Guardian published the results of a survey<\/a> which makes interesting reading. People were asked to estimate what proportion of the population was Muslim, what percentage are immigrants, what percentage of teenage girls get pregnant each year, and so on. The answers are compared with the actual figures and compared across a number of countries. As you might guess, the tabloid press have clearly managed to get their misinformation across. For example, those in the UK figure that 21% of the UK population is Muslim; the actual figure is 5%. In the US the average guess was that 15% of the population is Muslim when, in fact, it\u2019s 1%. \u00a0Interestingly, the UK ranks as the fifth most accurate in the \u201cIndex of Ignorance\u201d \u2013 Sweden is first with the most accurate guesses; the US is 13th (out of 14). Only the Italians are more ignorant!<\/p>\nAnd while we are on the subject of misinformation, the Daily Express published a fascinating \u201cnew\u201d definition of immigrants to bolster their continuing claims that the UK is being over-run by scroungers and benefit tourists. Their definition of migrants, (admittedly they called them \u201chidden\u201d migrants), now includes the children of those who have immigrated to the UK at some point in the past. By this definition, my children would be defined as \u201chidden immigrants\u201d and, even more amusingly, so too would the children of the loony leader of UKIP (the anti-European party) whose wife is German (and there, of course, is another irony).<\/p>\n
You would think you couldn\u2019t make it up but, as the tabloid press demonstrates time and time again, they can and do make it up!<\/p>\n
Love to you all,<\/p>\n
Greg<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have to confess to feeling a certain degree of nostalgia and\/or envy this week (not sure which). Thanksgiving, of course, is not a holiday we tend to celebrate in the UK. Not that we don\u2019t have plenty to be thankful for, I assure you! But, last Thursday when our American readers were settling down … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “30 November 2014”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9w76b-1S2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7194"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7213,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7194\/revisions\/7213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/jonathon_club_01_cropped.jpg\")
<\/a><\/td>\n![\"Jonathon](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/jonathon_club_02.jpg\")
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n![\"Wedding](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/weddingphoto.jpg\")
<\/a><\/td>\n![\"Jordan](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/jordan_and_greg_wedding_02.jpg\")
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