To everybody’s surprise, YouGov for Murdoch have produced a post debate poll showing a far greater lead for Cameron than any other poll. So YouGov have made the most vicious political attack of the night. I have just sent this email.
To:
Dear Sleazy Stephan,
Could you kindly confirm whether you again opened voting in your post debate poll as soon as Cameron finished his summing up, or did you wait until everyone had finished summing up this time?
Craig
Didn’t see any denial of this or the biased poll questions in his lawyers’ “not for publication” threatening letter. Good as a proof.
Csme across this knocking copy from Kamm.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/oliver_kamm/2010/04/lib-dems-and-the-big-tent.html
Craig must be doing it right to be the subject.
Lo and behold, our Eddie is in the comments (we were wondering where he had got to) –
I used to post on Murray’s blog but it is infested with troofers and abusive nutjobs and therefore not a place where any sane person should linger for too long. Murray is an interesting character, but his tolerance of the extremists on his site, and the fact that the Liberals are prepared to take him in, makes me think that Nick Clegg’s party is not a serious contender for power.
Posted by: eddie | 16 Apr 2010 21:38:52
Acidulous to the end.
After each of the previous two debates, I was phoned by what I presume was the Yougov poll (James Mates’s voice doing the automated questioning). Tonight I wasn’t phoned after the debate, despite being at home and near the phone.
I can only conclude there’s something wrong with their methodology, of not question the same selected 4,000 people, rather than the fact I voted for a clear Brown win in the first debate and marked Clegg the winner in the second.
If it was Yougov, then this failure/tactic might explain their result of a dramatic swing to Cameron.
“I used to post on Murray’s blog but it is infested with troofers and abusive nutjobs”
Hello, Larry.
Anybody who uses a word like ‘troofer’ is writing for a fairly small audience, though. It’s one of those “we’re a special club with our own invented words” things.
Thanks Mary – well spotted – this then just for ‘eddie’
Dame Pauline Neville-Jones – Conservative Shadow Security Minister.
2002-2005 Chairwoman of QinetiQ
2003 – Carlyle Group acquired 33.8% of QinetiQ.
Dan Briody, author of ‘The Iron Triangle:Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group said, “the Carlyle Group is a company that epitomizes corporate cronyism, conflicts of interest and war profiteering.
In ‘Le Monde’ Eric Leser wrote, ‘Carlyle is a unique model, assembled at the planetary level, as the capitalism of relationships…The group incorporates the ‘military-industrial complex’ against which Eisenhower warned the American people.
George H W Bush was a Carlyle advisor from 1998 to 2003.
Conservative Prime-Minister John Major was also employed by Carlyle and a report in The Sun Newspaper[sic]:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article144140.ece
revealed that the Tory premier, who lead Britain in the 1991 Gulf war, advised that allied forces were armed with ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons and prepared to use them.
Dame Neville-Jones is chairman[sic] of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIT).
The JIT played a controversial role in compiling the ‘dodgy dossier’ which set out the threat posed by Iraq’s WMD in the run up to the illegal Iraq war.
Dr David Kelly had criticised the wording of the dossier and was later found dead in a wood. Eminent British surgeons refute the coroners conclusion that David Kelly committed suicide.
Mark: one thing you omit to mention is that one of the major shareholders of the Carlyle Group is the bin Laden family.
Anyone else got or read “The Iron Triangle”? Fairly interesting in places, but the most remarkable thing is that the author managed to get 200-odd pages out of it.
“Mark: one thing you omit to mention is that one of the major shareholders of the Carlyle Group is the bin Laden family.”
And we all know what that means!
“Anybody who uses a word like ‘troofer’ is writing for a fairly small audience, though. It’s one of those “we’re a special club with our own invented words” things.”
Like the Troofer clubs who made up the term “Truther” to refer to themselves as people in the know as opposed to sane people like you and me who are called “sheeple”.
I see that Humphrys and Kellner take the shilling from this sleazy outfit.
The former is the senior commentator on the premier national news/factual programme. Is this right or ethical? Of course not.
http://today.yougov.co.uk/commentaries
Craig
Are you having one of your manic phases? Writing to YouGov in that way sounds rather schoolboyish.
Told you. There’ll soon be a flood of brainless pieces on Cameron’s ‘statesmanlike demneanour’.
Just a general comment on the debate.
For the first half hour or so it struck me that Cameron and Brown were talking across Clegg and ignoring everything he said. i wondered if this was arranged, to punish him for his position in the polls and also for his cocky statement about not working with Brown.
Later he managed to fight his way in but at the level of pure performance Cameron did best. Brown was awful.
The mercenaries of cybespace. They are not on the bus, they will not drink tea (or coffee) and they lack a sense of humour.
Welcome back, Edward. But pray tell, what has happened to Lawrence?
Given the obvious push-polling evidenced in the other post, one would have to be pretty stubborn, regardless of political stripes, to regard YouGov as unbiased. There was a cursory mention to the “poll for the Sun” this morning on Today as being possibly tied to the party the paper in question is rooting for. Perhaps that’s as close as the “leftist BBC” (hah!) will sail in suggesting that our elections are improperly swayed by media and business interests.
For all his myopia about the death toll in Iraq, I do wonder if Eddie might be right about the tone of your email, Craig. You are quite right to be angry – hell the Tories should be angry at having such corrupt support, though I suspect Kamm and his ilk are not bothered about that sort of thing.
Though Eddie citing “abusive” nutjobs as the reason for his leaving made me chuckle into my Earl Grey just now.
As the moth to the flame…
It didn’t take long for our Eddie to return. Perhaps he is actually Ollie (Kamm)?
In the absence of any post talking about how the television debates have influenced people here, perhaps I can kick things off.
I’m in Birmingham Ladywood (see link), which has seen the LDs rocket up to 32% against Lab falling somewhat to 60%. The Greens are standing again after a long hiatus which is nice to see, but without some form of PR a vote for them is not a vote for kicking out the war party. I’m not happy with where Clegg is regarding the market, but his statements about the banks have been encouraging, and much better than Brown (incumbent who deregulated the banks, and is now reaping the rewards) and Cameron (friend to the banks, won’t do much in practise).
So I’m inclined towards the LDs, but as Craig has said, they’re pretty rubbish on Afghanistan, and I don’t think they’ll be much better on the Palestine question either.
I worry that our large Muslim population (29%) will stick with Labour, which is distressing indeed. Perhaps faith-based solidarity is not as good as us agnostics would like to believe?
How are other folks here responding to the debates?
I should say that I thought the pressure got to Clegg somewhat last night – he sounded less certain and was less fluid than his first performance. But I’m not sure where the big surge for Cameron came from, especially since he wasn’t able to parry the charges of disproportionately benefiting the privileged.
well having stuck with the three TV debates, I have to say I am non the wiser about any of the parties really. Afterall can we believe a word any of them say at this time, they can promise the earth now but two years into a term all the glitz will be forgotten and the hard econmic facts will be at the forefront.
So was it just a PR exercise or intended to get people out to vote for at least one of them, as turnouts have been falling in the previous elections. Are we to decide judging by how well they performed on camera? If we look at their history then Labour can be discounted immediately. The Tories will fall back to their usual policies. The Lib Dems are somewhat an unknown. Their amnesty to illegal immigrants seems to be very short-sighted.
The fact that it was only the three main contenders on show, some of the others getting sound-bites during the follow up news round-ups, shows what a farce it has all been.
In the end most of the electorate will vote as they always have. A few marginals may make the difference. Personally as a “floating voter” I am undecided. Will my vote make any difference in any case? Will anybody’s vote change anything ?
Jon,
I hope the British people focus on the first debate where is was crystal clear that Nick Clegg was the voice of fairness and conveyed the strength of honesty to his opponents. Opponents that inevitable left ‘honest Nick’ in the position of referee in the Brown/Cameron wrestling match that was the third debate.
David Cameron was content to aggressively get a submission from Brown while ignoring Nick; this while sincere images of Cameron trying to look beyond the lens into people’s homes was dominant and gave him the edge.
Sincere he is not, I say again to the ‘troops’ here, Cameron stuck two fingers up at the founders of WebCameron, a blog that attempted to project Cameron as a ‘nice’ family man in similar fashion to the spin used to begin the rise of Tony Blair. In the end that blog was crushed by the Conservatives, leaving it’s supporters or ‘Cameron Rejects’ high and dry without a word, without an apology and without a thank-you.
Do not be deceived by Cameron, in fact please, please tell your friends and neighbours that Cameron, as we found out, has an agenda towards a ‘Big Brother’ Society.
Many of us fought and dug hard on WebCameron to get behind the Cameron mask, the shell we witnessed, and I personally thought we were succeeding when abruptly the blog was ‘taken down’ after being ‘revised’ and re-launched.
I hope my friends, the ‘WebCameron Rejects’ will also convey to the British public, the ruthless, slick, devious, ‘puppet of the powerful’ that is THE REAL David Cameron MP.
Hakluyt.
That single word conveys everything about the Conservative ‘back-office’ Suhayl – what a brilliant mind you have.
Robin Cook – we miss you PBUH – RIP
And there was I thinking that there was a connection between Cameroon’s lot and Hakluyt at 34 Upper Brook Street, Mayfair (named after the Elizabethan spy).
http://www.michaelsmithwriter.com/pdf/intelligence_companies.pdf
Parky, I know, I have similarly despondent feelings about it all.
As I’ve said before, I think that in England (though not in Scotland) there is a huge reservoir of Conservative voters who do not take part in polls, etc. but who will come out on polling day. A significant proportion of Labour voters will stay at home. This is a tradional truism, but I sense it will apply this time around.
In general terms, then, it seems that it is eminently possible to deceive enough of the people, enough of the time.
And even if we vote, lucidly and undeceived but simply because we feel we ought, we will be doing it knowingly as a somewhat theatrical exercise.
Meanwhile, the dynamics of the hard state continue apace;
Big money, big gun, big oil.
The rest is persiflage.
Thanks, Mark. Brilliant…? No – I wish! Just a way with words, maybe, plus timing! Perhaps, then, I ought to have been a comedian. Or a comedic writer, more like!
@Mark, interesting thoughts. However in terms of what Cameron actually said, I don’t know that he departed from the ‘family man’ image as much as you say. True, his professed concern for the disadvanted was shown to be hollow on inheritance tax. And the rhetoric on crime glosses over the correlation between crime and inequality.
But I think what goes unsaid about each party is where the detail lies. And on that note, I do worry with these debates that the audience are more ignorant than is safe on the instincts of each party. People will talk about ‘the same old Tories’ but how many will be able to elucidate on how a low-tax environment disproportionately benefits the super-rich, or that trickle-down economics is a con perpetrated on the poor, who are to await crumbs from the rich man’s table? Or on how the privileged class of the Conservative party naturally predisposes policy towards the needs of that class, regardless of how fervently Cameron believes in “fairness”?
On class, how many of the Labour faithful will realise that their beloved party has been taken over by the ghosts of Thatcher, who are “seriously comfortable about people being seriously rich”? Are they able to drop their Labour habit and plump for the LDs?
Jon,
The Lib- democrats seem to want to link with the Conservatives as a power strategy for gaining power – so what new do any of them actually bring to the table?