StatCounter

Monday 21 November 2016

Deliberately misinforming humour

I came across a joke on Facebook the other day that went something like this:

An Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irish man went into a bar but the Engliahman wanted to leave so they all had to.

Some thoughts struck me re this Brexit related joke:

a) what about the Wesh man? Is he excluded because Wales voted for Brexit?
b) The Irish man was in fact Northern Irish, don't facts matter any more?
c) The UK is not made up of  four equally sized countries:
England comprises approximately 83.9% of the total UK population
Scotland comprises approximately 8.4% of the total UK population
Wales comprises approximately 4.8% of the total UK population
Nothern Ireland comprises approximately 2.9% of the total UK population
So one could argue that the population of 88.7% of the UK voted for Brexit and 11.3% voted to Remain. One could argue that but then one would be as wrong as the originator of the joke.

So let's look at the Popular Vote instead:



So we have:
Leave - 17,410,742
Remain - 16,141,241

Not very funny but at least accurate!


No comments: