We’re into the final 100 days of the referendum (an insignificant milestone given prominence by the nice round number), and things are starting to get hot. National Collective are about to give Caledonian MacBrayne bumper summer profits as they convoy across the nation on their Yestival tour, Labour are out on the doorsteps with the LABOUR NO bus like a mystery tour of Scottish stately homes and seaside promenades – there were rumours of Anas Sarwar buying a Scottish Mining Museum souvenir mug in the gift shop – and Robin McAlpine and his Common People are trying to build a people powered revolution.

In communication, everything is about context, and how people respond to whichever busload of happy campaigners they run into depends not just on what is said but on who is saying it, and to whom. Resistant readings are an integral part of communication theory, and you can draw graphs to show how the receptiveness of one audience decreases as that of another increases dependent on what is being said. This is more or less why political parties can garner extremist votes and show apparent growth but simultaneously alienate other more moderate groups – the gamble made by people in charge of campaigning is that a certain message will bring on board fewer people than they can alienate. Perversely (and somewhat more dangerously), it also means that if mainstream politicians start adopting more fringe policies it lead to their legitimisation.

Then there is the person speaking – there is a good reason why people might be prepared to trust Gordon Brown more than David Cameron when what they say is much the same. Similarly, there are people who will take certain things from the mouth of Alex Salmond in a different way than they would from the less brash and avowedly non-nationalist Patrick Harvie. There really is no justice in it, but this is how it works. John Reid can call himself a patriot, but John Swinney cannot. If, as Robin McAlpine did, you say that the English are ‘not part of our lives’ you can be accused of excluding all the English people who live and work in Scotland, but equally it can mean that the Engllish experience is lived differently in governmental and economic terms. How people respond to such a sentence is guided by their preconceptions, likes and prejudices. Pro and anti independence activists alike are prone to it and we are all little balls of opinion and preprogrammed assumption. Most alarmingly given that we are going to vote in a very important referendum, none of us are half as rational as we think.

If you feel what I’ve just written is pure nonsense then just remember  thinking that if you read someone saying the same thing in the comment pages of a newspaper you agree with.

This excellent question was asked this morning by ERS Scotland, and it’s of course impossible to tell, because we all (well, a third of us) filled in a ballot paper with a single X on it, and because people might well have given a first preference to a party which didn’t get their X last week – i.e. anyone who voted tactically. But let’s assume that those clumsy Xs would have been sophisticated 1s and then get even further into handwaving and guesswork from there. Is Tory Iain McGill right to assume (in terms I disassociate myself from) that we’d simply have swapped a ‘kipper for a Nat?

Another assumption is that we’d use preferences for parties rather than the better version of preferences by candidate (for example, if I’d been able to preference amongst the SNP I’d have put Hudghton and Gethins ahead of Smith and Ahmed-Sheikh). For the purists, this assumption is equivalent to the assumption that every SNP voter gives a 1 to Hudghton, a 2 to Smith, a 3 to Ahmed-Sheikh and so on: voting the straight ticket in the order chosen by the parties. My final assumption (and this one is definitely wrong) is that all voters will rank all candidates. Let’s not get too far down the STV rabbithole by debating specific counting models, either, incidentally.

There were 1,343,483 valid votes cast. That would set the usual quota for election at 191,927. The SNP’s Ian Hudghton would comfortably claim election first, with 389,503 first preferences. Labour’s David Martin and the Tories’ Ian Duncan would also make quota directly. No-one else would make quota straight away, so all 197,576 unused SNP votes would transfer to Alyn Smith, while 156,292 Labour votes would go to Catherine Stihler, and 39,403 Tory votes to Belinda Don.

At this point Alyn Smith is also over quota by just 5,649 votes, so he is elected fourth, and those votes all transfer to Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.

So, four MEPs have been elected at this stage, two SNP, one Tory, and one Labour. Who’s next? Labour are closest to the next seat, 35,635 votes short, then UKIP, who are 51,393 votes short, then the Greens, who are 83,622 short. That means it’s time to start eliminating candidates with the lowest votes and time to get even deeper into guesswork about where their votes go.

The candidate with the lowest vote at this stage is actually the SNP’s third-placed Ahmed-Sheikh – her 5,649 preferences are lower than the 6,418 scored by No2EU, the union-led left eurosceptics. So she would be eliminated next: let’s assume that a third of SNP voters are voting the straight independence ticket, with the Greens next, a third voting soft social democrat with Labour next, and the final third splits equally between the Lib Dems, the Tories, and UKIP. There aren’t many of them so it doesn’t matter much.

Again, no-one’s much nearer to quota so No2EU get eliminated. Let’s assume half of them are primarily lefties and they go Green next, despite us not being anti-EU, and half of them primarily hate the EU so they go to UKIP. That’s 3,209 for each party, and again no-one’s on quota. The next two lowest are Britain First and the BNP. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that all the fash votes slide readily over to UKIP. That gives the ‘kippers another 23,851 votes, just 23,702 away from that fifth seat. Labour at this point are about 10,000 behind UKIP.

Now the real fun begins – no-one’s on quota, and the Tories’ surplus 40,030 votes (including transfers) are redistributed. Given the SNP are already out, that means their votes can only go to Labour, Lib Dem, Green, or UKIP. It’s hard to tell, but let’s assume half are rightwing and eurosceptic, people who’d put UKIP next, a third are coalitionistas prepared to put the Lib Dems next, and a sixth are non-racist unionists who’ll put Labour next.

This brings UKIP a tantalising 3,876 short of quota, with Labour 23,393 behind them, and it brings the Lib Dems to 109,951, just 3,446 behind the Greens. It’s not enough, though, and the Lib Dems are now the lowest-placed remaining party.

Their 109,951 votes (including transfers) are redistributed. Given the SNP and Tories are already out, that means their votes can only go to Labour, Green, or UKIP: bear in mind that the two remaining seats will be awarded only from that list too. I’ll assume (I know) that none of the Lib Dems have UKIP next, that a quarter of them are passionate unionists who’d put Labour next, and the remaining three quarters are lower-case g green-minded, transferring accordingly.

This takes Labour to 192335 and the Greens to 195860 (I have rounded in places so there’ll be an occasional vote astray). Both parties make quota, Labour’s Catherine Stihler narrowly for her party’s second seat, the Greens’ Maggie Chapman marginally more comfortably. UKIP remain those 3,876 votes short and thus return no Scottish MEP. The balance of Lib Dem transfers at the end isn’t particularly crucial – if more go to Labour first and then the Greens, then Labour would make quota more comfortably, with a surplus that could be expected to tend to preference Greens ahead of UKIP, although if not quite 10% of those Lib Dems had ranked UKIP above the Greens we’d be back to the same distribution as the actual result.

Of course, voters don’t vote mechanically like this with their preferences. Just look at any of the local election wards to see that. And you could make plenty of other assumptions that would see the final two seats go to Labour and UKIP, or just plausibly Labour and the Lib Dems (but no way could the SNP have won a third, contrary to Iain’s assumption). But wouldn’t it be nice to find out who we really want and really don’t want? Fair votes under STV aren’t just about proportionality, they’re about subtle and accurate expressions of our votes. I would like us to use nothing else.

(assumptions spreadsheet available on request)

Last night I blogged about the downsides of the Euro electoral system and the tactical voting it encourages. I argued that there were two seats in contention, and they could be between any of the Tories, the Greens, the SNP, UKIP and the Lib Dems. Just after I posted it, though, YouGov’s final Scottish poll was published. It’s got a 533 sample size, so the margin of error is bigger than with a normal 1000 person poll (up to 4.2%, rather than around 3%), but even so..

LAB – 28%
SNP – 26%
CON – 15%
UKIP – 13%
GRN – 11%
LDEM – 6%

The way this would work under the Euro electoral system is as follows (it shows the SNP on double UKIP’s vote, let’s assume they’re a notch above that, which only affects the order in which the last two seats are won):

The last two vote columns are key. If this were the result, the last two seats would go SNP/UKIP, with both parties’ votes at 13% at that stage (the SNP having been halved because they won the second seat). But look at the Votes 6 column. The Greens would, on this poll, fall just 2% short of claiming that last seat from UKIP. No-one else is even close at that stage – Labour would need 39% instead of 28% to take it, the SNP likewise, the Tories would need 26% instead of 15%, and the Lib Dems would need 13% instead of 6%. With a 4.2% margin of error, even assuming it all went in favour of Labour, or the SNP, or the Tories, or the Lib Dems, they couldn’t stop UKIP.

Only a boost to the Green vote, on this showing, could realistically stop Scotland electing a UKIP MEP.

If we took that two percent from the SNP, that’d leave the last two seats as Green/UKIP rather than SNP/UKIP, which cannot be the objective. So the tactical message to all non-SNP voters who don’t want to see UKIP in is lend the Greens your vote. This applies most of all to Lib Dem voters: your seat is lost, as all the polls agree. Your final message is about in or out of Europe – a Green MEP for Scotland rather than a UKIP MEP makes that case better than a wasted vote for the Lib Dems.

For a while I was the only one reading the Guardian, or so I thought. It started off with me reading the paper Guardian with a cup of coffee. Occasionally I’d laugh at the odd meta-article that crept through, and at myself. Then I found out other people were reading the Guardian too. Not only that, the amount of Guardian produced was being increased exponentially.

There used to be a relatively small range of Guardian, and long term Guardian fans will remember trademarks such as Ian Traynor’s excellent foreign reporting and how good G2 used to be when it first appeared.

Then came Guardian Australia, and Guardian US. Then The Guardian was playing a major role in global politics as Alan Rusbridger was ordered by MI-5 to smash up some hard drives containing sensitive information.  Shortly before an article about Alan Rusbridger, by Alan Rusbridger, documenting Alan Rusbridger’s difficulty in playing the piano appeared.

The fact you can get all different types of Guardian, and the fact seemingly everyone is either reading or writing for the Guardian, means that you can now find out what it is like to be Anna Wintour’s (the editor of American Vogue) daughter. Peak oil is actually quite boring, but peak beard is not. You can also attend Guardian workshops on everything from twitter to urbanism run by Guardian affiliated celebrities, and read Chris Huhne (who is apparently not the one who went to prison for lying in court) talk about how bad British politics is. It is now possible to find a Guardian article commenting on any aspect of your life if you type in your area of interest to Google next to the word Guardian. Oddly enough, this rule does not always hold true if you live in Scotland (and Severin Carrell deserves better than being relegated to the Scotland blog, stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of what he can write and what click rates demand is read)

Like good beer, and good beards, good journalism takes time and cannot be knocked off by anyone with a pen and a view on something – that way blogging lies – any more than reading a lot of books about space makes you an astrophysicist. Like the cause of good beer being appropriated by the hungry brand hipsters of capitalism and the climactically sensible growing of facial hair by the sons of Nathan Barley, I’m not sure I’ll ever get my paper back after peak Guardian. In the last week I’ve attended some exciting meetings on where journalism goes next, and in Scotland that may mean following a different path and a different model to London’s new media.

The Sunday Herald, turncoat commercialist opportunists that they are, ran with a splash on a second recently discovered McCrone report written in the late 70s which had recommended establishing an oil fund, as had been done in Norway.

There’s a bit of a difference though: during the late 1970s through most of early 1990s and ever since Norway ran budget surpluses which enabled it to save money without raising taxes, cutting spending or borrowing more.

Which are, unfortunately, the choices that the UK was faced with at the time and which Scotland would also have been faced with had it been independent. They’re also the choices that an independent Scotland would face now.

Not establishing an oil fund wasn’t actually a failure of government but rather an almost inevitable consequence of the proportionally bigger share of North Sea reserves Norway has and the almost immediate, but slightly accidental, involvement of the state (do read that link, it’s a great story).

If there’s an argument to be had about this it’s about the need to nationalise natural resource exploitation, but that’s not the argument that’s being made. The argument being made is that, essentially, the UK should have borrowed more to invest in non-UK assets (the Norwegian oil fund is entirely invested outside of Norway to avoid distorting the economy) which seems unwise. Would you take out a bank loan to invest in the stock market?

It was Scotland’s oil. And we spent the money. On Scotland.