timberlandko wrote:And, yeah, I know the official estimate is 70-110K. And yeah, I know it was on a weekday. Gather enough straw, and you can make a dog out of it.
See, thats why people get so pissed off at you, Timber. The sheer stubborn pettiness of your insistence on points, no matter how irrelevant, that have actually
been proven wrong in this very thread just now. No, the official estimate is not "70-110K"; it had initially been 70K, but was then updated to 110K. Thats as per Scotland Yard itself.
Your general point is clear, and actually fair enough - this demo was significantly smaller than the previous ones. Bigger than had been expected, but still clearly down from before. That goes with the polls that show an up in approval of the war, too. Point made. And I'm sure that the point will neither gain nor lose value, to your mind, whether there were 70,000, 110,000 or 200,000 demonstrators there. There were no million anymore, nuff said.
So why this petty insistence on spinning these numbers, which yes, some of us do, silly us, care about, downwards even in the face of the offical assessments? Scotland Yard had first said 30K, then 70K, and in the end had to upgrade its estimation to 110,000 as the demonstration unexpectedly grew as it went along. In every single news report from after the demo was finished, whether from the right (Telegraph), center (BBC) or left (Guardian), you will find these updated figures.
So why your childish insistence on "know[ing] the official estimate is 70-110K"? Is it just cause you dont want to be seen backing down, even on something totally trivial? I mean, really - would it actually impact the point you were making in any way at all to just go - 'oh, yeh, I missed that - it was 110k in the end, then, was it? I must have gone by the old figures still' ... ? What else could it be - resentment? contempt? - that makes you review figures from left to right that each say something between 100,000 and 200,000, and still go - oh yeh, those 70-110K people ... Is it just that you are too tempted by the chance to gratuitously annoy those lefties here, even if it means you have to go against your own sources, even when its just on some tiny, trivial thing?
<shakes head> Its not just bias - it's petty malevalence, is my take. Of course we cant always be there to juxtapose the actual facts, or the full text, etc, with your latest spin, so I'm sure it'll happen many times again. The topic? Totally unimportant. The message? Clear: utter disrespect.