Wednesday, May 15, 2013

That 3.1 BILLION is still missing

Meanwhile the press is fixated on Duffy. Which, under normal circumstances is commendable. After all, here is a senior public official who is a crook. A thief. A fraud artist. Well, not terribly artistic, I guess. And now he's been bribed with $90,000. I'm guessing it wasn't in cash, but who knows for sure? Well, that's what you call it when you give money to a public official.

Just another example of what a disgrace our Senate is, and what poor judgement our Dear Leader has. Duffy should be ridden out of the Senate on a rail, AND be made to pay back his Senate salary for the entire time. Why? The rules state you have to be resident in the province you represent, and he isn't. He took the job under false pretenses.

But I haven't heard much about that missing 3.1 Billion dollars. That's more gazebos that even Tony Clement can build in one riding. Peter MacKay would have to spend much of it on helicopter maintenance just to get them to fly enough to give him more rides for that kind of money. The longer we don't hear about a resolution, the more I think it was stolen by those in charge.

And how about those poll companies, eh? I love it when they have egg on their faces! First the Alberta election that they got wrong. Now a BC one. Not just wrong by a few points or a few seats, but totally miscalling which party was going to form a majority government. Why would anyone ever hire them again?

As one Tweeter said, either their methodology is wrong, or people are lying to them. I say bully for the liars in this instance. Most people don't even want to talk to pollsters. They aren't supposed to call cell phones, so they still try to reach people on land lines. I'm sure they call our number often. It's why we have it, to give out to people we don't want to talk to. It's worth the monthly fee. We never answer it. We don't even twitch anymore when it rings, unless we're actually expecting a call.

It has happened that pollsters do get me every once in a while. There are two basic strategies I highly recommend. The first is to creatively lie, giving conflicting data if possible. The second is to ask if the data they want is valuable. They always assure me that yes, it is valuable. Then I tell them my per question rate ($25) and ask if they have an account set up with me. Usually the questioner retires in confusion, but some press on gamely. To them I will give nonsensical answers, like 42, blue, Diefenbaker, cricket, or whatever random information comes to mind.

If all of us did this, eventually the polling companies would go out of business. Politicians would actually have to talk to people to understand what we want done with our money. Political parties would have to campaign blind, going all out in all ridings. News organizations would have to wait for actual results. Maybe without the poll results to skew people's thinking, they would actually vote for the person they think would do the best job, as opposed to voting for the person the polls say will win, so they don't "waste" their vote.

1 comment:

  1. Listening to the story this morning on CBC infuriated me. Didn't want to waste taxpayers money... Oh how noble!

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