Daily catch-up: an average nursery rhyme; Scottish polls; and public art

Half a dozen nuggets mined from the internet over the weekend by our political columnist

1. Lovely aide memoire by Grant Maconachie, a science teacher. In the old days you would say cut out and keep; today you would say print out and bookmark.

2. The afterburn of the Scottish referendum campaign could destabilise the UK general election: my article for The Independent on Sunday yesterday looked at how the Scottish National Party could have more of an effect on the outcome next year than UKIP – which failed even to come close in the South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner by-election last week (18 points behind Labour).

As well as suggesting that the SNP might win most Labour and Lib Dem Scottish seats in the House of Commons, the opinion polls suggest that the mania for independence rages on. YouGov found that Scots would vote 52-48 per cent for independence if referendum were held now – although three things should be borne in mind. 1. The polls overestimated Yes support before the referendum. 2. It is just one poll, subject to sampling variation. 3. Of those who said how they voted in the referendum, 48½ per cent said they voted Yes, when the real figure was 45 per cent (note that 3 per cent said they didn’t vote, against the actual 15 per cent, and that 1 per cent said they “can’t remember”!).

Ipsos MORI found that two thirds of Scots would support another referendum within the next 10 years. YouGov asked a similar question and found a lower number, 45 per cent, and 40 per cent thought there “probably would be” another referendum within the next 10 years.

3. Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, asked last week when Hallowe’en lost its apostrophe. Thanks to a program called Google Ngram, which allows you to plot usage of words in millions of books that Google has digitised, we can answer that question. The apostropheless form overtook Hallowe’en in popularity in the 1940s, although in British English not until the 1960s.

Similarly to-day, to-morrow and to-night lost their hyphens in the 1920s in America and 1950s in British English.

4. Quotation of the Day:

“Why is God making me suffer so much? Just because I do not believe in him?”

The late Sidney Morgenbesser, linguistic philosopher, quoted in his obituary in The Times (pay wall). Thanks to Michael Ezra.

5. My Top 10 in the Independent on Sunday magazine yesterday was Works of Public Art. This is “Conversation à Nice”, nominated by Helen Catt.

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My book, Listellany: A Miscellany of Very British Top 10s, from Politics to Pop, is published by Elliott & Thompson.

6. And finally, thanks again to Chris Heaton-Harris for this:

“Just ordered a load of bubble-wrap from Amazon. Don’t need it, just am interested to see what it comes in.”