Don't Trust Anyone

The first thing to know is that you can't trust anything you read. Except when someone tells you not to trust anything. You can trust that. Everyone has an agenda. My own agenda is that I want what's best for my kid.
The mainstream press has their own set of influences and none of these groups benefit from Scotland's Independence. This includes the BBC and STV. The BBC's budget in Scotland is £86m while taking £300m in license fees.
So as I tell you not to trust any headline, it's only fair that I tell you not to trust anything that I'll write. Question all of it. I'm not an expert… no one is, there's just too much information out there.
You might be a bit sceptical of my claims, after all I just said you shouldn't trust me, so let's have a quick example from the Telegraph. Studies say 60% of people just read the headline, deduce the content and then move on. So...
Alex Salmond's local income tax 'to cost families £550 extra'.
So that sounds like he's taking money from everyone - even the poorest. And look at his face, that glib smile as he wants to take our money. I never liked that guy. The only reason I use this article is that someone used it to argue against independence... anyway.
: "Families with two earners face a £550 hike in their bills for council services"
It couldn't be any clearer than that really, everyone with two earners is getting an increase of £550 so that's all I need to know... next article.
Wait! Let's look at the points, there's really not many
* Families with two average earners each with an average salary of £25,729 would pay £1699 instead of their current council tax.
* And what is the average council tax? £1149
So the average person is £1699 - £1149 = £550 worse off. Ok, it's not everyone like the first sentence implied, but the average and that's some sound maths right there… what a git, next article.
Wait! will two people that each have an average salary live in an average sized house? How average is it that two people in the same household have that average salary? What can we even deduce from an average salary? What if there are a few that earn obscene amounts of money, won't that skew the average such that most people could actually be much poorer and these figures actually are not in any way representative of most of the population?
These are the only figures I have that are sort of useful (from Robin McAlpine of the Reid Foundation - I'll link him later)
1 in 5 people in Scotland earn between £25k-£35k. 3 out of 5 earn less than £25k and half earn less than £21k.
If you are earning £14k, you are still better off than a third of the working population of Scotland (this includes part time workers).
So from that you can see that the most average 'household' doesn't have an income anywhere near £51.5k per year which also means the average of those that earn £51.5k are not paying the average council tax of only £1149. The math is way off. To me it actually seems like families with low incomes will be paying much less while higher earning families up to £50k will still be paying less to around the same (given they have larger houses in more prosperous areas at the top end), it will only be very high wage earners that will be worse off. I'm ok with this. But is this what the headline said or what the article implied?
This is the Telegraph and this is the standard of journalism we have today. Headlines are to get clicks and everyone just reacts to the headlines. Most of all, this referendum has taught me never to believe a headline because it's often in complete opposition to the actual facts once you apply some critical thinking. Unfortunately, very few people that are voting are doing this.
Be especially suspicious whenever you read the word 'average'. Especially where London is involved because Inner London is the richest region in the whole of Europe by far and it skews everything when it's included in any 'average' result. In the financial heart, the average City salary is £90,930, dropping to £53,100 in inner London areas. Remember this is also the most densely populated area in the UK. The Greater London area has a population of over 12 million while Scotland's entire population is only 5 million.
So now that I've told you not to trust anything you read, I'll ask you to trust this one. Because bad press and misleading stats mean the public is wrong about everything. So yeah, that one is fine. But the message from that one is important too because we're told there are too many scroungers and they are a tiny insignificant minority in the grand scheme of things. I'll talk more about this later.
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