We have four days left. Will you stand up for truth and honesty in this election?
08 December 2019 | Full Fact election update
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Dear Supporter,
In just four days’ time, people will be voting for the party they want to lead the country. This campaign has seen parties repeat false claims, invent other parties’ spending costs, publish misleading campaign materials and dodge the scrutiny of journalists and the public.
As our supporter, you already know that we all need accountable, impartial and honest information to make that choice a well-informed one. You’ll also know that this election, it’s been harder than ever for voters to access good information.
Supporter, I’ve been shocked by some of the tactics we’ve seen this election. But now isn’t the time to give in to apathy.
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We’ve fact checked the manifestos, the debates and the headlines. We’ve called out campaigns and parties on all sides for misleading claims and tactics. Now we need to get the word out to as many voters as possible.
You can share our fact checks with your friends and family, so that they can get the good information they deserve.
You can challenge your candidates at hustings and on doorsteps to get their facts right, correct their mistakes, and back up their claims.
But you can also support our fact checking efforts. In the critical final days, it’s more important than ever that our team keeps up with harmful claims on all sides. Millions of people are tuning into the debate for the first time, and we need to protect their vote. In 2017, 30% of all our election traffic came in the last four days. There’s never been a more important time to start backing Full Fact.
We have four days left. Can you help us stand up for trust in politics?
I'll start a monthly donation ([link removed])
I'll give £25 to support fact checking ([link removed])
Thank you so much,
Will
** FACT CHECK
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** Sajid Javid claimed a 50% fall in homelessness under Conservatives—but homelessness is up since 2010 ([link removed])
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Sajid Javid claimed on Sky News that homelessness reached its peak in 2008 under Labour and since then is down by almost a half.
There are lots of different ways of measuring homelessness, and none of them give a full picture. But according to all the evidence we’ve seen, this is almost the exact opposite of what has happened.
The Conservatives later told Channel 4 FactCheck that he had misremembered the statistic and meant to say that statutory homelessness peaked in 2003, which is correct. It also means Mr Javid was wrong in claiming credit for the Conservatives cutting the homelessness rate.
Misremembered stats ([link removed])
** FACT CHECK
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** Labour claims about savings under their policies are not credible ([link removed])
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Labour released figures this week that they said showed Labour policies would save the average family £6,700. They also said that that costs to the average family had risen by almost £6,000 since 2010.
But very few of these figures represent what “average families” will save under Labour’s policies, or how much more those families have had to pay under the Conservatives.
Overall these figures are not credible.
Laboured calculations ([link removed])
** FACT CHECK
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** SNP manifesto claim on living wage is slight underestimate ([link removed])
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The SNP claimed in their manifesto that Scotland has the highest rate of workers in the UK earning the living wage. It specifies that 81.6% are paid a “real Living Wage”.
This seems to be based on slightly out of date figures, the most up to date figures we could find suggest this is a slight underestimate and that the figure is closer to 83%.
Out of date estimate ([link removed])
**
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** Fact or fiction? ([link removed])
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The election is on the way—and with everyone trying to sell you something, it can be hard to tell fact from fiction.
Do you think you have what it takes to spot it? Put your fact checking skills to the test and protect your vote ahead of 12 December:
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** Also this week ([link removed])
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* The UK has one of the highest levels of foreign-born doctors and nurses in the EU ([link removed])
* It's incorrect to say the UK has worst recycling in the EU ([link removed])
* No single figure ([link removed]) about child poverty tells the whole story
* If you are earning £80,000 you are in the top 5% of income tax payers ([link removed])
* There are 11 million people in the private rented sector ([link removed])
* The housing supply has increased ([link removed]) by a million in the past five years
* This quote about selling NHS assets does not appear in the leaked UK-US trade documents ([link removed])
* £30,000 would be a high graduate salary ([link removed]) for most new teachers in England
* The Barnett Formula isn’t set out in law ([link removed])
Visit our election hub ([link removed])
**
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** Gaming the news cycle ([link removed]) [link removed]
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You have the power to infect the world with a deadly plague and bring an end to human history, all from the comfort of your sofa - sound familiar?
Well now Full Fact have partnered with Ndemic Creations to create a new Fake News scenario of their bestselling game Plague Inc. (with over 130 million players!). Instead of disease, players are challenged to spread false information across the globe to cause as much chaos and confusion as they can.
We want to introduce gamers to the damage bad information can do.
Download the game ([link removed])
**
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** How we use AI to help fact check party manifestos ([link removed]) [link removed]
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With a typical party manifesto using over 20,000 words to make around 900 claims, fact checkers need all the help they can get with navigating and selecting claims to check.
This election, we’ve been using our automated fact checking tools to scrutinise the party manifestos. In this blog, our Data Scientist David explains how AI helps us to identify claims and inform our fact checks.
Get behind the scenes ([link removed])
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Have a great weekend.
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