One for the connoisseurs...

Yesterday's Daily Mail editorial on the AV referendum was one for the true connoisseurs of that newspaper's idiocy, because virtually every substantive point it made was the polar opposite of the truth. For example -

"It [AV] is also so fiendishly complicated that even its articulate proponents struggle to explain how it works."

Each voter lists the candidates in order of preference. The first preference votes are counted, and if any candidate has more than 50% of them, they have won the election. If not, the lowest-placed candidate is eliminated and each of his/her votes is redistributed to the voter's next-preferred candidate. If any candidate has more than 50% of the vote at that stage, they have won the election - if not, the process continues in the same way until someone does have more than 50%.

That took me all of 86 words. Fiendishly complicated? As has been so often pointed out, AV is considerably simpler than the voting systems for Dancing on Ice or Strictly Come Dancing, and people somehow seem to get their heads round those.

"It is no exaggeration to say that a Yes vote could condemn this country to permanent coalition politics which would allow political elites to stay in power indefinitely."

If you replace the word 'no' in that sentence with the word 'an', it suddenly becomes strikingly accurate. As it is...not so much. AV doesn't conceptually make balanced parliaments (and by extension coalitions) any more or less likely. In the specific circumstances of the UK, where there is a medium-sized third party perceived to be ideologically in between the two larger ones, it's true it might in practice make balanced parliaments very marginally more likely because the third party will be well-placed to pick up second preferences. But the idea that 10-20 extra Lib Dem seats would be sufficient to bring about "permanent coalition politics" (especially when that party's support is currently dropping like a stone) is utterly risible. For the avoidance of doubt, that is a Bad Thing and not a Good Thing.

"Yes means that leaders like Margaret Thatcher would probably never have been elected"

This, believe it or not, is one of the examples the Mail puts forward to support its proposition that "Britain is sleepwalking into a historic disaster". What a pity it isn't true. Mrs Thatcher would have had more than sufficient support to claim outright victory under a majoritarian system like AV. That, again, is a thoroughly Bad Thing. The good news is that by having to cast the net wider to seek second preferences from centrist voters, she might have had to moderate her policies slightly. It probably would have been only very slightly, but that's still better than nothing.

"it is utterly deplorable that he [Cameron] was blackmailed by the Liberal Democrats into accepting the referendum could be passed with less than a 40 per cent turnout. On such stitch-ups the wheel of history turns."

So, on Planet Mail, a situation where the No side won't be able to claim victory if they receive fewer votes than the Yes side is a "stitch-up". Oh-kaaay...

Joining the Daily Mail : a dubious benefit

It's rather sad to see Gerri Peev, who I remember as being a fine jounalist on the Scotsman, put her name to a tediously predictable 'benefit scrounger' bashing article for the Daily Mail. There's actually nothing new in the revelation that the majority of initial applicants for the new Employment and Support Allowance are failing to get it, but Gerri - loyal to her new masters' cause - dutifully pretends to be dumbfounded.

"Out of about 840,000 who tried to obtain the £95-a-week Employment and Support Allowance, 640,000 were told they were fit for work, or withdrew their applications before they took the tests – suggesting they were ‘trying it on’.

Incredibly, 7,100 tried to claim because they had sexually transmitted diseases and nearly 10,000 because they were too fat. Only 178,000 – one in four – were given the payment after convincing doctors they were actually unable to work.

The disclosure by the Department for Work and Pensions raises fresh questions over how many of the 2.6million people on the existing incapacity benefit are really incapable of being employed."

Well, that's one side of the equation. But what about the other "fresh questions" that it poses, but which the Mail seem unaccountably incurious about - for starters, what if a lot of the unsuccessful applicants were not in fact "trying it on"? What if (as anecdotal evidence strongly suggests) the assessing contractor Atos have instead been wrongly certifying large numbers of people as fit to work as a direct result of the incentives built into the system for them to get the overall number of claimants down?

A week or two back, Jon Snow raised with Iain Duncan Smith the case of a woman in the middle of treatment for breast cancer, who was repeatedly found to be fit for work before common sense finally prevailed at an appeal - but by which time she'd been put through an unimaginable amount of completely unnecessary additional stress. To his credit, IDS made clear that he'd now put procedures in place to ensure that this could never again happen to cancer patients. But in a sense that rather neatly left unanswered the real thrust of Snow's question, which was about the culture at Atos, one that is clearly geared towards finding reasons to reject claims, rather than towards making the most accurate and objective assessment possible of each individual's capability to work. Until that culture is addressed, neither the Daily Mail nor the government is in any position to credibly draw convenient inferences from the current high rejection rate.

The Daily Mail, aka the FHM edition for people who think Quentin Letts is funny

I've just crossed over to the dark side for the first time in many weeks - I actually read an article at the Daily Mail website. Yes, I know, I know, but I simply couldn't resist reading the latest on the supposedly imminent US boycott of Scotland, which will doubtless lead to kilts being rechristened Freedom Skirts (or, better still, someone suggested Salvation Skirts). Talking of Lockerbie, does anyone give the slightest credence to this rumour doing the rounds about the British Embassy in Tripoli handing out Scottish flags to those welcoming Megrahi home? My first reaction was that it was paranoid drivel (which indeed it probably is), but then I did just begin to wonder where the average Libyan would locate several large Scottish flags (in pristine condition) at short notice.

But I digress. What I was going to reflect on was the character of the Mail itself, which is something that always startles me when I have a peek at the website. Given the well-known disdain the paper holds for, say, the coarseness of the BBC, or indeed for anything that offends the 'decent' values of Middle England, I would have rather naively expected the editorial staff to...how can I put this...actually reflect those stated values in their own choice of content. Instead, scrolling down the list of articles, I'm always left with the impression that I'm in fact reading a 2-for-the-price-of-1 combined edition of Heat and FHM specially designed for people who believe that the pictures are justifiable, but only when they're essential to the plot. (And of course who think asylum seekers spread disease, worry about being liable for inheritance tax even though they're not, and think Quentin Letts is actually funny.)

Exhibit A - "Danielle Bux narrowly escapes a wardrobe malfunction while showing off her holiday tan"

I would elaborate on the story, but I think the headline may already have spoiled it for you slightly. Danielle Bux's breasts almost slipped out of her dress...but didn't. Oh, and a photographer from the Mail just happened to be present at the dramatic moment (thankfully he wasn't wasted on trifling matters like the Afghanistan war). That pretty much covers it. Put these two facts together and what have you got? Material that is apparently more than sufficient for a lengthy story accompanied by three exclusive pictures of the, er, incident happening. Or...not happening.

And for the Heat-leaning female demographic, turn to page 27 for our shocking world exclusive photos that show Madonna now looks even more like Gollum than when we did the same stunt last year. Don't worry, we need to show you these pictures - how else are we to judge whether she's fit to be a mother?