From BBC Scotland today:

In 2017, MSPs passed a law requiring ministers to hit four targets, external, including pushing the share of children in relative poverty below 10% by 2030. But the JRF’s Poverty in Scotland report, external found the figure remained stubbornly high, averaging 21% from 2022 to 2025. The UK average is 28%

Why is it wrong to compare the percentage of children in poverty in Scotland with a UK average that already includes the same Scottish data with those for England, Wales and Northern Ireland in it?

Here’s why:

Clear? I knew it was a wrong thing to do but will admit to have a less developed grasp of why than the above.

It’s also morally wrong because the purpose was to conceal the size of the gap and this to protect the Labour Party of Government in England and Wales.

There is no apparent dedicated statistician in Pacific Quay but BBC News has a central Head of Statistics, Robert Cuffe, a former pharmaceutical statistician, from around 2018–19 onward. That role supports journalists across the BBC—helping them find, check, and explain numbers.

He needs to do some staff development for that lot up the road.

Wait, surely their Head of News is numerate?

James Cook, ‘a British journalist and broadcaster’, unless he’s modestly hiding stuff, is described only as ‘Educated at Forfar Academy, Cook began his career at Radio Tay in Dundee where he first read the news at the age of 15.’

That’s it. Left school at 15/16? No diploma, no degree, not even O-Grade Maths then?

It shows.

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