This little comment gem in the Times made me chuckle this morning. Deborah Mattinson bemoans newspapers for commissioning polls to "manufacture headlines rather than uncover facts" and goes on to attack pollsters who "sell" their ideas.
She then proceeds to sell the poll on page 17 of the same paper as a shining example of a good poll, which just so happens to have been carried out by the polling organisation she is joint Chief Executive of. Go figure!
2 comments:
Personally I don't take polls at face value. Those asking the questions often have an agenda, and it is too difficult to create balanced questions.
Also, I am curious Phil. How do you manage to devote so much of your time to blogging? Iain Dale can do it because he doesn't actually have a real job (Doughty Street doesn't count.) You on the other hand, I am led to believe, do have a computer admin job? Since you often post during what would normally be considered core office hours, I can't imagine that the company you are working for would be best pleased if they found out. Make sure you don't get caught!
Chris, I work online, hence I am always connected to the Internet and being on it is a fundamental part of my job. I don't actually spent a lot of time blogging. I write a couple of posts in the morning (sometimes on the tube) which I post at sporadic times in the morning and takes all of about 30 seconds. I thenmay post a couple more during my lunch hour.
In between that time I may post the odd comment here (and authorise a comment with a click of a mouse) but at the same time I may be waiting for some bit of code to compile, something to install, something to remotely copy to five machines in different parts of the world it really depends on what is happening.
I have two monitors in front of me right now which I control through one keyboard. One machine is running Linux which is what I use for doing my computer nerdy stuff, another which runs Windows and has email and browser on it. It ook me ten minute to write this reply to you as I am doing something called multitasking.
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