COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
You just don't stop, do you?
The Independent
displays a genuine case of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in the energy and
resources it puts into tearing down Jeremy Corbyn, week-in, week-out.
Polls are only as good as their true random sampling and as
good as the nature of the questions asked – as whether the questions suggest or
lead respondents.
I suspect The Independent
in such a commissioned poll makes sure the questions and words elicit the
result they seek, else the whole exercise would be a waste of money and time.
Readers unfamiliar with polling techniques should know that
polls are sometimes used as weapons. What's in the questions is everything.
We can refer to a person as "resolute" or
"stubborn," as "proud" or "arrogant," etc, etc. And believe me, you will get a different set
of responses from those called with each choice of words.
This phenomenon is a reflection of the underlying realities
of advertising and human suggestibility, polling being governed by the same
realities.
Indeed, the very topic of a poll is suggestive to
responders. Why on earth am I being polled about a man just elected and
starting his leadership? Maybe there's something wrong with him? Odd sounding
perhaps, but that is how human minds work, being only in part rational.
I am sure The
Independent understands these matters, and it is plainly shovelling loads
of cow manure disguised to resemble gold.
Jeremy Corbyn is a fine man of principle, something no one
can say of David Cameron. Cameron is servile to non-British interests,
dishonest, and not liked by even a simple majority of people. Amongst those who
do like him are the establishment that the publisher of The Independent serves with this rubbish.
Hilary Benn, the other politician mentioned in the poll, is
a one-speech wonder, and perhaps not even that, the attention he drew being only
derived from papers like The Independent
tripping over themselves to lavish relatively unearned praise. And besides
that, Benn was simply wrong from a larger perspective, a fact with which we
arrive back at the very reason for commissioning such polls: to tear down “undesirable”
positions and build up the “desired’ ones. I believe that’s called propaganda.
