What's Behind The Dodgy Push Poll?

A dodgy push poll with fishy weightings has left New Labour all in a lather fuelling the spin the lamentable leader could make it back to No 10 after all. You can't make it up - but someone did. Behind the foggy figures and heady headlines lies a fishy poll and a telling Sunday story.

If it's too good to be true, it probably is. Even with a scant glance at the latest opinion poll, hacks would be hard pressed to come up with a headline: "Brown on course to win election", but not on The Sunday Times.

It seems a new Sunday Times poll reveals New Labour is just two points behind Tories. "The YouGov survey places David Cameron’s Conservatives on 37%, as against 35% for Labour — the closest gap between the parties in more than two years."

Five or six per cent maybe but two? Does anyone believe the Tory lead has shrunk to a mere two percent, as suggested by the poll? Not the bookies. But maybe the money markets waking up in a cold sweat after a night of Brown nightmares.

The rogue poll is clearly an outlier. The Orange Party is deeply sceptical about commissioned push polls, particularly when they show such sharp spin and take no account of the battleground of the key marginals.

Wise Wells at UKPR warns: ”Until we see some more polls that support or contradict the further narrowing of the polls – be wary.”

But the real question is - was it is real?

As Wells notes, the changes from the previous poll are well within the margin of error: "YouGov’s polls this week have been very consistent in showing a 6 point lead, and these figures are actually within the margins of error of a true position of CON 38%-39%, LAB 32%-33%."

Now that's more like it.

Push polls are only as good as dodgy weightings, skewed sample and questions asked - or not asked. The outcome relies on spurious uniform swings.

The actual tables show a different picture. The left column shows an unweighted Tory six percent lead, the bold one to the right, actual weighted numbers, has two percent.

So how are they "weighted"? The views of 'Labour IDs' on the poll sample will have to be scaled up in order to meet the 'quota' for each poll. Polling pundits point out this is something that they have not had to do in the past to the same extent. So why is it happening now?

A quick look at the method reveals YouGov "interviewed a sample of 1,436 adults online across Britain on Feb 25-26."

Do ordinary folk actually sign up for opinion poll panels? How much credence can be placed on a sample taken online rather than in face-to-face interviews? A tinyYouGov 'panel' made up of faceless online people is hardly representative of the whole country.

When asked the question "Do you think Gordon Brown is doing well or badly as PM", both the weighted and unweighted samples show the same result.

A staggering 58 percent in total reckon Brown is behaving Badly.

Very little differences in the view of a pathetic PM between weighted and unweighted. But miraculously a significant difference between the two for the headline-grabbing poll. Enough to send New Labour jumping up and down with glee. Now that's odd.

The Orange Party suspects a very different agenda at work and play here.

A Murdoch inspired wake up call to Dave. A poll which may tip the struggling Supreme Leader over the edge to name the day. A headline grabbing story after being eclipsed by the Observer and Rawnsley's Bullygate revelations.

The poll came on the day of Dave's big speech to the party faithful in Brighton at a time when he is under increasing pressure to come out of the closet with clear, realistic policies and stop wobbling around. "Now we'll see if the Tories have the mettle" thunders Murdoch's Sunday Times.

Speculation that Bunkered Brown may name the day any day soon is intense. But Bottling Brown has form. A poll showing victory is within his grasp may just be enough to swing the balance.

The two point lead is the smallest YouGov has recorded since Bottling Brown's election-that-never-was back in 2007. Then the Tories went on to peak in May 2008 with a 26 point lead. The message is in the Sunday Times bottle. Bottling Brown beware.

Meanwhile in the real world of fantasy school league tables and dumbed down exams...

Thousands of school pupils had their GCSE results secretly downgraded last summer to avoid the embarrassment of too big a jump in the numbers achieving top grades, reports The Sunday Times.

Exam chiefs ordered boards to raise the bar and move the goalposts to cut the number of pupils receiving A* to C grades in Mickey Mouse exams to avoid more egg on their faces over rigged grade inflation.

Push poll opinion polls and dumbed down school exams. You can't make it up. But some will have a damn good try, until they're caught out.

Top picture: Scarfe, Sunday Times. Mid graphics: YouGov/Sunday Times survey results (click images to enlarge)

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Will Darling's PBR Dupe Voters?

The general election phoney war is about to hot up with Dreadful Darling's dumbed-down pre-budget report. It's all hands to the pumps of the sinking ship with a blatant package of politicking and posturing. But lurking beneath lies the dreadful state of the public finances. Beleaguered Brown's hopes of hanging on to power rests with the PBR. Will voters be convinced?

The public could be forgiven for thinking it's just business as usual. Nothing of the sort. Tomorrow's pre-budget is all about the election not public finances. Until the struggling Supreme Leader names the day, everything has to be taken with a pinch of salt.

What is needed is a clear, bold message on how to tackle the country's obscene deficit and lay bare the full horror of the country's dire economic mess. Instead a one-off tax on bank bonuses has been mooted along with ubiquitous 'efficiency' savings, which will bring in peanuts for the overall debt burden.

The pre-election budget will be more about shoring up New Labour's collapsing vote. Destined to go down as Darling's last joke on the public, the over optimistic government and past treasury forecasts are set to be exposed.

The key to cutting debt is cutting public spending. But there will be no public spending review until after the election. What the government would actually do is under wraps. Any 'cuts' are set to be hidden in election hot air.

Moody’s 'AAA sovereign monitor', published today, shows the UK hanging onto its triple-A credit rating by the skin of its teeth. The UK entered the crisis in a vulnerable position and is now facing an “inexorable deterioration of debt affordability,” warned Moody.

The UK’s fundamentals are dismal and don’t support the ratings,” said Citigroup's Mark Schofield. “Only if some pretty draconian fiscal measures are in place will the UK keep hold of its AAA rating.”

But Darling has already signalled he will put off much needed measures to slash the biggest budget deficit since the War. Shockingly, the government doesn't have a convincing plan for getting out of its own fiscal mess.

Cameron is right. “If you have a government that doesn’t have the courage to tackle the deficit, that’s the risk of the double dip,” he said. "The country has been the first in and the last out of recession of the major economies because of the policy errors of the last decade or so."

Dreadful Darling is fighting a lonesome, losing battle sorting out the fiscal mess inherited from Brown. Caught between the spinning devils and the deep blue sea of an incompetent treasury, Brown and his sidekick Balls call the economic shots. In the bunker, Mandy and Campbell control the spin.

The PBR package will have been been well-crafted with populist voter appeal and a dash of Brown sauce, aimed at drawing a well worn line between 'fair' New Labour and Cameron's Conservatives only interested in helping 'Tory toffs'.

The Struggling Supreme Leader is playing for short-term gain, paying lip service to cuts, going heavy on measures to strengthen the spinner's narrow dividing line.

Campbell's simplistic class warfare jibes, bashing 'Tory toffs', is a masterclass in exploiting public anxiety about the Tories only out to serve vested interests.

With Tories painted as on the side of a privileged few, Brown is trying to appeal to New Labour's core vote and tap into public anger at the fat cats.

The 'Eton' jibe plays well with New Labour's core voters but not to a savvy electorate. After all, Harman, Darling and Balls were all privately educated at toffee-nosed schools. Blair's own privileged public school education was kept under wraps.

What will stick in the throats of voters is any party which is seen to be on the side of vested interest, be they the political elite, the fats cats, the cronies, City bankers or country landowners. Darling's PBR is part of that plan.

The Tories have already begun the fightback with a debt ticker beamed onto the side of Battersea power station to switch the PBR focus back to that horrendous debt. Something the Orange Party was suggesting way back in February.

New Labour's general election focus will be on Tory voters who deserted the party in droves to follow Blair's hyped up hope and promise of a promised land.

But the politics of false hope lies in tatters. The discredited government is trying to salvage something from a decade of disaster and failure. Oborne has already delivered a damning indictment on a "rudderless economy and a once great Treasury that's now not fit for purpose."

"Darling", he said, "should be forced to own up to the Treasury's consistent failure to grip the nature and scale of the economic recession. This failure is on such a scale that it amounts to negligence."

Brown has been even more misleading. As the only G20 nation in recession, the PM and former chancellor has built up a disreputable reputation for not telling it straight. Anything ministers say will not be believed.

With Malcolm Tucker aka Alastair Campbell now back in the Downing Street fold, a line from The Thick of It springs to mind:

A dying government? Cabinet minister Nicola Murray was in no doubt: "Dying? You bet. Its hair is falling out. It's coughing up blood. And the kids are trying to change the will."

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Raising The Roof On Climate Change Con

As 'climate change' protesters storm onto the roof of parliament, Auntie's got her thermal knickers in a twist about global warming. After years banging the drum for climate change, it seems even the BBC is now having second thoughts and starting to wake up to the climate change con.

What happened to global warming? asks the BBC's forlorn 'climate correspondent' Paul Hudson, after pointing to the fact that "the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998."

The Beeb's U-turn may force a rebranding of job titles, along with saddos in the 'department of energy and climate change'. All working hand in glove with pseudo-liberal activists obsessed with climate change at the government-owned Met office.

Big Brother brainwashing and you'd better believe it. Even Corrie viewers were forced to sit through government propaganda with an ad frightening the living daylights out of children, with the brass cheek warning: "Man is causing global warming and threatening life on earth."

Is Auntie having a change of heart after ramming climate change down everyone's throat? It's all grist to the mill for climate change sceptics who argue this is evidence that they have been right all along. There are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.

Meanwhile ever sceptical Drudge points to climate change con-kid Gore, who got another chilly reception this time in Wisconsin, when a reporter had the audacity to ask some Inconvenient Truths.

Taking a question from an Irish filmmaker, Gore ducked questions over nine errors in his film, before the filmmaker had his microphone cut off by the eco-fascist moderators. So much for the Land of the Free.

In Denver, Colorado, the Phillies-Rockies baseball game was all snowed out with Saturday night's playoff postponed because of cold, snowy weather. How we laughed.

So what on earth is going on, asks the Beeb in its naivety? Not too difficult a question, even for Humphrys dumbed-down Mastermind.

Once again the Orange Party is forced to issue a weather warning to beware the Climate Change Conmen.

Predictions were based on dodgy, discredited climate change computer models. But too late to stop political wannabes seizing on the latest craze to jump on a greenwash bandwagon.

Big bucks are being made out of carbon credit trading. Green taxes help fill treasury coffers by stealth. Jobsworth eco-fascists have a politically correct cause and a big holier than thou stick to beat up anyone who doesn't toe the line of their narrow little minds.

The Met Office and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) need something to hang all their hot air on to justify strutting around the world, making a mint out of 'climate change' courses for dumb fool horses.

No wonder Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, is getting it in the neck. He's not only trying everything in the book to block the EU treaty and Blair's presidency but he's also written a book 'Blue Planet Green Shackles' exploding the man-made global warming myth.

All that doesn't go down at all well with the Masters of the Universe or the eco-brigade.

The Orange Party's view is startlingly simple. Global warming, global cooling. Whatever. Man's influence on our climate has been widely overstated. Throw in a few ocean and solar cycles and it's all part of life's rich natural cycle.

Call a spade a spade. Global greed, not 'global warming' is the Big Issue.

Greed by wiping out the rainforests and its people to prop up the west's addition to cheap beef and plant oil additives. Greed from China's factories belching out poison to prop up western lifestyles with slave labour.

Greed from a country obsessed with cheap polluting air travel. Greed and half-baked 'green' policies on industrial pollution which allows pesticides and poisons to be dumped on land and in rivers.

Wrapping up pollution in the cotton wool con of 'climate change' and forcing poor souls to try to read by the dim light of an 'energy' bulb is a disgraceful eco-cop out.

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GCSE Numbers Game Fails Pupils

Pupils are paying the price as pawns in a GCSE numbers game to prop up a government charade. The muddled exams mess has become a measure of failed New Labour performance which is failing children.

When a government department is put under the microscope, spin and manipulation are not far behind.

The government's obsession with GCSE exams is an inflatable joke. They've let the schools down, they've let the pupils down and they've let themselves down. New Labour has failed to deliver on its education promise, according to a Newsnight poll.

Deprived and disadvantaged youngsters in bog standard comps bear the brunt of a government playing politics with education instead of fixing the problems of their own making.

The current GCSE sham should be abolished. Only key subjects of maths and English are needed for entry into some professions. The rest are a mass of inappropriate and dumbed-down meaningless "studies" which are a yardstick for nothing.

A GCSE does what it says on the tin - a general certificate of secondary education. Nothing too taxing, but enough to show that youngsters spent some time at school. GCSE's certainly don't stretch bright pupils. It's difficult to know how the kids keep motivated and keep going.

GCSEs have become a shabby judge with schools reduced to entering pupils for soft option and pointless vocational subjects to boost results and school performance. Obsession with league tables produce record GCSE results, to stave off closure and meet unrealistic targets.

Schools are playing the system, as the government tries to switch "failing" schools to its discredited costly PFI academies sham, handing control over to big business backers and government sympathisers.

The government, with its school secretary, Ed "get me out of here" Balls, cannot keep up the charade for much longer. Today's shocking figures reveal the true extent of a decade of New Labour's failure.

The government record is appalling. Figures released by LibDems reveal after a decade of drivel, the number of 16-year-olds leaving school without even achieving the basic standard of five good GCSEs is expected to top 3 million.

Young people are churned out of a crammed classroom which has no room or time in the over-packed exam-obsessed curriculum to develop their skills and talents.

In the topsy turvy world obsessed with making everyone 'equal', failure is rewarded with a pat on the back and a clutch of worthless pieces of paper.

Rewards for failure does no one any favours. Far from creating a classless society, a decade of New Labour has widened the gap between the haves and have-nots. Class divisions are most noticeable in classrooms.

GCSEs have produced a class-ridden two tier system as independent schools come up with their own solution. More independent schools are switching to the harder iGCSEs this year to stretch pupils. The most able are leapfrogging GCSEs and taking AS levels a year early instead.

That comes at a price. Private schools are financially propped up by taxpayers with the sham of charitable status. State schools are left to muddle along with a discredited Mickey Mouse exam system to make them look good.

State schools, with all eggs in the exams basket, cannot compete on a level playing field. What's fair and equal about that?

The stakes are high. Exam boards compete for candidates. The more they dumb down, the more candidates and entry fees, they get. Schools face being stripped of funding and placed under the control of New Labour sympathisers as part of the 're-education' process.

Meanwhile, the government continues to massage the GCSE figures by introducing course-work modules and more retake opportunities for students, treating academic and vocational qualifications as if they are identical.

Today's artificial 'record' GCSE results come hard on the heels of last week's artificial 'record' A-level results. Both spun in a desperate attempt to prop up a decade of failed government education policies.

The legacy is a lost generation of youngsters branded failures with no future.

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Bursting The Inflated A-Level Bubble

Mickey Mouse A-levels and dumbed down exams. Too many fresh faces chasing too few places. Thousands of anxious pupils await the fickle finger of fate with yet more record results and record straight As. The inflated A-level results bubble lets everyone down.

After jumping through hoops it's time to jump up and down before the smile is wiped away and harsh reality kicks in.

The goal posts have been moved. The rules of the game have been changed. Dumbed-down exams do no-one any favours. Hard-working students know it's all a con but are forced to go along with the ride.

There are plenty of students who've studied their socks off to win a place at a proper university. The Orange Party takes its mortarboard off to them. But for most it's a reward for failure. Youngsters are left demoralised and fearful of a future with nothing to look forward to than a life on the dole and mountain of student debt.

The system breeds failure. Those at the bottom are given false hope and unrealistic expectations with a dodgy course at scum-bag poly. Those at the top are not being stretched and steered away from 'hard' subjects to 'soft 'studies' so schools and politicians look good.

No doubt Ed "Didn't I Do Well" Balls or one of his minions will be shouting the results from the rooftop. Never mind the quality feel the quantity. Another record pass rate from the most hard-working, cleverest pupils in the world. But there's nothing "progressive" about cheating deprived children out of a proper education.

Balls' cock-eyed schoolboy experiment in social engineering has been a miserable failure. The pipe-dream to improve social mobility has had the opposite effect.

Far from closing class divisions, New Labour policy is widening the gap with a system bending over backwards to be so 'equal' it fails almost everyone.

Youngsters deserve more than dumbed down exams and moving the goalposts to massage pseudo-educational credentials and ministers' egos.

State schools are shunning traditional academic subjects, as the government encourages bog standard schools to take ‘soft options’ with 'studies' in the title. More state school pupils should be going to proper universities to read proper subjects. But the system drives down standards.

A-levels are becoming 'Mickey Mouse' qualifications, according to the think tank Civitas, failing to stretch the brightest youngsters and the government is in the thick of it.

Teachers said better marks were not due to improved lesson standards or more talented candidates. The rise in A grades is because exams are easier to pass and students are granted multiple re-sits blamed in part on the 'modular' system, with courses broken up into bite-sized bits to boost scores.

The system is a shambles. The standard now so low it’s a national disgrace. No-one trusts A-levels not least students, parents, employers and universities.

Times are tough. Universities have been forced to cap places and forced to entice over overseas students to make ends meet. This year some 60,000 will find no place and no job to fall back on.

Ministers should have thought of that before setting off to cloud cuckoo land to get 50 per cent of teenagers into university.

Tories are determined to do something about dumbed-down exams promising to toughen up the examinations system, with a focus on harder questions and more credit for youngsters studying 'hard' subjects rather than the 'soft' options.

That's a welcome start but for years politicians of all colours have dabbled in the education game and A-levels have been reduced to a numbers game.

Today that's to be expected from a stalinesque government department of education, schools, dinner ladies and whatever which has built its fortunes on a lie.

The rot trickled down from Whitehall to Town Hall, as an ideological battle was fought between the do-ers and do-gooders. Rigourous study of an academic subject gave way to idealistic babble about the rounded individual.

Exams have no place in that School of Life. Teachers have been turned into learning support workers. Inspiring teachers imparting a body of knowledge to young, eager minds willing to learn are becoming a thing of the past.

A whole generation is being lost in a sea of confidence tricks, false hopes and unrealistic expectations. Just what is the point of giving everyone a worthless piece of paper? Call it a day and dole out a school leaving certificate.

Reward students with success in proper exams by scrapping crippling student fees and loans. Put more money into funding more places at proper universities for proper subjects.

Leave the universities to set their own entrance exams with their own exam boards. Isn't that where A-levels first started?

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Young Jobless Left With Legacy Of Despair

A legacy of despair is being left behind by a fag-end government with a lost generation of youngsters sinking in a sea of despondency and destined for a life on the dole. After a decade of dire jobs drivel, shocking figures reveal the true extent of a government paying lip-service to any pretence of working 'Labour' credentials.

A Policy Exchange think tank report based on official DWP figures over the last ten years makes grim reading. The true extent of the jobs figures sham highlights a shocking 6 million poor souls on out-of-work benefits.

And that comes as embarrassing official figures reveal record numbers of Neets - the 18-24-year-olds not in school, college or work so beloved of jobs figures manipulators.

According to quarterly figures, there are now more than 100,000 more 18-24-year-olds Neets - not in education, employment or training - than there were a year ago. That's now a disgraceful 835,000.

Given half a chance very few people would choose to live on state handouts. But when you are being screwed for a job left right and centre there's little choice.

Pride gives way to despair as hope is abandoned for all those who try to enter a dwindling jobs market. And with forced unemployment comes crime and punishment from a society of the fortunate few.

Hiding his head in the sand for the last ten years, chancellor Darling spins the government pre-election line that the government will do "all it can" to avoid the "lost generation" of young people.

But manufacturing has been deliberately decimated, putting all the eggs in a financial services and media/creative basket now on its last legs. Cheap slave labour has been imported to do the dirty jobs to give the country a false sense of economic security. Billions of pounds have been squandered on useless non-job creation schemes.

The Orange Party's big concern is that away from all the worthy, worthless rhetoric, governments have a nasty habit of keeping a pool of workers on sedation on the dole.

Bosses too can keep a lid on a workforce scared stiff of losing their jobs, forcing pay cuts and forcing down working conditions, in return for fat profits and bonuses.

The usual lame excuse is trotted out blaming the rapid rise on the recession depression and a lack of jobs for school and college leavers. Ministers worth their salt should have seen it coming and made plans instead of sitting idly by and waiting for the jobless to be thrown on the scrapheap?

Hiding behind the spin of a global recession cuts no ice. The government is still trying to dig itself out of an economic hole of its own making.

What isn't needed is Sugar-coated apprenticeship gimmicks from a celebrity-obsessed government nor dumbed-down Mickey Mouse qualifications to push disillusioned youngsters into useless college courses to put off the dreaded day of a life on the dole.

Tories are driving home the point accusing ministers of making "empty promises" and driving home a message which chimes with the public.

Petty party politics apart, what is certain is that the country cannot and must not lose a whole generation of young people to unemployment and underachievement nor breed a culture where jobs are the exception and hand-outs are the rule.

Most Neet youngsters are likely to have low skills and a lack of real experience of real jobs in the real world.

Meaningful training, apprenticeships and work is the answer, not the current mishmash of half-baked uselessness 'courses' and non-jobs which just act as a stopgap before the dole queue beckons.

Time will tell whether the Tories will turn it around and whether the new People's 'Progressive' Party lives up to its name or lives down to the hype.

What is clear is that after more than a decade of deceit, whoever put the 'new' into New Labour should hang their heads in shame.

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