the brilliantly leaping gazelle

The BBC seems to not to just to be wanting to have it’s cake and eating it, but to then also try to convince us that if we so imagined that this was indeed the case, that we were mistaken.

I refer, of course to tonights BBC One ‘Question Time Special’, featuring – according to the BBC at least – the leaders of the four main political parties, The Status Quo, Not Quite as Status Quo as the Status Quo, the Goldilocks version of the Status Quo and The Tartan Status Quo.

One of the problems for me is that the BBC is more than happy to constantly talk up or talk down political parties based on nothing more than opinion polls. Polls which are invariably conducted using a statistically inconsequential number of adults, so inconsequential that they represent the margin of error that might nullify the very thing that the poll claims to prove, yet which to the media are somehow indicative of what the population thinks.

Of more of concern is the ‘bandwagon effect’, which as one might imagine, describes the effect of people wanting to back a winner, especially if that winner is confidently predicted to be winning by everyone. Everyone wants that! Only an idiot would support someone who they knew was going to lose, er like Plonker admitted to doing only this week, when he supported Corblimey in the 2019 general election. 

Essentially opinion polls create a self-fulfilling prophecy, and one that by reporting on these polls, the media helps inflate out of all proportion.

Which brings us back neatly to the BBC and tonights debate.

Ofcom (the broadcasting regulator) claims the guidance they’ve given to broadcasters is that the most important of all the factors is the performance in the last two general elections of the political parties. But as Farrago pointed out ‘“We haven’t stood in the last two general elections. It’s as if everything in our politics is designed to stop new boys and girls coming in and to keep everything the same.”

I’m no fan of Farrago, but I am a fan of fairness within the democratic process and this isn’t fair. If the BBC have no problem at all with constantly publishing poll results bigging up Reform UK in order that they can report on the Tories ever worsening woes, then shouldn’t be able hide behind some bureaucratic chicanery to deny him a place on tonights debate. 

So according to the latest update on the BBC’s poll tracker at 3.30pm on Thursday 19th June, just over 4 hours away from the start of the debate, The Status Quo are polling at 21%, The Not Quite as Status Quo as The Status Quo are on 41%. The Goldilocks version of the Status Quo is currently at 11% and the Tartan Status Quo is on 6%.

Meanwhile, Farrago and his Not quite as much not The Status Quo as they pretend, are on 16%, so one can understand his frustration at not taking part. Although possibly he’ll use this entire affair to bolster his narrative of him being the victim of an establishment stitch-up.  

The irony is that the debate follows England’s second match in the Euro’s and I can’t help in making the unfavourable comparison between the amount of time, forensic scrutiny and easily comprehensible analysis that has been devoted to the Euro football, against that afforded to the general election. Apart from last Friday, when only the opening game was played, there have been a minimum of eight hours a day – a fucking day! – devoted to this by BBC One and ITV.

It’s not as if England’s result on July 4th is anywhere near as important as the one tonight, is it

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And the problem with reliance on extrapolating the results from from a numerically small number to make a larger point is dodgy to say the least. Yes, the numbers may themselves be accurate, but the way in which those numbers, and the statistics that they then produce, can themselves be all too easily be presented in an eye-catching way, is less than helpful.

Take for example, 10 instance of a thing happening in one year and in the next it happens 15 times. The increase can be expressed in of two ways, either as an increase of 5, which is easily ignored, or as one of 50%, seems alarming. Both of which are correct, but if you were working for a charity that needed a big number to be the headline in a press release, which figure would you use? Knowing that the scarier the number, the greater the likelihood that that press release will be used as a the basis for a newspaper article.

‘Acid offences up 75% in UK but only 8% go to court, data suggests’ was the headline in the Guardian today. 

And just to make it clear, I’m not making light of acid offences in any way, what I am doing is simply proving the truth of Mark Twains observation, ‘That there are lies, damned lies and statistics’

‘The total number of recorded offences last year based on freedom of information (FOI) requests was 1,244 – up from 710 in 2022 – comprising 454 physical attacks and 790 other alleged offences, including carrying corrosives and threats of acid attack to aid other offences such as rape or robbery.’

So whilst technically acid offences, they’re not the sort of crime one normally associates with the words acid offence, not someone throwing acid into the face of someone else. Carrying acid, or threatening to use whilst committing another crime? Er, no. 

Those types of offences, the physical attack ones, the 454 which I hope weren’t all of the Katie Piper kind, make up 36.4% of the total. A bit less scary than 75%, but still appalling.

Nasty, and despicable yes, but did those threatening to use acid actually have the means to carry out their threat, or were they just doing – just doing! – what criminals have always done, which is to terrorise their victims into compliance?

If the charity which compiled the data and out out the press release, Acid Survivors Trust International, wanted people like me to take the issue as seriously as they do, then possibly not choosing the most media friendly way of printing that data might be a good place to start.