We apologise for another post on the subject of The Wright House, everyone, but we do love getting our teeth into a puzzle, especially when it comes with a side order of lots of juicy evidence of the Scottish media telling people outright lies.

This should be the last one for the forseeable future, and we’ve actually got some solid info to impart this time rather than just a confused expression, so buckle up.

Armed only with Google, an inquisitive nature and an army of alert readers, the first thing to note is that we’ve discovered the exact location of Douglas and Jacqueline Wright’s former home. It was 28 Wigtoun Place in Cumbernauld, and you can see it here on Google Maps:

It’s clearly the same place STV did an outside broadcast from last night:

If you search the location on property website Zoopla you get this:

This tallies with what STV News told viewers last night, and blows a huge gaping hole in what was printed in two newspapers in the last 48 hours.

The idea that M&F Property Solutions (MFPS) resold the house “months after” the Wrights sold it to them (as claimed by the Daily Mail) appears to be flatly and categorically untrue. And the Sunday Mail’s claim that the Wrights “were stunned to discover [M&F] sold it on within a year for £75,000” equally seems untenable.

The S-Mail also told us that MFPS paid the Wrights £21,000. This also seems to be an unarguable falsehood. The D-Mail and STV are united on the fact that MFPS sold the house to a third party for £75,000 and paid the Wrights £51,000 from the proceeds, having signed an agreement to keep anything over that amount in return for selling the property quickly.

The Wrights told the D-Mail that they “raised two children” in the house, so had clearly lived in it for a considerable period of time. Mrs Wright also told STV that it was a former council house that they paid £21,000 for.

That figure seems plausible – if they’d lived there since before 2002 and for over 15 years (the sort of time it takes to raise two children), they’d be entitled to a Right To Buy discount of 70%. A purchase price of £21,000 on a 70% discount would mean the house had been valued at £70,000 in 2007, which seems in the right ballpark.

The Right-To-Buy scheme also stipulated (same link as above) that part of the discount had to be paid back if the house was sold on within three years. But by waiting four years – 2007 to 2011 – the Wrights would avoid having to return any of that £49,000 premium on their purchase price to the taxpayer.

The D-Mail’s contention that £30,000 of the money paid by MFPS to the Wrights went to pay off their mortgage, then, is hard to explain, unless the Wrights had borrowed more money on the house in the intervening time. After four years, and presuming a modest deposit, the outstanding sum should otherwise have been well below £21,000.

We also still don’t know how much MFPS offered initially. According to the D-Mail the starting bid was just £17,000 but Mrs Wright told STV News that Michelle Thomson “came in, looked about the house, and she went ‘£40,000, that’s all I would gie for this’, and I thought ‘You cheeky bitch’.”

However, a source very close to Ms Thomson told Wings Over Scotland this morning that Ms Thomson had “never met” Mrs Wright, and had “no idea” who the woman Mrs Wright allegedly met was. So there’s considerable doubt over both accounts of how the final agreement came to be reached.

All we know for certain is that Mr and Mrs Wright were subsidised by taxpayers to the tune of £49,000 to buy their house, and made a 143% profit when they sold it on, pocketing £30,000 for simply living in their home for four years.

They’re nevertheless very angry about “losing” the additional £19,000 they feel they should have made (despite the fact that they made no apparent attempt to sell the house through more conventional means in the hope of realising a higher price) and hold Ms Thomson responsible for that loss, as “she is meant to represent equality”.

We’re not sure which definition of “equality” is being deployed there.

We also know beyond reasonable doubt that the Sunday Mail’s shrieking front-page “HOW CAN YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT?” headline is based on a complete untruth, namely that MFPS paid just £21,000 for the house.

The only time it’s changed hands for that sum was when the Wrights bought it in 2007, with the taxpayer effectively picking up over two-thirds of the tab.

It remains to be seen whether Michelle Thomson is eventually implicated in the failure of Christopher Hales to notify mortgage lenders of the circumstances surrounding the sale of the Wrights’ house and others.

But what we can say is that the avalanche of howling press and political outrage about Ms Thomson allegedly “taking advantage” of “vulnerable” people seems to be, to put it very mildly indeed, on shaky foundations. Although still not as shaky as the media’s grasp of basic facts.

We look forward to the Sunday and Daily Mails correcting the enormous and serious inaccuracies in their reports. In our experience, readers should expect a brace of postage-stamp-sized “clarifications” sometime in early January.