AUSTRALIA DAY - A REASON FOR CELEBRATION?

[Maureen K Clifford]

Thank you Will you have no idea how heartening your comment is

Cheers

Maureen

[r.magnay]

G'day Will and Maureen,
Though I don't doubt for a second that your intentions are honourable, be very careful quoting percentages, racism goes more than one way remember, it would be interesting to know who was polled to achieve these results and who adjudicated what is racist and what isn't!

[manfredvijars]

The May 27, 1967 referendum passed with 90.77% voter support.
Commonwealth of Australia gazette No 55, 26 June 1967.

[r.magnay]

G'day Manfred,
I was referring to the more recent poll rather than the actual referendum, as it turns out I was listening to an interview yesterday between a radio announcer and one of the blokes who conducted the poll...or a poll which returned similar results to the ones Will referred to, one of the questions in the poll was...'would you have any concerns if a relative married a Muslim?' of the people polled, something like 90% answered yes. First of all it didn't delve any further into what the concerns would be, and secondly any race can be a Muslim! Hardly a conclusive verdict I would have thought. From that you get the impression that anyone who has any concerns about a Muslim.....that is anyone who practices Islam, must be a racist! I get increasingly annoyed at people who accept polls at face value...if it suits them, I think we all know that a poll can be manipulated to give a result whichever way you want it to go! I am not suggesting that is necessarily the case with Will, but a point to note never the less.

[Maureen K Clifford]

Totally agree with you Ross - never have been a fan of polls as have always felt there was a bias but what I hate even worse are statistics. Numbers can always be twisted to show what you would like them to show - whilst they can be useful as a guide it is never IMO wise to make a decision based entirely on them - sometimes just using good old fashioned common sense works equally as well.

But running polls and compiling statistics keeps a lot of people in a lot of organizations in a job these days Statistically that shows that it is keeping the unemployment levels down

Cheers

Maureen

[manfredvijars]

Indeed Ross ... similarly anything that's reported on the popular media is open to question. There was a time when the media was an honerable industry and reported the 'facts' Those facts were well grounded and seldom called into disrepute. Now even a primary school kid can refute current media 'facts'.

Radio polls are seldom worth the paper they're written on. What they do seem to highlight is that someone (or group) is fishing for something to base a particular self interest on - for their own ends. Objectivity is a rare commodity (even in judging poetry it seems). ...

If we want to 'fix' things based on inaccurate 'facts' we will never be able to address the real issues because all our efforts would be flimsy, facile and fleeting; not well grounded at all. The result is usually millions of dollars in wasted effort and misplaced good intent ... and this is what leaves everyone with a bad taste in their mouth.

[manfredvijars]

... yes, where an illinformed and alarmist minority parading themselves as protecting the community but are more about localised outbreaks of xenophobia, bigotry and ignorance.

[warooa]

Yeah they just did a study and the findings were that 36% of all statistics are totally useless.

[warooa]

That same study found that research causes cancer in rats

[Dave Smith]

Get this one, 33% of road fatalities are caused by drunk drivers, does it then follow that 67% are caused by sober people, go figure, lets all go get drunk and save lives.

TTFN