{"id":19706,"date":"2016-07-16T01:16:28","date_gmt":"2016-07-16T00:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=19706"},"modified":"2016-07-16T01:16:28","modified_gmt":"2016-07-16T00:16:28","slug":"total-liars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=19706","title":{"rendered":"Total Liars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I saw a <a title=\"'PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE' Bank of England holds off on interest rate cut and sends pound soaring\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thesun.co.uk\/news\/1447777\/bank-of-england-holds-off-on-interest-rate-cut-and-sends-pound-soaring\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">headline in The Sun yesterday<\/a>, which reads:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Bank of England holds off on interest rate cut and sends pound soaring<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>They used this graphic to illustrate the phenomenon:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"The Sun's deliberately misleading graphic\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 524px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 524\/253;border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 5px 10px 5px 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"The Sun's deliberately misleading graphic\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/sun_gbp_usd.jpg\" width=\"524\" height=\"253\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\">You have to bear in mind that The Sun is ultra right-wing, and was ultra pro-brexit. It spent the entire time leading up to the referendum twisting information, printing stories about immigrants and crime, and defaming anyone who aired pro-EU sentiments.<\/p>\n<p>Please allow me to show you a <strong>factual<\/strong> graph representing GBP versus USD over recent weeks using real financial data sources.<img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Value of GBP against USD up to 16 July 2016\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 524px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 524\/253;border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 5px 10px 5px 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Value of GBP against USD up to 16 July 2016\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/gbp_usd_16072016.jpg\" width=\"524\" height=\"253\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\"><\/p>\n<p>The high point on the left is the pre-referendum price (over $1.483 to the \u00a3). The end of the graph marks the price at the end of trading on yesterday (the dotted line indicates $1.317 to the \u00a3).<\/p>\n<p>Key points to note are as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the \u00a3 is currently $0.166 lower than it was before the referendum <\/li>\n<li>the current value of the \u00a3 is a direct result of the referendum outcome <\/li>\n<li>the \u00a3 is currently down 11.2% from its pre-referendum value <\/li>\n<li>its lowest point was 13% below the pre-referendum value <\/li>\n<li>it is currently up about 1.8% from its lowest value <\/li>\n<li>it hasn&#8217;t &#8220;soared&#8221; <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you look carefully, The Sun\u2019s graphic is similar to the real financial data-based one \u2013 but not identical. There is a double peak centred around the 12th and 14th of this month, but there is certainly no level plateau around the 9th and 10th. And there is nowhere near as much fluctuation (fluctuation occurs over a day, but the daily figure quoted is the closing price). However, they have purposely only quoted data that makes the graph look good \u2013 like this:<img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Actual financial data purposely selected to look better than they are\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 524px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 524\/253;border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 5px 10px 5px 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Actual financial data purposely selected to look better than they are\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/gbp_usd_16072016_fiddled.jpg\" width=\"524\" height=\"253\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\"><\/p>\n<p>This is just the end data on the larger graph I showed above. It seems to tell a completely different story, doesn\u2019t it? And look what happens if you squeeze it \u2013 here\u2019s the same part of the graph, but made narrower:<img decoding=\"async\" title=\"The same misleading data, just squashed together\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 524px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 524\/253;border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 5px 10px 5px 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"The same misleading data, just squashed together\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/gbp_usd_16072016_fiddled_more.jpg\" width=\"524\" align=\"left\" height=\"253\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\"><\/p>\n<p>It really does look like it is \u201csoaring\u201d \u2013 but it is identical to the one above as far as the numbers are concerned.<\/p>\n<p>This is the kind of manipulation The Sun excels at, and which it uses to control the minds of most of its readers. It\u2019s one of the main reasons why we ended up with such a stupidly wrong referendum result \u2013 it\u2019s what you get when you allow stupid people to vote on things they don\u2019t understand, and allow dishonest people to advise them.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"British Pound Likely to Head Higher before it Drops\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfx.com\/sentiment#pairsGBPUSD\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forex has commented<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>British Pound Likely to Head Higher before it Drops<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I saw a headline in The Sun yesterday, which reads: Bank of England holds off on interest rate cut and sends pound soaring They used this graphic to illustrate the phenomenon: You have to bear in mind that The Sun is ultra right-wing, and was ultra pro-brexit. It spent the entire time leading up to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_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":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}