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How Britain works

Seanm

Seanm

pfm Member
As the people who installed Johnson start to get frustrated at how difficult it is to remove him, we're being allowed a brief peek behind the curtain. People who would otherwise start twirling their finger beside their forehead if you so much as suggested that British politics might involve a few thumbs on scales are now talking openly about police corruption, the influence of newspaper proprietors, billionaire Tory funders etc.

I considered as a title, "Conspiracy theories that turn out to be true".

Add your own. As a starter, here's "You can't trust Yougov polls, they're owned by a Tory!"

Well.

Thread from a Yougov pollster. The thread's a little broken: key Tweet here:

"But despite having written the story and designed the charts, we were banned from releasing the story because it was too positive about Labour."
https://twitter.com/chriscurtis94/status/1534452779460206592?s=20&t=BhVrXhlfyTLtPvgpxcZ_MQ
 
Seanm said:
"You can't trust Yougov polls, they're owned by a Tory!" Well. Thread from a Yougov pollster.
Click to expand...
Everyone needs to read this thread. It has more than one example of deliberate poll suppression in the 2017 election period. The main one is the suppression of the result of the poll on the Leaders' debate (hint: Corbyn won), but there are two others.
  • YouGov didn't stand by their MRP polling that predicted a hung parliament. Instead they suggested that it was merely 'experimental', when actually it showed the same results as its regular polling.
  • The second is pure suppression: "On the morning of the Manchester bombing, we actually had Labour pulling level, although the poll got spiked because the campaign rightly paused." Note the use of the passive voice, when the killer question is, who spiked the poll?
Assuming the accusations are true - and it is laid out by someone who worked for YouGov at the time - it is awful, manipulative, corrupt practice. Our institutions are failing us.
 
laughingboy said:
  • The second is pure suppression: "On the morning of the Manchester bombing, we actually had Labour pulling level, although the poll got spiked because the campaign rightly paused." Note the use of the passive voice, when the killer question is, who spiked the poll?
Click to expand...

All election campaigning was suspended, by mutual agreement between the two main parties, in the wake of Manchester.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-security-manchester-election-idUKKBN18J0JG
 
laughingboy said:
Everyone needs to read this thread. It has more than one example of deliberate poll suppression in the 2017 election period. The main one is the suppression of the result of the poll on the Leaders' debate (hint: Corbyn won), but there are two others.
  • YouGov didn't stand by their MRP polling that predicted a hung parliament. Instead they suggested that it was merely 'experimental', when actually it showed the same results as its regular polling.
  • The second is pure suppression: "On the morning of the Manchester bombing, we actually had Labour pulling level, although the poll got spiked because the campaign rightly paused." Note the use of the passive voice, when the killer question is, who spiked the poll?
Assuming the accusations are true - and it is laid out by someone who worked for YouGov at the time - it is awful, manipulative, corrupt practice. Our institutions are failing us.
Click to expand...
It's quite something isn't it. I've always thought that polls shaped political opinion rather than merely reflecting it, but I'd thought of it as an impersonal, structural thing. But here's a professional cheerfully admitting that no, polls are deliberately used to shape opinion in specific ways by the owners of the companies themselves.

It really is impossible to have too crude a take on how power works in the UK. Just a series of insultingly obvious stitch-ups.
 
stevec67 said:
Britain doesn't work. It's broken. The protest vote to "smash it all and start again" has only achieved the first bit, and nobody knows how to fix this particular Humpty.
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It works fine, for the people it's supposed to work for.
 
Seanm said:
It really is impossible to have too crude a take on how power works in the UK. Just a series of insultingly obvious stitch-ups.
Click to expand...

Ask Mick P about the 'handshakes' and the dressed up man who stood just behind "Her Maj" on the balcony last weekend.

Grand Master, Duke of Kent...

queen-elizabeth-ii-and-prince-edward-duke-of-kent-on-the-news-photo-1654170202.jpg
 
Seanm said:
I've always thought that polls shaped political opinion rather than merely reflecting it, but I'd thought of it as an impersonal, structural thing. But here's a professional cheerfully admitting that no, polls are deliberately used to shape opinion in specific ways by the owners of the companies themselves.
Click to expand...
It's worth reading the spin that the Times put on YouGov's MRP poll when it published its prediction of a hung parliament: 'controversial YouGov estimate...'

The Times story includes this act of sabotage: 'A Labour figure in the Midlands said that while the Tory social care blunder had helped, Jeremy Corbyn’s unpopularity continued to deter natural Labour voters and the party would be losing rather than gaining seats in the region.'
 
YouGov is denying the main accusation. Instead, it effectively slurs its former employee, naming him alone as responsible for the poll, while suggesting that the sample of viewers of the debate on 31 May 2017 was skewed in favour of Labour:

Guardian
 
laughingboy said:
YouGov is denying the main accusation. Instead, it effectively slurs its former employee, naming him alone as responsible for the poll, while suggesting that the sample of viewers of the debate on 31 May 2017 was skewed in favour of Labour:

Guardian
Click to expand...
Yeah, he's toast.
 
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