huhne, convicted of perverting the cause of justice along with his (ex)wife over lying about speeding points. A similar conviction took place fairly recently of Labour MP Fiona Onasanya.

Then on the morally dubious side there’s the ‘cheating’, Cecil Parkinson and his secretary, or Paddy Ashdown (‘Pantsdown’) for same, John Major and Edwina Currie at it on the Downing Street desk while the Tories bleated on about morals and ‘back to basics’.  Financial dealings: Labour’s Peter Mandelson and his failure to disclose loans, Tory Derek Conway and his suspension over payments to his sons. There was cash for questions (Tories 1994) and cash for influence (Labour 2008)  and number of other stings by journalists, Oh and let’s not forget the expenses scandal, when it became obvious just how much piss was being taken by our elected representatives. No I won’t argue that British politics doesn’t suffer from sleaze, the issue I have is with the idea that this is somehow unique to Westminster or indeed that Scottish politics or the SNP is uniquely free from this. *

Evidence from around the world rather rather suggests that many other parliaments and governments are far worse than Westminster, and I’m not just talking about the upfront dictatorships.  In terms of world leaders in recent years Jacques Chirac, Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump are just three high profile leaders of mature advanced democracies about whom there are serious questions of probity. A few hours on Google would turn up many many more allegations and indeed convictions regarding wrongdoing and sleaze from all levels of government around the world, MPs, Senators, mayors, councillors and regional assemblies. But if we accept that varying degrees of corruption and sleaze are part and parcel of most governmental structures around the world, does the evidence support the idea that the UK is a cesspool of corruption or that Scotland and the SNP are a beacon of upstanding righteousness? Well let’s see…..

Transparency international create an annual index of corruption perceptions (based on the perceived level of public sector corruption as seen by experts and businesses that operate globally) For 2018 the UK appears at 11 in their ranking of 180 countries (Denmark is number one, i.e. least corrupt, and poor old Somalia is 180th). I’m not sure that being perceived as less corrupt than around 94% of countries is something to be ashamed of, although clearly there is some room for improvement (note that the UK’s score has been improving over the last few years (but fell from last years peak), again not the impression you get from the Scottish nationalist twitterati. (www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/corruption_perceptions_index_2018 )

So what about Scottish politics?
Let’s tackle the idea that Scottish politics, be it MPs, MSPs, MEPs or local councillors, and those who stand for election as such along with their activists and campaigners are somehow sleaze free.

Party Leaders
The Scottish Parliament has been with us almost 20 years. In that time we have had five first ministers, one of whom had to resign while in office over a minor financial scandal. 
That’s a 20% scandal attrition rate for First Ministers

Of the various leaders of the four major parties we’ve had, if I recall, eight Labour leaders at Holyrood, two of whom resigned their post over financial problems (including above first minister)
Three Tory leaders, one of whom resigned from post over an expenses scandal. 
Three SNP leaders and four Lib Dems.
That’s almost a 17% scandal attrition rate for major party leaders.

I can’t remember anything similar among the UK party leaders or PM’s while in office.

Obviously ex SNP leader Alex Salmond himself is currently facing twelve charges relating to sexual or indecent assault, including two attempted of rape. It could be a year or more before that makes the courts so lets leave it for a judge and jury to digest for now. Once it’s over we can draw our own conclusions on Salmond’s behaviour on whatever evidence is presented.

Convictions and rulings against SNP elected representatives, or those standing

So we can see that the record of Scottish party leaders has been less than impressive in the last 20 years. We can take it as read that Scottish Tories and Labour are bad 'uns, (Eric Joyce anyone?), after all that's what SNP activists tell us. But Is it just Labour, Tory and Lib-Dems? Well my main question is whether there is any evidence that the SNP might be just as sleazy or dodgy as their counterparts at Westminster or indeed any other parliament. Well funnily enough, there is…. (You knew there would be).

First there’s the downright bad eggs:

Lets start with ex SNP MP Natalie McGarry who recently pleaded guilty of embezzling many thousands of pounds from various groups she was associated with, including, apparently,  cash intended to go to a foodbank. Will she go to jail? We wait to find out…. ( https://www.holyrood.com/articles/news/natalie-mcgarry-admits-embezzling-£25000-independence-campaign-groups )

Then there’s Bill Walker, notorious violent wife beater and MSP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Walker_(Scottish_Nationalist_politician)

Alex McLeod convicted of electoral fraud and sentenced to community payback, then breached it and was sentenced to more community payback:

Craig Melville convicted racist

Jamie Rae sentenced to 15 months in jail for nine counts of mortgage fraud to tune of £151k and falsely claiming £16.5K of housing benefitshttps:

Bill Holman convicted of kerb crawling for prostitutes in Glasgow red light district: https://www.scotsman.com/news/councillor-fined-for-seeking-prostitute-in-glasgow-1-2951543

Then there’s also the incompetents

Alex Salmond’s ‘buddy’ Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh guilty of professional misconduct by solicitors tribunal (former-perthshire-mp-tasmina-ahmed-sheikh-guilty-of-professional-misconduct). But Tasmina seems to have form for incompetence as evidenced by previous proceedings: 14970256.tens-of-thousands-in-unpaid-paye-triggered-bankruptcy-case-against-snp-mp

How about Humza Yusef, despite being Transport minister he somehow managed to get stopped driving without insurance, or maybe he was doing it because he was transport minister and didn’t think the rules applied to him, who knows? transport-minister-humza-yousef-embarrassed-driving-without-insurance

There’s plenty other dodgy goings on though:

Lewis Ritchie assault and sexual harassment claims

Innes Nelson Charged with assault, then claimed charges had been dropped, it was then discovered that he had paid the victim £200 to drop the charges!

And then there’s the activists

Convicted bigot Sonja Cameron (Dr). who has a conviction for plastering anti-english propaganda across Deeside and also had links with SNLA terrorist Andrew Macintosh was approved by the SNP to stand for selection to be a council candidate, thankfully she didn’t win selection, but wtf were they thinking? 

Brian Gillies convicted rapist

General miscellaneous Dodgy dealings and hypocrisy

Dealings with Cambridge Analytica revealed as their MPs tried to badger other parties about their links to the firm!

Angus MacNeil.  Cheats on wife at taxpayer expense with several people including young girls

Deputy leader Stuart Hosie cheats on wife

Mark McDonald, ‘resigns’ as a minister over sexual misconduct and then suspended

Caroline Stephen, ran up £4k of council tax debts and then SNP bailed her out using members subs so that she could take part in a vote.

Steve Cardownie, failure to declare links to lobbyist in regard to planning proposal

Jim Orr, Standards commission found he had breached code of conduct in writing defamatory allegations about the deputy provost.

Andy Doig, suspended from SNP after homophobic comments.

Then there’s expenses…

During one particular period Alex Salmond claimed £116,000 in expenses as an MP even though he only turned up at Westminster six times (includes £14,000 flat rental and £18,591 incidental expenses).

In another examination of his records Alex Salmond was found to have claimed the full (unreciepted) monthly food allowance of £400 as an MP including two months when parliament was in recess and despite spending most of his time on FM duties at Holyrood.

Alex Salmond spent £259 of taxpayer cash on some tartan trousers then his staff went to extraordinary lengths a year and a half later to avoid admitting he hadn’t paid it back, while he then hastily did so https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/10359238/Alex-Salmonds-secrecy-battle-over-250-tartan-trews.html

There's an entire book to be written on the expenses claims of both MPs and MSPs (and no doubt councillors too) and that includes the SNP, but sometimes the claims aren't s excessive, For example some people on the gravy train claim for the most petty things, I’m sure some of us remember Labour MP Jim Murphy’s pounding from SNP over a quite legitimate (if petty) £1.30 claim for Irn-Bru. Ironically the SNP aren’t above similar claims as Richard Lyle’s claim for a £1.80 bag of chips shows: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/snp-backbencher-richard-lyle-billed-4411584


To Sum Up
Basically at whatever level you examine it Scottish politics and the SNP has its fair share of dodgy, self-serving sleaze, and frankly voting for independence is unlikely to change the nature of some of those who are attracted to politics as a job. SO next time someone tells you independence means sleaze free politics, remember the delightful Scottish politicians and activists above. Oh and especially remember the hounding that Charles Kennedy received prior to his death and Ian Blackford MP's role in that: snp-s-ian-blackford-accused-of-disfiguring-last-months-of-charles-kennedy-s-life-1-4776721

* NOTE strangely  at the time of looking the wikipedia page on UK political scandals seems to have had all SNP scandals edited out, almost like someone doesn't want you to know about them!
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Saturday, 15 December 2018

On referendums

Brexit so far
Well here we are, unsurprisingly the Brexit process hasn’t gone well (who'd of thunk it?), it’s not quite the eleventh hour yet but time is getting on. We have an ‘agreement’ but we are constantly told by high profile leavers and remainers that it’s rubbish. We’re told by all of Theresa May’s political opponents that it’s just about the “worst possible” and we are constantly told by the media that there is no way it will get through parliament. Well I guess we’re going to see soon. May has pulled the vote once but she can't do so forever. A couple of days ago she faced a no confidence motion from her own MPs which of course she won 200 to 117 (i.e. 63% confidence), but with over a third voting against her. Still, as bad as it was, it’s still a clear win, and it’s better than when Jeremy Corbyn faced the same and lost badly with only 40 votes against 172, (i.e <19% confidence), and he’s still here!

First off, I should of course point out that I voted to remain, however my general feeling about the EU is that it is a flawed, bloated, overreaching, bureaucratic behemoth. It’s just that at the end of the day I believe that the degree to which we have become integrated with it, and the actual costs vs benefits mean that it is on balance probably better to try and reform it from inside than to walk away.
I reckon the costs and the knock-on impacts of leaving will negatively affect the UK economy for at least a couple of decades, and that there will be innumerable undesirable social, economic, cultural, trade, scientific/academic and security (military and law enforcement) consequences, to name but a few areas.
The recent announcement on the UK being excluded for definite from the top tier of the Gallileo GPS project is just one example of the kind of knock-on consequence we could do without. To be fair this particular one has been trailed for a while during the negotiations but to be honest it seemed like a no brainer to sort out and I actually expected agreement. I wonder how much of the decision is based on other EU countries wanting the work that UK industries had on the project, and I speculate that such attitudes are going to prevail in negotiations for a future trade deal, making it much harder to finalise than the withdrawal agreement. We’ve already seen Spain murmuring about using Gibraltar as a bargaining chip and French using fishing access, but I’m sure the list will grow.

Current trajectory seems to be drawing us towards a second referendum on the deal, as if the first one wasn’t divisive enough! it’s even worse in Scotland where it’d be the third highly divisive ballot in less than five years. However the government’s inability to get parliament to agree to what it has drawn up and the EU’s apparent intransigence regarding further modification to the leaving agreement does seem to be giving us no choice but to let the people decide on the final step. Even at this late hour I expect the EU to offer a few additional crumbs but I doubt it will assuage enough of the rabid Tory leavers in Lord Snooty’s gang, er sorry I mean Rees-Mogg’s ERG.

Second referendum
Here’s the thing about referendums; they can be highly divisive when they are held on questions that have emotive connotations (such as sovereignty and constitutional change). When the result is close they don’t appear to settle things, and people won’t accept they lost when they feel they are within touching distance of winning. Both the EU and Scottish refs prove that beyond doubt. That’s why it seems to make sense to set a line considerably more than 50% + 1 vote for any referendum which enacts large scale change and is in effect irreversible (yes we could rejoin the EU but not with our current deal and only with agreement of the other 27 members, meaning it’s not our decision). The reason we don’t have a similar rule for normal elections is because in those cases people get a chance to review their decision every four or five years and vote differently if they realise the last time was a bad mistake. Requiring for example, 60% to vote for a change would give a much stronger mandate for that change and put those not voting for it in a very clear (but still sizeable) minority.

The other thing about referendums for radical change is they should be very clear about what is on offer otherwise you could be pitting a harsh gritty reality against a prettily painted fantasy which will inevitably become the former but only once people have voted for it, and then it’s too late to change their mind. The EU referendum clearly suffered from this, despite the subsequent cries of “leave means leave”. Simply put ‘leaving’ means different things to different people, and then there’s the method of exit: for example, you can leave a house by many different routes, you can open the front door and walk outside, or you can climb out the attic skylight take a run and leap off the roof, or anything in between. It is not a stretch to say that many of the things promised by assorted ’leavers’ were fantastical and unrealistic, and even some of those that weren’t were contradictory with things others ‘promised’. That alone makes any government negotiations difficult, after all they can only negotiate us to one leaving position not the many contradictory ones demanded by numerous factions and groups. Thus it sadly makes sense to allow the people yet another vote on whether the finally negotiated reality of exiting the EU matches, or comes close to what they actually want.

At least this time people would be voting with a decent amount of information and surely that’s a good thing?

But perhaps my view is clouded by being a 'remainer', so in the interest of balance let’s see what a hard-core ‘leaver’ has to say about the use of referendums: 

David Davis quoted from Hansard 26th Nov 2002:

“…….Referendums should be held when the electorate are in the best possible position to make a judgment. They should be held when people can view all the arguments for and against and when those arguments have been rigorously tested. In short, referendums should be held when people know exactly what they are getting. So legislation should be debated by Members of Parliament on the Floor of the House, and then put to the electorate for the voters to judge.

We should not ask people to vote on a blank sheet of paper and tell them to trust us to fill in the details afterwards. For referendums to be fair and compatible with our parliamentary process, we need the electors to be as well informed as possible and to know exactly what they are voting for. Referendums need to be treated as an addition to the parliamentary process, not as a substitute for it.”

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmhansrd/vo021126/debtext/21126-17.htm

If nothing else a second referendum of the proposed exit agreement would meet Davis’ criteria. The reality of leaving the EU has been “rigorously tested” and we’ve got a rough ballpark idea of what we will/or won’t get.

As it happens I absolutely agree with Davis’ words, and at the time of the Scottish independence referendum I felt that the SG (SNP) 'white paper' “Scotland’s Future” was unrealistic and speculative to a degree where it was unlikely to bear more than a passing resemblance to the eventual reality of leaving the UK and hence should it come to pass I favoured some sort of referendum on whatever was eventually negotiated. Thankfully it never came to pass. However I do note that after initial reticence the SNP/SG appear to have fallen in behind a second ref on the EU issue; one wonders what view they would take on that process should they get their wish and have yet another Scottish independence vote which they won.

Is it wise to have a second EU referendum?
Now there’s a question, one might easily ask if it was wise to hold the first EU vote in such a vague manner,  but without it they could never have started serious negotiations. As Davis also said in 2002, a pre-legislative referendum is probably the worst type; but in this case you needed it to start the process. The mistake was in not realising that a further decision would be needed once the reality became clearer. In retrospect it should always have been made clear that there would be a vote to start the process and then at some point a vote to decide on whether the negotiated settlement was what people wanted. Maybe that’s how future pre-legislative referendums should be laid out, so that people don’t get the idea they can vote for vague outcomes and that’s the end of it.

If it is held it may resolve the ‘will we won’t we’ issue but if there is an option to remain then it will further divide the country and could potentially spark civil unrest in some places if the original 'leave' vote is overturned. No doubt there will be trouble, ably stirred up by a number of political groups. And it is likely also to seriously empower some more extreme politicians as many people become disillusioned with the current lot. The political landscape could change a lot

If you don’t think that a referendum result can change the political landscape that much look at the SNP and their post 2014 polls. The real danger with a second referendum on an EU deal that results in us remaining is that if for example 35-40% of the electorate are so cheesed off that they vote for whatever ‘hybrid leaver alliance party’ springs up as a result, they could dominate the electoral process in many constituencies stealing votes from both the Tories and Labour.

In Scotland we have spent most of the last four years since the independence referendum arguing about independence almost as if the referendum never happened, all the while the SG appears to be loosing its grip on the basic day to day business of health, education, policing etc, and this is to some extent what has been happening with the UK government for two years and no matter what happens next it is a situation that will likely continue. If we end up remaining after a second ref then the day to day business of UK politics will potentially be consumed by ad-nauseam arguments over this ‘unresolved’ issue (see Scotland).

If there is one thing we can take from this situation is that Davis was right in 2002, referendums of this type are a very bad idea.
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Sunday, 20 August 2017

Scotland’s disappearing golden eagles have same wind energy story



AKA: Dodgy data used to lie about wind turbines and denigrate eagle research.

I stumbled across a link to the following blog post the other day ( http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/scotland-s-disappearing-golden-eagles-have-same-wind-energy-story ). It purports to be the truth about Scottish Golden Eagle numbers but in reality just appears to be a bit of anti wind turbine propaganda. The author (a Mr Jim Wiegand) was so rude about the research he quoted and his post made so little sense from what I know about golden eagles in Scotland that I decided to dig a bit deeper. Unlike the author I’m not claiming ‘eagle expert’ status but I know a bit about them, particularly in Scotland and I certainly know how to read and evaluate some scientific papers.

Since the writer seems keen to promote his bit of ‘investigative research’ around the web along with childishly calling much more accurate analysis ‘rigged’, ‘fraudulent’ and ‘ridiculous’, (among other things) I decided that it would be useful to point out the massive flaw in his claim just in case anyone was thinking of taking him seriously.

So, what’s the problem? Well, his main argument is that 80% of Scotland’s golden eagles have disappeared from the regions with wind turbine developments. Now if you live in Scotland and know much about eagles, or indeed wind farm locations then you’ll immediately be wondering exactly what does he mean.

Well this self declared “eagle expert” has apparently read a 2014 report that claims 2-5 eagle pairs are present in Southern Scotland and he handily provides a map from the report to show the area in question (delineated as pretty much everything on the mainland south of a line from Greenock to Clydebank, through Glasgow to Falkirk and then along the south coast of the Firth of Forth). So far so good, anyone who knows Scotland and eagles will be aware that there are, or have been, at best only handful of eagles living in that area on and off in recent times, So what’s the problem? Well, he then claims that in 1992 there were 68 pairs of nesting eagles there thus his claim of a massive decline (WTF?), anyone who knows about Scotland and eagles will be aware that this is nonsense; so the question is how does he come to this conclusion?

Well first things first, he’s fairly cagey about referencing the 2014 report, he provides a link to a 2016 RSPB news report, but that is now a dead link. So a bit of googling reveals that the report is actually Fielding and Haworth (2014) and is an SNH commissioned report available here: http://www.snh.org.uk/pdfs/publications/commissioned_reports/626.pdf

So how has he come to the conclusion that this report is misrepresenting/hiding a massive collapse in eagle numbers? Well surprisingly his blog actually shows why his conclusion/claim is wrong even if he either hasn’t noticed or is deliberately ignoring it.

It seems to arise from a comparison he makes with a figure taken from an older paper. This is a paper published by Rhys Green in Bird Study on the 1992 golden eagle survey (Green 1996). The blog post shows a map from the 2014 Fielding and Haworth report of the area in question (Southern Scotland), it then shows a map from Green’s 1996 paper and refers to ‘area G’ which Mr Wiegand has taken to be the same area of South Scotland. HOWEVER (and this is the important bit). It is clear from both maps that the areas are not the same: I.e. while the 1996 paper includes all of the ’Southern Scotland’ area in the recent 2014 RSPB report it also includes Fife, Argyll, all of the area right up to Glen Coe taking in Rannoch Moor and all the associated mountains in between and around, it also covers Arran, Islay and Jura and a few smaller islands. Forget Fife as there are no golden eagles in Fife, but if you know anything about eagles and Scotland then you will be well aware that Argyll, Islay, Jura and the mountains around Glen Coe, Loch Etive, Rannoch Moor, Crianlarich and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs contain quite a few golden eagles, easily 60+ ‘missing’ pairs.

It's almost as if he knows absolutely nothing about Scotland and its eagle distribution and has not a clue about the importance of that bit of missing land in the second report. There are almost certainly more golden eagles breeding on Jura alone than in the entire South of Scotland area, same for Islay, but Mr Wiegand appears oblivious to this and then goes on to blame wind farms for this non-existent collapse in Southern Scotland’s eagles, drawing comparisons with a similar collapse in Californian golden eagles that he then blames the Audubon society for ‘covering up’ and claims the RSPB is doing the same for Scottish data! I have no idea if California has suffered such a population collapse, but based on this sample of Mr Wiegand's ‘investigative research’ I’d recommend if you want to find out then use a different source of information!

As for wind farms, well Southern Scotland has quite a few, but then so does a lot of Western Scotland and there's plenty of eagles there . But for anyone who is puzzling why there are so few eagles (regardless of year) in some parts of Scotland the answer is much more likely to involve illegal use of pesticides by people with other management priorities, rather than wind turbines.

It’s tempting to give Mr Wiegand the benefit of the doubt and assume it is a genuine mistake, However given his rather rude comments on the research of others and his somewhat dubious claim to be an “eagle expert” (if the quality and accuracy of his blog post is any guide) I conclude that on balance he probably deserves being called out on this. As far as I can see, there only a few explanations for such a huge innacuracy. He is either spectacularly ill-informed and too lazy to improve his level of understanding about Scotland and its golden eagles even though he clearly has the information to hand, or he is unable to understand the information right in front of him; or maybe he’s just a biased liar deliberately misrepresenting the data, who knows!. He can choose which is the most accurate explanation of his conclusion, I suppose a cynic might suggest he could be all three! And if you think that’s unfair, well he has been just as rude about the dedicated people undertaking and reporting on Scottish golden eagle surveys so frankly he deserves it.

You may well ask, who is this Wiegand chap anyway? Well he seems to be a blogger with a real anti wind farm stance, He’s very keen on childish name calling directed at people and organisations involved in wind power or who conduct research that conflict with his views (http://www.windtaskforce.org/profile/JimWiegand). Now I have no strong opinion on wind power, I’m neither pro nor anti. However I am very much anti bad science and anti biased reporting of science and anti manipulating of scientific data so that’s why I’m calling him out. Oh, and if you look at his webpage you may get a hint as to why he might not understand what is going on with Scottish eagle populations or the relevance of the missing area on the map… he lives in California, not that that is any excuse because one would hope he could still read a map and take the time to do some proper research before drawing his conclusion.


References:

Fielding, A.H. and Haworth, P.F. (2014) Golden eagles in the south of Scotland: an overview. Scottish Natural Heritage Commissioned Report No. 626.

Green R.E. (1996) The status of the Golden Eagle in Britain in 1992. Bird Study 43, 20-27

Wiegand J. (2017) Scotland’s disappearing golden eagles have California's same fraudulent wind energy story. Blog post from Citizens’ Task Force on Wind Power-Maine.







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Saturday, 10 June 2017

General Election Result

After the local elections back in May it was clear that there was a small but significant upswelling of anti-snp votes that were favouring the Conservatives, but local elections have a very different dynamic to national ones, and that, combined with the typically abysmal turnout and the alternative vote system means that trying to extrapolate the results to a Holyrood or UK general election is pretty difficult.

As much as I hoped that this general election would see SNP votes and seats significantly reduced Neither I nor anyone else seriously expected to see more than a handful of seats change hands. Mind you, a number of predictions based on opinion polls had suggested that a fair number of SNP seats were at risk, but hey opinion polls are all nonsense these days right?

At 10pm on election night the exit poll rolled in, indicating a Tory result just short of total disaster for them and a Labour result way in excess of what almost everyone expected. However for many Scots it was the size of that yellow column on the graph that generated the most interest, 'SNP down 22 seats' the presenter declared. At that point I knew the poll was nonsense, no way they'd lose that many. But by 6am the following morning it was clear just how accurate the exit poll had been when 21 of Sturgeon's stooges were missing from the line up. For the Tories a difficult night in England and Wales was tempered by an astounding result in Scotland. Labour also impressively clawing their way back from that single MP, with fewer seats than the Tories but not really so far behind in vote share, and even the Lib Dems recovering to a degree that Scottish MPs now make up one third of their Westminster contingent (not much admittedly, but good to see).

Frankly, no matter what your politics you should be glad that Scotland is now represented by a much more varied group of MPs reflecting a range of political opinion rather than having 96% of MPs representing just half the electorate, single-mindedly focused on one narrow aim and afraid to disagree with head office on almost any issue. The SNP still have the majority of seats, but no longer do they have anywhere near approaching the majority of votes, and that has to be healthy.
Of course this also has the pleasant upside of skewering Sturgeon's second independence referendum demands, after all she was the one who claimed that it was her opponents who were putting independence (i.e. opposition to it) at the heart of their campaigns, and you know what... those three parties took 62% of the vote compared to SNP's 37%. If the SNP's claims that the others were campaigning on an anti-independence ticket was accurate then it's pretty clear how voters view 'indyref2'.
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Sunday, 21 May 2017

Local Election Result Arithmetic

In the aftermath of the local elections I heard a fair bit of whining from SNP supporters about the media coverage of the result. Nothing new there I guess, the SNP have long employed the technique of 'working the refs', a tactic that has worked well for the right-wing in the US, (essentially if you keep accusing the media of being biased against you persistently enough, and for long enough they may start to cut you some slack even if there isn't a significant bias (See Eric Alterman's excellent book 'What Liberal media?' for details of how this works). So it hardly comes as any surprised that the SNP are dissapointed or angry with the reporting.That aside, what is the nationalist complaint? Well it seems they percieve, or rather, they would like you to percieve that the media was virtually portraying the local elections as a Tory victory when it was the SNP who actually won a huge victory and this was all but ignored, or even portrayed as them doing badly.

On the face of it there is an element of truth in there, the SNP did very well in the local elections especially when you consider that they've been in power in Holyrood for 10 years. But of course being in power at Holyrood is not quite the same as being in power at Westminster in the way it affects people's perception of you (especially if your number one strategy is blaming Westminster for almost anything bad), but all the same parties in power do perhaps tend to lose their luster after a term or two so the fact that the SNP has seemingly held its vote is impressive, or is it...?

I think we all know that in Scotland in recent years there is another dimension to all political voting, arguably it's the element that now dominates, and that is of course the issue of independence. The nearly two years of campaigning, associated propaganda and mud-slinging (from both sides) that preceded the 2014 referendum changed the Scottish political landscape dramatically and arguably reset all metrics and expectations associated with voting, the 2015 general election underlined how much things had changed, comparisons between pre and post 2014 voting patterns don't account for this.

When viewed through the lens of nationalist expectation the SNP's result in the 2017 local elections is dissapointing (for them). I know some who were indeed dissapointed, their own expectations were that SNP would be left with majorities in many of the local authorities, and as the largest party in almost all. They also hoped to recieve a share of the vote well into the forties, just like in 2014 (44.7%), 2015 (49.9%) and 2016 (46.5% of constituency votes) and show that the momentum is still strong...

In the event the SNP had no majorities and were the largest group in  around half of councils, they recieved 32.3% of the vote, giving them 35.1% of seats. A pretty good showing but well below the mid to high forties that would fit with other recent acheivements. However, local elections are quite diffrent in nature from Holyrood and Westminster votes, there tends to be more independent candidates and perhaps a greater tenedency for voters to choose the candidate over the party; these can muddy the waters further. Thus maybe the best comparison of how the SNP are doing is with previous council elections.

Undertaking a comparison with their previous performance in the 2012 local elections is a difficult business because there have been many ward boundary changes in between. This means that an direct comparison of seats is not possible, or at least it's possible but it could give an inaccurate picture of any changes (or lack of) in voting pattern. Trying to account for this has given ammunition to those SNP supporters who want to perpetuate the media bias meme. The word from the activists is that the SNP won 6 more seats than in 2012 and 107,000 more votes, i.e. that they are doing better (see David Hayman on Question Time recently for how this is the narrative the faithful have decided to pursue) . But quoting those figures out of their context doesn't really tell you much about how the population voted compared to 2012.

The BBC attempted to resolve this problem of significant boundary changes by using recalculated 'notional' figures for the 2012 elections that treated those votes as if they had been cast under the new 2017 boundaries, these figures were calculated by Prof David Denver at Lancaster University who has been studying UK elections for decades. However his figures are based on both direct electoral arithmetic and some educated assumtions about vote disdribution in some wards to fill in gaps, They perhaps offer a slightly more realistic comparison of the results, but by Denver's own admission, it's a bit rough. These results suggest that 'notionally' the SNP 'lost' seven seats on what they would have had in 2013 under current ward boundaries. Reporting this discrepancy is of course food for the nationalists cries of media bias but frankly it makes little difference, plus 6 or minus 7, it is a tiny shift and essentially suggests that not much changed. Similarly The claim that the SNP vote increased by 107k also reveals very little when scrutinised in context.

In 2012 the SNP recieved 503,233 votes on a 39.6% turnout (you can see how popular voting for councillors is), and indeed they did get lots more votes this time around: the 2017 total was 610,454. And while that looks like an impressive increase in support, it isn't really, it's merely a reflection of a higher turnout in 2017; 46.9% in fact. In order to see if SNP support increased we really need to correct for that significant increase in turnout. Thus we must compare the percentage share of the vote,  in 2012 the SNP drew 32.33% of first pref votes, in 2017 they 32.3% which is a tiny reduction, close enough to say that essentially they stood still.

Therefore in terms of their share of the vote and in councillors elected the SNP have merely maintained their 2012 performance, the recent outcome was not significantly better or worse. As I've already said, this is pretty good going for a party that has 'been in power' for a while. But given that the 2012 elections took place long before the aforementioned impact of the independence referendum and the subsequent massive upswell in support for all things SNP then it is actually surprising that they didn't do significantly better than their 2012 results. If you took these council results and directly compared them with the previous three polls (Holyrood, Westminster and Independence) you might conclude that SNP support has significantly fallen from mid forties to low 30's. However I think council elections are different enough from other national votes to make this a dodgy comparison but all the same it might just be an indication that support, or at least enthusiasm for the nationalist message is falling back, especially when you consider that the nationalists were expected by many to be much better at mobilising their voters. Frankly if I was an SNP supporter I'd be dissapointed, but probably only mildly concerned.

On the other hand there are the Tories. Often written off as an irrelevance in Scotland in recent years and that is a theme that is doggedly promoted by many an SNP supporter and was at one time by Labour too, but amusingly Labour stopped making panda jokes sometime in early 2015! The tories came a distant second to the SNP with 25.3% of the vote (up from 13.27%) but that is getting on for an almost doubling of first preference support in 2012. They also increased their seats by either 161 or 164 depending on wether you make a notional comparison; either way they more than doubled their representation. They were left largest or joint largest group in around 20% of councils. They are now pushing ahead of Labour in votes and seats. It's definetly a more interesting story than" SNP vote stays steady", can you blame the media for highlighting it. For those tempted to still try and argue that the Tory 25.5% of the vote is irrelevant, then it's worth remembering that it's not that long ago since the SNP was polling in the mid twenties in some elections (Local Elections 2007: 27.9% and 2003 24.1%, Holyrood 2003: 23.7%, and 1999 28.7% or Westminster 2001: 20.1%, and 2005: 17.7% ) once a party loses or gains favour changes can be quick....ask Labour!

So what happened, why did the SNP's vote stay pretty much the same as 2012? did all those extra people energised by the 2014 referendum stay at home? Or did the Tories managed to persuade large numbers of residual Labour voters to switch to them? Certainly there seems to have been a fall in Labour votes nearly as impressive as the Tory increase. An SNP supporter I discussed this with was somewhat dismissive of the Tory performance and claimed that those extra votes came to them just because of their stance on independence, but I pointed out that is the same single issue that has given the SNP a big boost in other ballots in the last few years. I would agree that the Tory campaign was woefully dependent on the issue of independence when it should have focussed more on local services and governance, but if the SNP insist on continuing to dangle a sword of Damocles over Scotland and dominate both Scottish representation in Holyrood and Westminster it's only to be expected that significant numbers of people will begin to look for any other way to get their voice heard.

I could speculate further on the meaning of the local results but I guess in a few weeks we'll see for sure if 'peak nat' has passed or if the these local elections were just a mere blip on the SNP's journey.

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