This was very interesting and yet I was so distracted by that square root of 1% I had to stop reading and go and check it out.
First of all the square root of 1% worked out at 10%. This is because percentages are really just a fancy way of writing fractions.
The square root of 1/100 is 1/10, because 1 x1 = 1. And 10 x 10 = 100. (Squaring is when you multiply something by itself and square roots just undo this.)
Then I wondered why 800… so I guessed to population of the UK when they started the meditation centre was 56,000,000. But this worked out at 0.00001429 which is the square root of 0.00377964
In other words they went with the square root of 0.38% of the population, not 1%
A good job really as otherwise the population of Skem would have gone up by 5.6 million people. I don’t think that dome would quite accommodate them!
If you ever need nerdy fact-checking, I’m your woman!
recommended listening, The Magnetic North - 'Prospect of Skelmersdale', good album by Hannah Peel, Erland Cooper and one time Skem resident Simon Tong. (2016)
If nothing else The Post is now a voice for these “forgotten” places on the periphery of the theme park that passes for a city now. For Skem read Bootle, Birkenhead, Kirkby and Runcorn.
I remember the earlier incarnation of the site that Reach PLC like to quote from the noughties called “Crap Towns”.
Most of it was/is sneering British class prejudice and petty oneupmanship dressed up as some sort of social commentary. Perfect now for Echo articles and comment sections.
The Echo recently did a piece on Skem that assumed the reader might never have heard of the town. I think it was the writer projecting, they gave a Wikipedia style description and said its most famous feature was its lack of roundabouts and never mentioned the Marahishi connection.
You’d know more than most (given your fantastic exploits at Reach PLC!) but it’s clear the Echo and MEN and their other flagship local titles represent their respective areas only in name, and the in house style is to write, as you point out, as if someone on Cornwall Live is reading about County Road or in this case Skem for the first time.
They’re also very good are throwing raw meat to their audience to comment on certain subjects, but not on others. It pays the bills for Reach to have journos trawling social media and DMing people but accurate and authentic local journalism it is not.
Problem is with the echo (deliberate misspelling) is that it actually has very few "reporters" in the accepted sense of the newspaper world, most of them are at best straight out of University, and little more than Glorified interns. Of course, the other problem is that apart from the 5 years or so that they spent at Uni, they've never lived in the area, so have very little local knowledge, other than the City Centre, and Smithdown Rd, where they all either still live, having never moved after graduating, or used to live when they were in Student Accommodation
This was very interesting and yet I was so distracted by that square root of 1% I had to stop reading and go and check it out.
First of all the square root of 1% worked out at 10%. This is because percentages are really just a fancy way of writing fractions.
The square root of 1/100 is 1/10, because 1 x1 = 1. And 10 x 10 = 100. (Squaring is when you multiply something by itself and square roots just undo this.)
Then I wondered why 800… so I guessed to population of the UK when they started the meditation centre was 56,000,000. But this worked out at 0.00001429 which is the square root of 0.00377964
In other words they went with the square root of 0.38% of the population, not 1%
A good job really as otherwise the population of Skem would have gone up by 5.6 million people. I don’t think that dome would quite accommodate them!
If you ever need nerdy fact-checking, I’m your woman!
Funnily enough I also started to do the maths- thanks for saving me the effort!
Disappointed that there was no mention of the political wing of the movement, also based in Skem, the Natural Law Party - sadly now disbanded https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/yogic-flyers-crash-out-of-british-politics-5366184.html
recommended listening, The Magnetic North - 'Prospect of Skelmersdale', good album by Hannah Peel, Erland Cooper and one time Skem resident Simon Tong. (2016)
A terrific read. Well done
Yes. This is the kind of article that made me subscribe. The Aspiration Dispersal Field generator, wow.
“Unemployed. Love the Floyd.”
Really informative piece.
If nothing else The Post is now a voice for these “forgotten” places on the periphery of the theme park that passes for a city now. For Skem read Bootle, Birkenhead, Kirkby and Runcorn.
I remember the earlier incarnation of the site that Reach PLC like to quote from the noughties called “Crap Towns”.
Most of it was/is sneering British class prejudice and petty oneupmanship dressed up as some sort of social commentary. Perfect now for Echo articles and comment sections.
Good work, Jack, bringing this story to life.
The Echo recently did a piece on Skem that assumed the reader might never have heard of the town. I think it was the writer projecting, they gave a Wikipedia style description and said its most famous feature was its lack of roundabouts and never mentioned the Marahishi connection.
You’d know more than most (given your fantastic exploits at Reach PLC!) but it’s clear the Echo and MEN and their other flagship local titles represent their respective areas only in name, and the in house style is to write, as you point out, as if someone on Cornwall Live is reading about County Road or in this case Skem for the first time.
They’re also very good are throwing raw meat to their audience to comment on certain subjects, but not on others. It pays the bills for Reach to have journos trawling social media and DMing people but accurate and authentic local journalism it is not.
Keep up with your own work, you’ve got the knack!
Problem is with the echo (deliberate misspelling) is that it actually has very few "reporters" in the accepted sense of the newspaper world, most of them are at best straight out of University, and little more than Glorified interns. Of course, the other problem is that apart from the 5 years or so that they spent at Uni, they've never lived in the area, so have very little local knowledge, other than the City Centre, and Smithdown Rd, where they all either still live, having never moved after graduating, or used to live when they were in Student Accommodation