the brilliantly leaping gazelle

It always baffles me how the protesters from Just Stop Oil manage to avoid serious injury when attempting to draw attention to a problem, a problem that most people are quite content to remain a problem.

Their latest stunt involved throwing some powder at Stonehenge today to make some point or other about keeping oil or coal in the ground. About how much more needs to be done, with much more urgency and of course, much more guilt about living in a society where these boons to humanity have become commonplace.Bizarrely, no-one has ever lamped one of these fuckers and because of that, it emboldens them to commit even greater follies in pursuance of a goal as unlikely to be achieved as Scotland winning the Euro’s.

Do people care about the planet, yes of course they do! But they care about heating their homes a lot more.

Do they want more renewable energy, yes of course they do! But they also want the certainty that when they turn their light switch on in January – when the sun doesn’t shine – or in the summer – when the wind doesn’t blow – it’ll work.

Do some people agree think that electric cars are the future, of course they do! But most question their affordability and practicality.

Why don’t the protesters just sue their parents for committing the unpardonable crime of having had them in the first place, and further compounding that sin by doing so in a time and place which indulges their performative posturing?  

If only their Dads has kept it in their pants!

I must confess to being a tad confused by the media’s seemingly insatiable appetite for using opinion polls to manufacture stories out of at election time, when recent previous history has proven time and time again just how wrong they can be.

My opinion of opinion polls hasn’t been helped by their disastrous misreading of the 2015 election, one that was only eclipsed by their failure to accurately predict the outcome of the 2016 referendum. Mind you, that was only eclipsed by their utter failure in predicting the outcome of the 2017 election. So, improvements were urgently needed, as every newspaper and media outlet said in 2015, again in 2016, and er, in 2017 and yes finally some things changed and they got it a bit right in time for the 2019 one.

I’ve long been of the belief that the use of opinion polls should be seriously limited during an election campaign. This would be positive thing for democracy, not a negative. Yes, by all means, let the parties conduct their own polling for their own private use. How much support do they enjoy as compared to the other parties and therefore which policies are proving popular – or not – with the electorate, and what demographic of the electorate should they focus on. That sort of thing, for their eyes only, to be analysed by anals in pointy hats and not be used otherwise.

Lest there exists a situation whereby an opinion poll can that give rise to a story one day, is apparently contradicted the next, and for the same newspaper to report on both of these stories in a state of blissful ignorance that they’d ever published the one that they’ve just contradicted. And this also gives the false impression that x per cent of the population thinks’ this, as opposed to the more accurate – but less newsy – observation that x per cent of statistically insignificant number of the population thought this.

In yesterday’s Independent there appeared this headline, ‘More than half of voters want Jeremy Corbyn back in the Labour party, new poll reveals.’

Wow! That certainly was something, although what exactly that something was, and even how likely it was to become that something, was not discussed. There’s a poll, don’t you know, and polls tell us something, which in this case was that,

‘More than half of all voters believe that former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn should be allowed back into the party if he is re-elected as an MP in his constituency of Islington North.

Exclusive polling for the Independent by Techne shows that while 56 per cent of all voters say he should be re-admitted, this number is much higher among Labour voters, with 8 in 10 saying that Corbyn should be allowed to rejoin the Labour Party’

Seeing as how I’m brain damaged and get easily confused, I tried to make sense of it. So, people were asked a question predicated upon the notion that something that hasn’t happened yet does happen and creates the necessary conditions for that question to be asked? Hang on, didn’t Chris Morris do a sketch on Radio 4’s ‘On The Hour’ back in 1992 based a this exact premise.

But maybe, because of how I’m brain damaged, possibly I’m being unfair, maybe their methodology was sound, Oh the results were based what 1,624 adults said, it says. That can’t be right, especially if a newspaper is making such a bold claim in the middle of an election campaign based on such a small number of respondents.

Then I saw this opinion poll result based bollocks in The Independent today,’ Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson set to win seats in new Ipsos MRP poll. Ipsos projection also shows Jeremy Corbyn at high risk of losing his Islington North seat’

I thought that people liked him. Isn’t that what you said yesterday, and even if you didn’t explicitly say that, you certainly gave that impression. But lets not dwell on that because,

‘The model also projects that Jeremy Corbyn may lose his seat in Islington North after 41 years of being an MP. Labour is estimated at 54 per cent of the vote in the constituency, with candidate Praful Nargund, while Mr Corbyn may be at just 13 per cent.’

A quick visit to both websites, Techne who produced yesterdays opinion poll, an Ipsos, who produced today’s one, proved that there’s no such thing as a load of old bollocks that can’t have more bollocks added to it, with the help of some computer bollocks and impressively sounding sciencey bollocks.

At Techne, I found that whilst an impressive sounding 18,252 had been invited to take part in the survey, the overwhelming majority of these – 16,616 –  had either declined or else had not properly completed the survey in some way. I also discovered that interviews were either conducted using CATI or CAWI.

Both baffled and intrigued by these acronyms, I decided to investigate. CATI turns out to stand for Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing, whilst CAWI is Computer Assisted Web Interviewing, and despite both having the pro’s and cons, the main pro is that they are cheap. 

Then over to Ipsos. While they make all manner of highfalutin claims about how sciencey based their poll is, its still basically a load of old bollocks. 

‘Multi-level regression and post stratification (MRP) is an advanced modelling technique that estimates the likely vote share for main parties in each constituency by using a national survey with a large sample size. Data on how people say they will vote (and if they will vote) is analysed by a wide range of factors to see how different types of people, in different areas, are likely to act.’

Clever bollocks but still bollocks none the same.

‘For example, it estimates the probability that a woman, aged 25-34, with a degree, living in a Lab/Con marginal, who voted Labour in 2019 will vote for each party running in that constituency. These estimates are then applied to the differing profiles of each constituency to estimate vote counts for each party.’

Ah estimates, basically guesswork with a dash of optimism and a tiny bit of bollocks.

‘Nevertheless, this is just a snapshot of people’s current voting intentions, and there is still time for things to change.  As with any survey and any model, there are uncertainties to take into account, such as margins of error, the impact of unique local dynamics, and sensitivities to the data that goes in.’

Yeah, we know its bollocks, and this covers us when it does indeed turn out to be bollocks, but as no one will actually bother to look behind the story and check out our website, we’ll be fine.