Bag's Rants

Political Mathematics and English

One of the things I clearly missed out on in school was the course that taught you to manipulate statistics for your own ends. I had to pick that up post school and an interesting time has been had since then.

In addition, I also missed out on the political mathematics which has facts and figures of support for Tony/Labour/Government dropping week on week and yet show that everything is going well and we have the best year yet for the NHS/Schools etc. And the part that got me thinking today is the the figure is still +ve. That tells me there is times that the polls must have an upward bias otherwise support for Tony/Labour/Government would be zero. Alternatively they ask about other things where there is clearly +ve support to keep the statistics up.

I have no doubt it is all around the questions used in these polls. When the polls are released we should also get to see the questions asked but nobody ever does. It brings me back, again, to the Yes, Prime Minster episode with Sir Humphrey explaining to Bernard Woolley about a poll on National Service where the questions led the person down a particular path.

Anyway, back to the real world and we see Labour is down to it's lowest ever level in a new poll. Blair is doing a good job in destroying the Labour party.

posted by Bag @ 9:45 am