the brilliantly leaping gazelle

As anyone who’s been following these posts will know, I’ve returned to the topic of opinion polls more than once, not just because the polls themselves can be manipulated, but more because it only tells one what a statistically insignificant proportion of the population are thinking. There are estimated to be somewhere in the region of 51 million  eligible voters in the UK – whether they’ve bothered to register to vote or not is the subject of another post – and yet typically a survey will ask no more than 4,000 what they think.

And that’s being generous.

So in the Observer today, I was intrigued by a headline on its homepage that announced that;

Nearly 50% are of no religion – but has UK hit ‘peak secular’?

Curiosity piqued, I read on. It stated;

Analysis of data from the annual British Social Attitudes survey and the biennial European Social Survey was carried out by Stephen Bullivant, professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. “The rise of the non-religious is arguably the story of British religious history over the past half-century or so,” he says in the introduction to his report, The ‘No Religion’ Population of Britain.

It paints a picture of a Britain in which Christianity has seen a dramatic decline – although figures suggest a recent bottoming out in recent years. The avowedly non-religious – sometimes known as “nones” – now make up 48.6% of the British population. Anglicans account for 17.1%, Catholics 8.7%, other Christian denominations 17.2% and non-Christian religions 8.4%.

And for good measure, to make the survey appear to have some methodological integrity so as to reassure us that we could trust what the headlines told us, there was…er nothing.

Nothing at all, no detail as to how many adults were surveyed, how they were surveyed – face to face, telephone or online – or a breakdown of the respondents by geographical region. Annoyed by this, I clicked on the link that the story gave. It took me here. Not helpful.

Most people would have left it there, thought no more about it and enjoyed the good weather we’re having.

But I’m not most people.

I found this on the British Social Attitudes website;

 The British Social Attitudes survey has been carried out annually since 1983 and is our longest running survey. Over 90,000 people have taken part in the study so far.

90,000 people since 1983?

This survey neatly demonstrates how it is possible to extrapolate a meaning from a statistically insignificant amount of people who were asked the same question. In a survey about politics though this matters.

The BBC regularly publishes a poll tracker, which compiles all the data from the major polling organisations and produces a handy graph. Here’s the latest one.

It also adds that;

As everybody knows, the polls got the 2015 general election wrong.

They suggested that the likely outcome was a hung parliament but, as we know, the Conservatives won an overall majority. So is it worth paying attention to them this time?These methodological changes vary from pollster to pollster but there are some general trends.

Several of them now ask the people who take part about their educational background. The aim, as with questions about class, age, gender and region is to get a sample of people who are representative of the population as a whole.

Others have developed more sophisticated ways to estimate how likely it is that somebody who takes part in a poll will actually vote. Just asking people whether they will vote is not a good guide.

Of course, we can’t be sure whether these adjustments will make the polls more accurate. So some people will no doubt decide to ignore them all together.

But there’s still clearly an appetite for them.

No fewer than 30 have been conducted since the Prime Minister made her surprise announcement on 18 April.

That’s more than one a day.

And where does this appetite come from? The very people that commission them and turn them into news!

Inherent in all of this is the danger of the ‘bandwagon effect’,  which Wikipedia describes thusly;

 The bandwagon effect is a phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases the more that they have already been adopted by others. In other words, the bandwagon effect is characterized by the probability of individual adoption increasing with respect to the proportion who have already done so. As more people come to believe in something, others also “hop on the bandwagon” regardless of the underlying evidence.

The bandwagon effect occurs in voting: some people vote for those candidates or parties who are likely to succeed (or are proclaimed as such by the media), hoping to be on the “winner’s side” in the end.

That’s the problem with political polls; they help create the very thing they measure.

I’m aware that my last post might have given the impression that my tour of the Houses of Parliament was a total disappointment. Possibly my comparing the tour to a threesome might have helped foster that belief. But just like a threesome – or how I imagine one to be – it was similar to most experiences, inasmuch as the anticipation of it is was far superior than it’s realization.

I mean the tour wasn’t in and of itself bad, although the tour guide imparted a lot of historical guff. Of how someone had done something hundreds of years ago, which had been shocking then, but with the passage of time it has now become a tradition. But there wasn’t anything much about how the procedures and practices of the House had adapted over time, and are engaged in an ongoing process of adaptation to better suit the needs of the people it claims to serve.

I mean, it’s all well and good parliament passing The Equality Act, which imposes legal obligations on employers and organizations not to discriminate, but it also rather handily provides a get out clause for them.

 Duty to make adjustments

(1)

Where this Act imposes a duty to make reasonable adjustments on a person, this section, sections 21 and 22 and the applicable Schedule apply; and for those purposes, a person on whom the duty is imposed is referred to as A.

Because ‘reasonable’ isn’t defined and neither does it stipulate who defines it either. Therein lies the problem. One’s definition of reasonable might well depend on how reasonable the adjustment works for you. In my case, at the Houses of Parliament, on at least two occasions it involved an escorted journey into the bowels of the building, a journey in a lift and then briefly heading outside, before re-entering the building and rejoining the tour.

And even the government is at it. On its gov.uk page it explain ‘reasonable adjustments’ thusly;

Employers must make reasonable adjustments to make sure disabled workers (including contract workers, trainees, apprentices and business partners) aren’t seriously disadvantaged when doing their jobs.

So being  disadvantaged is fine, as long as it isn’t ‘seriously’ Again, there’s no definition.

I know that the building is old and that it wasn’t designed to accommodate people with disabilities. But if Parliament requires society to change, shouldn’t it lead by example. I bet Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson doesn’t have to deal with this when going about her business as a cross-bench peer? Maybe she does, but if she doesn’t, does that mean that some disabled people are discriminated against more than others?

Yesterday, I went on a tour of the Houses of Parliament. It summed up perfectly what I think is wrong with both the political process and democracy in general. It sounded great in theory but the longer it dragged on, the more increasingly disenchanted with the whole thing I felt, so that by the time it had ended I felt somewhat worse for having participated in it at all.

It’s rather how I imagine I’d feel after a threesome.

There has been lot’s of warnings in the press of the threat posed to the democratic thingy by ‘fake news’. That it might do this or that and how if unchecked, it’s effect could rather be like an angry toddler with only a paint set to play with in a pristine white room.

But this is in part the press deluding itself that ‘fake news’ hasn’t already gained a foothold in all sections of the media. As newsrooms have their budgets cut and with staff under pressure to create copy, this has given rise to ‘churnalism’. It’s basically when a newspaper just copies and paste bits – or all – of s a press release and presents it as a story.

Watch this brief video to see how easy it is.

It’s not the media being exploited so much, as it being a totally inevitable consequence of media economics in the digital age. Why should an editor bankroll a lengthy and costly investigative report that might result in costly legal action, when he has far cheaper alternatives?

One of my gripes about this election is the media’s reliance on opinion polls. These can hijack the news agenda and in turn influence what policies and proposals are put before the electorate. Why bother announcing something when the chances are how it plays in the polls becomes the story, and not the thing itself. And the thing is no hardly ever looks at polls to see if you’ve either a) provided any details about how many people you interviewed or b) how you interviewed them. This last bit bothers me. A lot.

On Sunday this appeared. This blog followed soon after. So naturally after posting, I signed up with the market research company concerned, Opinium. Only it wasn’t me. Yes they were using my email address, but they were a older semi-skilled white male, educated to  GCSE level, with no particular political affiliations who read a red top. And in the interests of balance they also signed up with YouGov – an online only market research company – only this time as young female of Chinese parentage, with a professional qualification who had strong political opinions.

Anyone can pretend to be anyone online – as dating sites alone prove.

Am I a hypocrite – denouncing that which I decry or am I just proving the very inherent risks in taking online persona’s as anything other than fake? Or if I survey the reader of this blog, might that give me the answer?

The received wisdom, which the results of the local election would seem to confirm, is that the Conservative Party have played a blinder by neutralizing UKIP as a political force so effectively, that they are in danger of becoming a political farce.

In a weird way, I feel sorry for UKIP. Not because their views they espouse are ones I necessarily agree with.  But more that the frustration and cynicism of people with the established political parties that they gave voice to, has in turn been cynically watered down by the Conservative Party.

UKIP forced the issue of a European referendum. Without sustained political pressure from UKIP and media pressure from sections of the most of the press, one wouldn’t have happened. UKIP got 12.6% votes cast in the general election of 2015 remember? To everyone’s surprise, we voted for Brexit. Certainly to Teresa Mays surprise, because she was a Remainer! Therefore it seems plausible, if not certain, that Teresa May might well have been advised to make it seem that she was seeking a strong negotiating position, sending out the right ‘mood music’ and signaling her willingness to walk away from any deal that she though wasn’t in the nation’s best interest. Of course, appealing to those voters that had been lost to UKIP played absolutely no part whatsoever in her decision.

But if it did, was it that much of a shock? Remember the European Elections of 1989? Like it was yesterday I’ll wager. When the Green Party took 14.9% of the vote, causing both the Labour and Conservative parties to confront the truth that the Greens had a message that voters liked? And not just voters, but a significant amount of voters, so significant in fact, that both parties sought to reposition themselves in the minds of the voter as more environmentally aware. So successful were both parties at doing this, that at next European elections in 1994, the Greens only got 3.2% of the vote. Rendering the threat to the political environment nullified and ensuring business as usual.

Another day, another poll suggesting that something might happen to someone, whereas something else might happen if that someone does something different because some people are feeling something that they could well change their minds about.  Or something.

Yup, there’s another poll in today’s Observer, carried out by Opinium, which states;

The Tories have dropped one point to 46% since last week, while Labour is unchanged on 30%. The Liberal Democrats are up one point on 9% and Ukip is unchanged on 7%.

While Labour has succeeded in clawing back some of the Tory lead, which stood at 19 points two weeks ago, Theresa May’s party would still win a majority of 100.

Oh dear. Someone, somewhere is doing something – but hang on! There’s a caveat here. A small glimmer of hope! The report adds, in something akin to what I imagine would be a schoolboy’s voice when offering a grudgingly mumbled apology, whilst looking downward and kicking his shoes;

if this weekend’s figures are an accurate prediction of what happens on polling day.

What! You mean to say this poll could be wrong? Next thing is you’ll be telling me that they base their findings from a survey of only 20005 people. Oh that’s in the small print is it? Along with the fact that respondents took part online. Well that’s fair enough, I suppose, everything’s done online nowadays. What with it being more modern than a bloke with a clipboard. At least they weren’t paid to take part – oh they were?

But that wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the story. I had to go their website to discover that rather salient fact.

You get cash rewards for each survey that you complete. The average payment is 50p and we pay you when your account reaches twenty five pounds.

Admittedly, one doesn’t get much but that isn’t the point. The point is that not just a only a sad sack like me would think it worth asking to question the survey’s methodology, but also that for a newspaper that frequently takes the moral high ground, isn’t this just a tiny bit something?

I was watching BBC2’s ‘Newsnight’ yesterday and there’re was a discussion about the local election results, their impact on the parties strategy and the results might be indicative of voting behaviour on June 8^th. In the midst of all this they discussed Teresa May; more specifically how she was perceived by voters. One of the panelists, a presenter on a London talk radio station observed that a lot of his callers – regardless of their political affiliation – expressed admiration for Teresa May. Others, he added considered her strong, capable or a combination of all three.

But crucially, when asked to explain why they felt this way, they hadn’t a reason. It was more a feeling, an impression that they got. Another panelist then jumped in. He too had heard the same thing repeatedly on the doorstep. A feeling that she was somehow good without knowing why they thought it.

And then it struck me! Teresa May is copying the techniques first perfected by Harold Saxon, Doctor Who’s nemesis ‘The Master’, who finding himself on earth creates an identity for himself as Harold Saxon, an emerging political force. Bear with me. One way he does this is by launching the Archangel network of telecommunication satellites. Only there is embedded in the signal that every user gets is a subliminal message that he is good, he is to be trusted, that he is kind and so on. They don’t know why they think it, they just know he is.

Only he isn’t. And it’s only when it’s too late and becomes Prime Minister that people realise that.

But hey, ‘Doctor Who’ is only voguish science fiction, rooted in far-fetched implausibility populated with robotic villains who screech terrifying stock phrases repeatedly.

Yeah, only make believe.

This morning I woke up to the first results from the local elections and they were either very good or very bad, depending on your political allegiance. The Conservatives had their best results in over a decade, the Lib Dems did badly but nowhere near as badly as Labour whilst some in the media have judged UKIP to have been obliterated, having lost all of their seats.

Thinking about UKIP being obliterated,  I thought of last night, specifically me watching ‘The War Game’ again for the first time since I was fifteen. For those of you who don’t know what ‘The War Game ‘is, it was made by the BBC in 1965, and shows the effects on ordinary civilians of a nuclear war. Immediately banned. and never broadcast at the time and only screened over 20 years later, it nonetheless won the Academy Award for best documentary.

One of the pitfalls one exposes oneself when watching something one remembered fondly from ones youth is that it can all too often be a disappointing experience, as one is judging it with a more critical eye. Sometimes things are best enjoyed as memories.

This wasn’t one of those occasions.

Watching it again after so many years,  I was struck by the fact that not only has it stood the test of time remarkably well, but that at fifteen I thought it worth seeing in the first place. I had somehow persuaded my mum to drive quite a way me to a screening of it organised was by C.N.D in a church hall. It was almost like watching ‘A Clockwork Orange’ when it was banned. Both had achieved a near mythical status, but ‘The War Game’s shocking power came from it’s matter of fact approach.

So when Jeremy Corbyn is criticized in the press for saying that if Prime Minister he wouldn’t launch a nuclear weapons is that such a shock. I mean here’s man who when he didn’t have power saying the same thing when he does. I know I’ve got brain damage and everything, but how is that a bad thing? The press would brand him a traitor to his ideals if he suddenly recanted them and use it as evidence of his untrustworthiness. And those politicians who are lauded in the press for being somehow strong for saying they oppose his principled decision, are they not aware that in a nuclear exchange, the effects of the resulting nuclear winter, the radiation sickness affecting billions, the collapse of civil society would not differentiate between who had or hadn’t fired them?