Badgerstoke on Polling

With the upcoming vote on the 24^th June my many readers have asked me to run my eyes over the many polls that are being published on an almost hourly basis. I’m glad to say that the latest polls show the “leave” vote pulling slightly ahead and this has caused a great deal of excitement on the internet although, sad to say, not much everywhere else. 

Firstly I need to make it clear that the process of polling no longer involves the use of a physical poll (or pole) and is also not connected with the country of Poland. The word is though to derive from the 18^th Century Practice where landowners would beat their tenants with the said pole until they voted the way they wanted. Thankfully voting is now secret and so the practice has died out in all but the most remote rural constituencies in the Highlands of Scotland.

The polls have always been unreliable in the past. If the polls before the last election had been correct then Nigel Farage and one of the Miliband brothers (I can never remember which is which but in this case I mean the weird looking one) would be in a coalition Government. This would have been an uneasy Labour/UKIP alliance, but one can imaging that a compromise policy of “encouraging immigrants but being unpleasant to them when they arrive” could be made to work.

So why are polls so unreliable? I suspect the blame for this can be laid at the door of people like me. I have always taken the policy of keeping my views secret. This has the advantage of stopping people trying to convince me to change my mind as they have no idea what I think and also it hides that fact that I may not actually have an opinion on the particular subject. However when forced to give my opinion by a persistent researcher then I will often give the opposite view to what I actually think. I am not normally dishonest but in such cases I will make an exception.

Polling organisations have been trying to get people to be more willing to say what they think. One method of doing this is to employ attractive young women to stop men in the street in the hope that they will be less likely to express their displeasure at being delayed on their way to the pub or betting shop. However I think this will still produce unreliable results as I find it is often difficult to concentrate when in close proximity to a young lady with a large chest.

Another problem with any poll is making sure you have an accurate cross-section of the population. Internet polls have shown the leave camp being much further ahead for quite a long time now. But we should bear in mind that the people polled in this way are going to be more introverted and more obese than the average voter. Indeed many of these voters may have problem actually leaving their bedrooms to vote. I think postal voting would be the best thing for many of these people as they could send their mother to the post-box rather than braving the outside World.

The bookmaker have been showing the remain camp quite a way ahead for some time. But this of course will be biased because it will be only based on the views on men of low intelligence (after all they are people who think that giving a large slice of their benefits money to a bookmaker is a sensible thing to do). It is indeed a sad fact that about half the population of the UK has less than average intelligence. Unfortunately these people may vote in the referendum if they can work out how to make their mark on the slip and also remember which day it is on.

Another problem with sampling is where do you take the sample? If you were to poll in Scotland for example you may well get a different result to taking your poll in a more pleasant part of the country. The SNP have been telling us that the Scots are heavily in favour of "remain" for quite a while; mind you they did call the result of the Independence referendum very wrongly and so I’m not sure how much credence we can put on this prediction. On a side issue, I have always wondered why SNP politicians are named after fish: Sturgeon, Haddock & Salmon?

So I think the only conclusion we can draw is that by carefully choosing where, who and when you take your poll you can get the answer you want. And I have noticed that if either side is starting to pull ahead then we get a spate of polls pointing the other way published in the newspapers. Surely it can’t be that the media are trying to make sure it is a close contest because it sells more papers.

So it seems that you can’t take any notice of the polls as they will all have a built-in bias. However I think it is fairly obvious that if you are reading this blog then you are likely to be of greater than average intelligence and so if people would like to tell me how they will be voting then I am willing to do my own informal poll. All votes will be treated in confidence and not used to embarrass anyone later.

Badgerstoke’s Tip: If you want to know which way a poll is biased then just look at the people that paid for it to be done.

Badgerstoke on The EU Referendum

Up until now I have been reluctant to make any comment of the upcoming EU referendum due to the heated debate that has taken place in my own family as well as the rest of the country about how to vote. However my many readers have been encouraging me to make my views clear as they are looking for guidance in this tricky matter. So I have decided to give my views. 

I have mentioned my son-in-law Dean in the past; he is on a Government scheme which has been preparing him for work for almost two year now. He is very much in favour of leaving the EU and will certainly vote that way if it isn't raining on the day. His argument is that millions of Romanians are just waiting on the other side of the channel for when our borders are opened and will flood over and take all the jobs that he might be interested in if he ever does becomes ready for work. 

My son Brian who is in his final year at University doing a degree in Modern Art with Media Studies is in favour of remaining in the EU. Although he had told me his degree would ensure him of a well paid job when he graduates he is now considering taking a Masters Degree in Philosophy with Pottery somewhere in Europe as this will ensure an even better job. He was hoping to get a grant from the EU for this. However I believe he has also been influenced by a Portuguese Girl he met at University who seems to have been resisting his charms. He did spend some time during his last trip home learning to say “would you like to come to a restaurant with me, we can split the bill” in Portuguese.  However he later told me that he found she speaks perfect English and had just been ignoring him.

My wife is undecided on the matter of the EU and she has been watching a number of soap operas on the TV to see which way her favourite characters might vote.

So as you can see the Badgerstoke family is split on the way to vote.

I did decide to do a poll around our neighbours and found that there was: 2 Remains, 1 Leave, 25 Don't Knows, 1 Whatever (this was a teenager) and one set the dog on me as he thought I was selling something.

So having explained the turmoil in the Badgerstoke family I will now give you my opinion.

I think there has been an unfortunate creeping Europeanisation of our country since we joined the EU. You can see it in the media and politics where good solid British names like Smith, Jones and Singh are slowly being displaced by foreign sounding names like Portillo, Farage and Sturgeon.

In my young day we had a host of good British Imperial Units to brighten up our day. Ask one of today’s youngsters how many chains in a hundredweight and they look at you as if you’re mad. I still lament the passing of units like Furlongs, Rods, Groats, etc.  These have been replaced by foreign units like the Kilogram and Metre. In the past it was easy to know whether your car has good petrol consumption in miles per gallon but the automotive industry is no doubt in favour of the EU because no one has any idea of what constitutes good fuel consumption in metres per kilolitre. Another problem with these foreign units is that you only need to divide by tens to do conversions. Now we have a whole generation who are no longer able to divide by sixteen without using a calculator. 

Recently I had a problem with the plumbing a Chez Badgerstoke and I was recommended a number of plumbers. I got three estimates and the polish chap had the cheek to offer me the cheapest price. I went with the next person as he had a Liverpool accent. I must admit it was easier the understand the polish chap (who had the temerity to speak perfect English) rather than the one from Liverpool but I decided not to take the chance as the Pole probably had no idea what a ballcock was as it probably has a different name in polish.

And in the high street the creeping Europeanisation can also be seen. Our Favourite Indian restaurant was recently replaced by Polish Deli for example. And even in proper British shops like Lidl & Aldi, foreign foods are taking up more and more shelf space. It is not too much of a stretch of the imagination to think that soon proper British foods like sausages, baked beans, Heineken beer and Spaghetti Bolognese might disappear all together.

So I think things have gone far enough. I have done a little research on the World Wide Web and found a lot of information about what the EU has in store for us if we remain with them. Here are a few of the most alarming:

1. Pints and Miles are to be eliminated and it will become and illegal to use them.

2. British sausages are to be called “emulsified fat tubes” and only those produced in Germany can be called sausages.

3. Bananas must not bend too much. Any banana that does have too much bend cannot be sold in the shops and will be pulped and used to make banana milkshake. This will be the end of the banana split as that requires a bent banana to keep the ice-cream from sliding off.

4. All shop prices must be shown in Euros.

5. Immigrants must be put at the top of council housing lists and given benefits to make them feel welcome.

6. All Children must learn at least two European languages.

7. All people must own at least one item of ethnic European clothing (e.g. Lederhosen)

8. Schools must offer lessons in ethnic European musical instruments like the fulgelhorn or glockenspiel

  
There are lots more on the many unbiased websites that have suddenly appeared and you can look for yourself.

I think we must leave the EU and reconnect with the Commonwealth. Countries like India, Australia and Rhodesia have just been waiting for us to get back in touch and all the PM has to do is pick up the phone and we will be welcomed back with open arms. I’m sure Australia would be more than willing to junk its business links with it near neighbours if the old mother country asked them to. And if not we could threaten to stop the Queen ruling them and send Rolf Harris back.

Another possible approach for a post-EU Britain could be to ask other disgruntled European countries to join us. We could start our own organisation and I suggest calling it the Union of Europe (or UE). We could have a Singular Market to help businesses trade, freedom of movement so worker would work in any country, trade laws made centrally so that all countries traded equally, a central court which could ensure the rights of our citizen and lots more. We could have all this without the drawbacks of the EU.

So if I’ve convinced you then please vote leave on the 24^th June.

Badgerstoke’s Tip: Always treat foreigners with sympathy as they may not have had the pleasure of experiencing British cuisine.