Open mike 01/05/2010

13 comments on “Open mike 01/05/2010 ”

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1. Janice 1

   1 May 2010 at 8:44 am

   I was phoned by UMR Research last night and as there was the usual crap on TV I consented to take part in their current survey. They started off by asking me how I voted in the last election and how I will probably vote in the next one. As usual I lied to muck up their statistics and (hopefully) put the frighteners on NACT. I was then asked two very leading questions about how I thought the government and the country were doing. The survey then went into the roll out of ultra fast broadband. I lost count of the number of times that it was emphasised that the government was going to spend 1.5 billion on this roll out. The thrust of the survey appeared to be against Telecom getting the contract and local power suppliers building a new network as opposed to Telecom’s old existing network. There were also negative questions about Telecom wholly owning Chorus, all Chorus profits going to Telecom, and whether it was a good thing to give 1.5 billion to a private company. The questions about the Chorus/Telecom relationship were really derisive. There were other questions about whether it would be better to have a local company, who knew the area, would do a better job and lay out a new network, than a nationally focussed company who didn’t know the locality. There was nothing about Telecom already working locally in a relatively competent manner (XT aside). I was amazed at how the qualitative questions were skewed. One would have the best being one to five (5 being the best) and the next would have it five to one (5 being the worst). I really had to concentrate to stay within the zone. Another trick was a lot these questions were based on subjective judgements that there was no way they could be answered, these required an answer from less to more, or more to less just to confuse the respondent. I guess the whole thing was designed for Joyce so he can give the 1.5 billion to his mates in local power companies, rather than Telecom. It was an interesting exercise one that I haven’t bothered with before. Is this how all these “research’ surveys are run?
   • r0b 1.1

     1 May 2010 at 9:53 am

     Janice – interesting. I only get called very occasionally, I always take part to study the questions as you have here. It would be great if more people did this, commented on surveys that they took part in, so we could all get a picture of what’s going on…
   • gingercrush 1.2

     1 May 2010 at 11:18 pm

     UMR Research is Labour’s polling company isn’t it?
2. freedom 2

   1 May 2010 at 9:43 am

   86% of people found that 72% of surveys had a 1 in 5 chance of achieving a 3.76 positive result when asked 2 or more questions on any subject where 35% or more responded.

   etc etc etc

   i am tired of statistics, can anyone remember when they last saw, heard, read or experienced any fact based, accountable and verifiable reporting of data that relates to anything in the real world?
3. Che Soffe 3

   1 May 2010 at 11:04 am

   Hi guys, long time reader first time poster (i think). You’ll have to excuse me as i’ve been to the local tonight and had a few (as you do on a friday).
   Firstly I must say I’m a kiwi that lives in the U.K.
   Last night I watched the leaders debate.
   I thopught Gordon Brown won as did the labour and lib dem supporters I watched it with (unfortunately none of my friends over here are toris so i can’t ask their opinion).
   As we watched the debate we also followed it on twitter which seemed to give Gordon Brown the victory with Cameron coming last (even though Clegg seemed to not have any policies).
   The people I talked to at work and in the local thought that Gordon Brown won it as well.
   However in this mornings papers they were stating that Gordon Brown lost the debate and Cameron came out of it looking good.
   While I may be associating and working with a bias group of people (my Social circle isn’t big enough to accurately gauge the public percerption) I find it hard to belive that everyone I know, have talked to and read the comments on twitter of are that far removed from the average person for this to be correct.
   This makes me wonder if the media in the U.K. offer a voew as bias as the media in N.Z. and try to influence elections to their own (or their companies) personal perference. Also, if this is a wordwide situation is there anything the average layman can do to stop this apparent media bias?
   • Renee 3.1

     1 May 2010 at 10:39 pm

     Hey Che, good to hear from you! Wondered where and how you were. Keep on reporting in from UK on your and your mates impressions. It all sounds depressingly familiar. Kia kaha from Taranaki.
4. freedom 4

   1 May 2010 at 1:23 pm

   to Che Soffe, et al
   stop buying newspapers
   stop watching network news shows
   source news from as many independant sources as you can

   tell everyone you know the same story you just told us

   regardless of the naysayers, we can get honesty back into the media if we all make enough of a dent in the incomes of the companies involved and simply stop swallowing the crap they feed us, stop buying the rubbish they sell us and stop believing everything someone says simply because they have a microphone.

   the Bennet debacle of the last 48 hours should be enough proof for anyone
5. ianmac 5

   1 May 2010 at 2:03 pm

   Che Soffe: It seemed to me that the Brit MSM sort of declared its bias so that you know before you buy a paper, just what you are likely to read. Back here the MSM tends be conservative and claims to be non-partisan. But we do get riled up because what we think is significant hardly gets a mention but the “smile and wave” does. I wonder if many people in Britain vote beyond their loyalty?
   Hope that when you wake up shortly on a sunny Saturday morning that your head stays intact. 🙂
6. Quoth the Raven 6

   1 May 2010 at 2:14 pm

   Is anyone following what Obama is actually doing in the states? Outrageous shit just keeps flying under the radar. Take these two examples: ACLU: National ID Card Mandate, Worker Fingerprinting Database Masqueraded as ‘Immigration Reform’

   Democrats on Capitol Hill are responding to public outrage over Arizona’s racist immigration bill with a draft of the ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform’ bill that includes “a troubling provision which would create a biometric national ID card’ and mandatory fingerprinting for every worker in the U.S., the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement today..

   “If the biometric national ID card provision of the draft bill becomes law, every worker in America would have to be fingerprinted and a new federal bureaucracy—one that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars—would have to be created to issue cards,’ the civil liberties advocacy group said in strong opposition.

   More Than 40 Lobbyists ‘Infesting the Obama Adminsitration Mini-profiles on 20 of the lobbyists in the president’s administration that he promised wouldn’t be there.
   • freedom 6.1

     1 May 2010 at 3:55 pm

     to paraphrase the latest incarnation of this attempt to police people

     It is discriminatory to make illegal aliens carry ID cards,
     so instead we will make everyone carry ID cards
     nice huh!

     Please remember… the road to the Holocaust started with some small yellow stars made of cloth
   • Rharn 6.2

     1 May 2010 at 7:25 pm

     The day will come when your drivers licence will have a digital fingerprint embedded in much the same way as the photograph.

     Digital prints will be used as a means of ID. The one thing that is slowing this down is that the publlic has the perception that the taking of finger prints is for criminals and as such there is so much negitivity on this issue because of this. It’s not an inappropiate response considering that prints have been used for criminal ID since the late 1800’s.

     I personly have mixed feelings on this. The photo ID was sold to the public as a means of identifying driver. Now the NZ licence in many instances is not a valid form of ID so I can not but wonder how by adding a digital fingerprint this will improve the licence as a form of ID.

     But is does have applications with smart cards. The card holder has their prints embedding into the card in place of PIN and the ATM has a scanner if the two match then ya get your money if it ‘don’t then you don’t.
7. prism 7

   1 May 2010 at 3:15 pm

   If meals are introduced in schools in the USA I wonder if in five or ten years it will be trumpeted as USA leading the world with caring policy helping children rather than a response to USA generals worrying about fatness and not fitness in young people who they want to utilise as soldiers.
8. lprent 8

   1 May 2010 at 4:26 pm

   Some minor fixes to the site theme for single posts.

   1. Made trackbacks and pingbacks appear at the end of the comments in a new section id they exist. We’ve been collecting them (and cleaning out the spam), now you can see the links.

   2. Made Comments RSS and Trackback URL appear at the end of the comments/trackbacks/pingbacks (previously only at the top of the comments)

   3. Added the “Share this article” appear at the end of the post comments after the Comment box. Now does the damn code for ScoopIt actually have a working link these days so I can add it?

   4. Added Previous / Next post at the bottom of the post so after reading the comments you can traverse to another post without the scroll. It was irritating me.

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