The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The scribbler has a way of dealing with wrong numbers on the phone. They usually come, as we know, such is fate, at the dinner hour just in time to interrupt a decent bottle of wine. "Is Betty there?" enquires the caller. "Yes," I reply. "But she's drunk and sleeping in the bathtub. Should I try to get her?" There's a stunned silence at the other end, and then a click. Works every time. Except once. "Could I speak to Susan please?" said the polite male voice. "Well," I said, "she's drunk and sleeping in the bathtub. Passed out. Would you like to wait?" "Oh sure," he replied. Well I don't know who Susan is but I can only surmise she's quite a party girl. The scribbler dealing with pollsters has another tack. They always phone at dinner as we know, interrupting the wine, because they know someone will be home. "Would you give me your home phone number," I tell the anonymous voice. There is confusion from the caller. "Well," I say. "You have just made me get up from a very nice meal. Give me your home number and tomorrow night I will phone you and ruin your meal with a bunch of silly questions." Remarkably, I never receive my request. This all brings us around to this silly election, which apparently is being run entirely by the polling firms. The National Post tells us, in screaming headlines that everything has been decided by its polling firm due to a survey of 1,579 Canadians which "is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20." There are 31.5 million people in Canada and this genius-like polling firm has somehow found the 1,579 most brilliant minds in the land to decide our future. Don't know about you, but not being one of the most brilliant 1,579 citizens in the realm, I don't tell the truth to any complete stranger who comes knocking on my door ringing the phone. I drive my wife to the polling booth each election and after we've crossed our X's I drive her home and she won't even tell me how she voted. Why should I share my political thoughts to a stranger I've never even slept with? See 'Public' P.# Con't from P.# When a pollster gets me Ñ when I'm not eating Ñ I say I vote for the Rhinoceros Party. Or the Marijuana Party. People are so sick of public relations flacks from the PMO and spin-doctors manipulating elections I can guarantee that a decent hunk of those 1,579 aren't telling the truth and decide to manipulate the numbers in their own way. The whole basis of democracy is the secret ballot. Ask my wife. There was a time when owners of newspapers would send ill-paid reporters to wear out their shoe leather, actually get out of the office and talk to the Great Unwashed. Now high-paid scribes sit in their veal-feeding pens, going blind from staring at computer screens all day, while their owners hire polling firms to tell us what we should think. The Globe and Mail and CTV have the Ipsos-Reid firm, which found the Grits "most capable to govern" thanks to a poll of Ñ wow! Ñ 2,000 people in a survey "considered accurate to within 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20." The Post has COMPAS. In Quebec, it is CROP. There was a time when newspapers ran the Gallup Poll buried on page 65, back with the truss ads. Pollsters were assumed to be anonymous nerds with a clip-board. Now, things have reached such a frenzy that the heads of the major polling firms are better known that most dull politicians. Conrad Winn, president of COMPAS, and Darrell Bricker of Ipsos-Reid are regularly quoted on the front pages as if they embodied the wisdom of John Kenneth Galbraith, George Bernard Shaw and perhaps Socrates. When any idiot knows that a good number of honest people Ñ when encountered by an earnest pollster Ñ don't tell the truth. This interview was conducted with myself, which is considered inaccurate within 2.7 percentage points, 21 times out of 21. X x x AND ANOTHER THING The twits who run the National Hockey League are completely bereft of logic. The NHL, as we know, now has Canada's game in U.S. franchises that wouldn't know a blue line from a hat-trick. It does not have the secure TV contracts of pro baseball or NFL. And so, come Stanley Cup time, what does it allow the juvenile kids off Saskatchewan farms to do? Look at the newly-bearded Calgary Flames. All looking like thugs who sleep under bridges. Can you imagine owners of the World Series letting their mercenaries appear on TV like that Ñ when the NHL has its only chance before American audiences? Someone up there on top is daft.
