With the NSW election campaign well under way and a federal poll soon, I’m glad I stumbled across this classic explanation of how to get the answer you want from an opinion poll, courtesy of Yes, Prime Minister.
Lie honestly
A curious thing to find on a Monday morning: a passionate argument which claims that…
By lying to yourself, you are often able to innovate. You trick yourself into believing you are headed into something exotic and wonderful where no one has gone before. You imagine the thrill and seethe in the selfishness of seeing the chest of gold for the first time. You bask in your own glory that you are truly right and everyone else is wrong.
I’ve always tried to be an honest person. Is honesty holding me back from true creativity?
Surprise! Prohibition leads to crime!
Gosh, who’d have thought? Ban tobacco in a jail, where almost everyone smokes the stuff, and suddenly black market cigarettes are US$125 a pack. Jailhouse cooks make more from smuggling than cooking.
Chuck Alexander, executive vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, says: “It didn’t do anything but make (tobacco) a lucrative business.”
Thanks to the clever lads at Freakonomics for the pointer — and some fascinating follow-up comments from their readers.
What hope the Liberal party?
Forget my last post about the Libs’ shoddy campaign in Marrickville, they can’t even organise a decent scandal any more!
While the Americans bring us sordid tales of evangelical ministers doing meth with rent boys and astronauts in diapers in kidnapping allegations, all the NSW Liberal Party can manage is sending a schoolboy-standard lewd SMS message. Pathetic.
What hope the Liberal candidate?
OK, the Liberals have a snowflake’s chance of winning our local seat of Marrickville in the forthcoming NSW state election, so they can let any muppet have a go. But if this is the best election flyer you can come up with, Ramzy Mansour, then who are you kidding?
Consider:
- If you can’t even organise someone who can cut paper in a straight line, what makes you think you can run the state of New South Wales?
- If you can’t raise the $3000 to professionally print the 45,000 leaflets necessary to hit your electorate, how little support do you actually have?
- If you can’t do the basic financial management to understand that for large print runs, offset printing is a lot cheaper than photocopying, why on earth would I trust you with a billion-dollar state budget?
1 out of 10, can do much, much better.
Introducing: Intelligent Warming
The Truth about Global Climate Change… follow the link, all will be explained.