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Next Lib Dem Leader: Nick Clegg MP Exaggerates Ten Fold. Is it Deception? Or Gross Incompetence?
James Graham's Kway Kwam* Blog is rather good. In fact I am going to add it to my blogroll and visit more often.
Today James has been over here to defend the inutterably indefensible. Nick Clegg made an error in statistics and claims something has risen 16-fold. Mr Graham changes one of the reference years and claims on the back of this that it has risen eight-fold.
In fact, doing things properly it has risen by 67% not 700% or 1500%. The thing being proportion of the electorate not voting for either of the main parties in 1951 and 2007. The first of these being a general election with an 80% plus turnout, the latter local elections, turnout around 29%.
It was a Lib Dem apologist calling themselves Tim Kinsella was also here a while back I think giving a press reference (a Guardian blog) for the Lib Dem's disgraceful age "error" in relation to Virendra Sharma in Ealing Southall.
These defenders of all things statistically and arithmetically awry, Mr Graham and Mr Kinsella both, also think Mr Clegg and Ealing Lib Dems respectively were not engaged in spin.
I agree. Spin is taking a real situation and making the best of it for presentation of your interest. This was not spin. It was either (a) humungous deliberate deceit, or (b) humungous accidental incompetence.
* Quaequam, which is "liberati" for Everyman or Anyone I suppose. As in "Anyone can see this bar chart is accurate".
12 comments:
The fact remains that the share of the vote that supports third parties has increased from 4% to 32%. Now level of spinning on your part can change this brutal fact.
What you seem to be suggesting is that two party politics is not in crisis because in absolute terms the level of support has only increased by two thirds. But that is to ignore the drastic drop in support for both Labour and the Tories in both relative and absolute terms.
In absolute terms, support for the combined parties has gone from 76% of the electorate to 38% - in short it has halved. I'm sure you are convinced that such a reduction isn't a problem at all, but the rest of us who don't have our heads in the red sand think differently.
You Fib Dems are all liars. Your man round here (two jobs John Leech) perpetrated the Christie Hospital Hoax at the last General Election (ask him about it in the bar, he is proud of scaring cancer patients witless with his barefaced lies). Ask him about handing out leaflets in out patients wards at a cancer hospital. That your cup of tea is it.) You should be carfeul who you mix with. And today he is at your piss poor conference (why is the hall always empty?)he and a load of other Fib dem MP's who voted against the casino, are demanding that Gordon Brown do something or other about the Casino. Leech says that although he had reservations about the casino from day one he still thinks Brown is a bastard for cancelling it ( I am paraphrasing but probably not too far 'cos he is a potty mouth). These 'reservations' by the way included a brodcast on Radio Manchester 4 hours before the announcement of the Supercasino winner was made, saying Manchesters bid was a joke, Blackpool was gonna win and Manchester City Council shouldn't have wasted money even bidding. What an arse. In another act of breathtaking hypocrisy the leader of the Fib dems in Manchester 'simple' Simon Ashley is blaming the Lords for scuppering the casino. Fact 1. It was Lib Dem Lords who scuppered it. Fact 2, the Lib Dem Group on Manchester City Council voted against the casino.
Get away the lot of you . You bunch of charlatans.
Been to Liverpool lately? You are being creamed in every election you stand in. Last thursday you had a 1000 council seat majority turned round to a 700 Lab majority.
What a bloody joke you lot are.
Of course the level of the electorate choosing to vote is an issue for Labour. In fact it can tend to help our opposition in very many cases. And I'm not over the moon about many - very often right wing - local parties doing their communalist thing.
Never mind all that James.
But while he might have an underlying point that is valid what Nick Clegg said was factually utterly incorrect. Completely incorrect.
You don't seem to give a monkey's about that.
Either he fibbed and exaggerated deliberately or he is completely untrustworthy when it comes to statistics. Which is it?
I'll be back with some charts. Lib Dem willingness to be utterly cavalier with statistics and arithmetic is legendary and Cleggie is providing a very good example which you seem happy to defend.
"Oh, it doesn't matter if the words and numbers were wrong ... there is some truth there."
Give over. You don't believe that. Your blog has a Latin name and you clearly have had your brains partially graded at some fine university or other.
Anonymous: fair play on that Liverpool result. Warren Bradley is surely toast. Though shame about old Bob Wareing in West Derby. You may not agree with that last bit.
Is Leech going to be on the platform? All fired up and eyes bulging like some of the others? Or the usual face like a slapped backside?
A comrade I spoke to from Liverpool on Saturday described local campaigning against the Libs as "like shooting fish in a barrel".
Long may it continue.
Share of the vote has increased from a little under 6% in Nick Clegg's reference year (in a general election) to 32% in 2007 (in a local election with 40% of the turnover). It may have doubled in real terms but this alleged factor eight is ridiculous. Lib Dems simply don't care about honesty.
Lib Dem Resolutions should be:
- Be accurate
- Compare like with like
- Check your sums
- In a hole?
- Stop digging
And Clegg said 2% didn't he? What a twat.
From what I can see in Liverpool they are good at maths there too!! Ha Ha.
They've always been great at Maths there. One time their EU schemes had created jobs for something like three times the working population of the city. I think they actually stuck that in.
Now they are just in a deep deep hole after pissing away the City's reserves with some big bravado council tax freeze or was it a cut or local income tax or tax hike or tax cut or both at once? I forget.
"all fired up and eyes bulging like some of the others"
Is that an allegation of wrong doing?
Why is an MEP policing Labour blogs during his parties Annual Conference?
If I had to guess I'd say it was someone winding the fiend up rather than the fiend themselves. But lots of them seem to be blogging it quite regularly so you never know.
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