A Different View
Surveys can put you top of the poll or down the dumps
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
If there are two clichés that must be trotted out by every aspiring politician, they are the revelation that a week is a long time in politics – unless it’s during the summer recess when it seems like a week can go on forever – and the second one is that the only poll that ever matters is the one on election day.
But the truth is that a week is the same length measured by anyone’s yardstick – and that somebody must love polls because we get them across the media all of the time.
There doesn’t even have to be an election on the horizon for papers in particular to commission one which invariably reveals that the main parties and their leaders have gone no more than two per cent in either direction from the last poll a month ago.
And yet, funnily enough, if they’re not supposed to matter, polls seem to engender extreme paranoia among politicians.
Perhaps it’s because they are the only profession whose career is dependent on the whim of the public at the drop of a hat.
And even during a period of maximum stability, the most they can look forward to is a five year stint before they have to go knocking on doors again to plead for their old job back.
So straws in the wind carry more significance when it is a selection of those people polled out of season who can ultimately determine your fate on election day – by common consensus the only poll that really matters.
That said, the Trump team in the US have a unique way of dealing with unfavourable polls – deluded as their idol, they simply tell you they’re not true.
Take Jay Garner, a retired sheriff who was waiting patiently for his hero outside a convention centre in Charlotte, North Carolina, recently when he was approached by the man from the London Times for his view on Trump’s poor showing in the latest polls.
“The polls are skewed,” he said. “I think it’s done by the liberal media and I think it’s all to confuse the Donald Trump supporters.
“I saw a secret poll yesterday and Trump was leading by like 65 per cent to 35 per cent. And I believe that poll more than I believe these other polls.”
So the actual polls are all wrong but the secret polls – presumably paid for Trump’s own team – are on the button…because they show exactly what the Republicans wanted them to.
Private pollsters like this are the equivalent of business consultants – once defined as people who are well paid to tell you the time with your own watch – because any set of questions can be tailored to produce the desired answers.
But before we dismiss Sheriff Garner and his ilk as nothing more than people looking at life through Trump-tinted glasses, he is not on his own when it comes to theories on pollsters skewing the polls.
A recent YouGov poll for The Times – and of course it’s ironic that it’s a poll about polls – found that one in four Americans questioned thought that surveys were doctored to help Hillary Clinton.
Read Dave’s column in full in this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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