Thursday 8 January 2015

HOW COULD THEY HAVE GOT IT SO WRONG?


29 comments:

  1. I should say, as a sometime IT professional type person. With spreadsheets, I can totally understand how they might have got it wrong.

    You would think though, given the gravity of the situation - democracy at stake etc - that they would have double and triple checked.

    Even I would have done that.

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    1. Ah... OK.

      I didn't realise it was so easy to make a mistake in these figures...not being very IT. Given that it is, I wonder how many times these figures are checked.

      After all the mistake must have been pretty profound for the result to be so different... It's the 0- 2 in the case of the SNP I find hard to understand, without having a notion that someone somewhere was selectively counting.

      4 Lab, 2 Cons, 1 Green becoming 3 Lab, 2 Cons, 2 SNP is a big change.

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    2. The gap between the two counts were so significant that you cannot help thinking that such mistakes may have been made elsewhere, either way, and went unchallenged.

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    3. I'm not sure of the counting method, John, but it's not as complex as the transferable system used in local elections. it has to do with the number of constituency seats in the area and the number of votes cast for the parties.

      Total votes party party received, divided by the number of constituency seats plus 1 by each party. So it should be a pretty exact science.

      I would think that all the parties will have people there calculating, and ready to challenge.

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  2. Have to hope that Mccourt has been removed, in IMHO the difference is to large to be a mistake.
    wullie

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    1. That's the way I thought too, Willie, I can't understand how you could get it so wrong.... but a the same time, I'm listening to what Paul says, as he has experience of they system.

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  3. how could they get it so wronng

    Yes how did the snp get the price of oil so wrong
    we would be bankrupt by now if they had won a YES vote.
    But they didn't thank god and the good sense of the Scottish people



    Nicola Sturgeon denies oil price plunge would harm independent Scotland
    Fall to $50 a barrel leaves £18bn black hole in SNP tax and spend forecasts prompting critics to suggest Scotland is better off within UK


    http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/08/nicola-sturgeon-denies-oil-price-plunge-harm-scotland

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    1. Oil is still a bonus, again.
      By the way we would not be independent for another 16months or so, what will the price of oil be then? $10 or $110, no one knows, not Westminster, not Holyrood, not Labour, not Tories, not liberals and not the SNP.
      Perhaps you have a crystal ball, pray tell, what will it be?

      I see Mr Murphy, now wants an oil fund, pity he didn't want it when he was Scottish secretary.

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    2. What Jim said Niko.

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    3. Yeah, $50 a barrel is worse than not having any oil. I heard that Westmonster offered all the oil fields to Austria, but they refused to take such a burden.

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    4. Well... would you? It's a night mare having all that oil that was only 50$ a barrel a few years ago... and then was $110 and now is 50 again.

      I feel sorry for Saudi and Dubai and Norway... it must be terrible.

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    5. Niko there is a new bridge across the Forth if your present abode is to small.

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  4. Having been at a few counts, it is my experience that everyone, watches everyone else like a hawk. This was probably a genuine mistake, although a rather large one, every parties officials would have worked out the result for themselves but, kudos to Mr Thompson for having the courage of his conviction.
    History pivots on small actions as well as great ones.

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    1. It's a mathematical calculation Jim... If Paul's still reading maybe he could make an fist of explaining how it's done on the spreadsheet...

      It would certainly be brave to make that kind of error, particularly at the very end of the count when the political colour government depended upon it.

      It was bound to be under scrutiny.

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  5. Tris

    I believe that most mistakes made at counts, although not really thinking about the referendum as there are still many allegations being made, are honest ones and I tend to think our system doesn't help, esp in the first past the post general elections. I am still someone who favours PR and the feel that the Liberals missed a real opportunity 5 years ago to really force the Tory and Westminster hand on this. PR has to come along at some point, hopefully with a few revamp of candidate selection across the board.

    I tend to believe that results should be double checked when it comes to the calculations, I double check my work most of the time, esp. when it comes to things like funding so it isn't rocket science. Basically we are ill served at times and the system I feel doesn't help.

    Just my thoughts.

    Bruce

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    1. Aye Bruce. As I said I don't know how they work these things out, but certainly in this case it was possible to make a fairly large mistake. if that's so then everything should be double/triple or quadruple checked.

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  6. Here Niko, how is the price of oil assisting Osborne, not very well one must say. He gets the lion's share of tax, he still gets that, he gets the lion's share of VAT. We get a tiddly wee bit of our oil money back, I just love how you NO voters do you countrymen and women down for a load of folk who would rather stab you in the back and throw you out of your country if they could. As JimnArlene said it was always described as a bonus to Scotland who could manage quite well without it.Get another record son, we are fed up with you and your wee tales.

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    1. The snp and their so called experts stated the robust expectation was
      oil at $110 a barrel until at least 2018

      They said it not I and they were massively wrong weren't they if
      anybody else had said the same..............well we know what kind
      of abuse you would be spewing at all and sundry

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    2. When oil was $50 a barrel in 2009 YOU said that We were TOO POOR to be Independent.

      When oil was $110 a barrel last year YOU said that We were TOO POOR to be independent.

      Why don't you just admit that you are a sad racist Scotophobe. Funny how oil is suddenly worth £15,000,000 a year to Scotland when it was only £3,000,000 on the 18th September according to labour and their Quisling horde.

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    3. anon coward

      Who said we were to poor????

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    4. Niko. The forecasts were wrong. But by this time next year it is likely they will be back online.

      No one denied that oil was a volatile asset, but what unionists tried to make pout was that the success of Scotland was dependent on high oil price.

      That was never the case. The economies of Scotland and the UK were more or less equal. Any oil income was a bonus. Not being constantly at war was a bonus and not having WMDs to replace was a further bonus.

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    5. Ah but WMD are a socialist aspiration according to the Labour party and food banks create local harmony with social inclusion at its roots so that we can give billions of free tax payers money to the banking fraternity so we can all benefit. Vote Labour you know it makes nonsense but we will do it for you if you don't.

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    6. LOL That was pretty smart!!

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  7. Munguin and Tris, makes you wonder if this was a deliberate scenario, I trust nobody, and wonder how much fankling went on with the counting of all those postal votes in the non smoke filled back rooms of Labour/Tory/Lib Dem councils.

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    1. Like you, I trust authority very little. They get things wrong too often to be trusted, but whether this is incompetence or design, I really don;t know. I expect it's a mixture.

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    2. It's more by design as we live in a Labour corrupted society.

      When history didn’t happen

      When Labour MSP and BBC Scotland collude and both deliberately lie on air repeatedly nothing untoward over elections can be discounted as an accident anymore.

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    3. Adams is a liar. Or she is a very incompetent journalist.

      So she works for the BBC, it is possible she is both.

      BBC don't want Scotland to be independent or have too many powers becasue even they can see that the more we get the more we will want.

      And that would mean the end to some very cushie jobs on excessive pay and all sorts of fringe benefits that may accrue to BBC management...

      ...And of course nearly every one of the management is related to, in some way, some person from Labour.

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    4. The former who I believe is one of those who get her fee sent abroad so that they can then take out a loan as pay to save her burden of proper tax into this country.

      Independence like Integrity scares the shit out of their lifestyles.

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    5. Yes, they are a set of tax dodgers. The old one that does the news at 6.30, I forget her name, she is paid as a company so that she pays corporation tax instead of income tax.

      Mind look at the example they get from their godess, Mrs Tahtcher.

      The second greatest Briton in the history of the universe was so fond of her home state that her mansion was owned by a company registered in the British Virgin Islands so that the old bat could avoid tax in the Uk when Old Nick finally claimed her for himself.

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