Talking about pollsters in the
UK related articles thread, I suggested that the point of UK polling is to falsify a narrative that the newspapers and television can then get behind. The COVID-19 playbook is nothing new; rather, the people at the heart of governance have been playing these same types of psychological scripts in the same way since the time of Bertrand Russell. The only difference, this time when they did their usual doubling-down on the narrative, something snapped.
It is interesting to note, ITV daytime staff all tested positive for COVID in the week running up to Christmas 2021; so with them all "self-isolating" ITV announced it would not run any live broadcasts over the Christmas period, instead it would be reruns. The context of this was very big, though probably missed by most. ITV do the majority of live television outside news broadcasts in the UK, and their presenters were getting the brunt of OFCOM complaints for their misinformation regarding the vaccine data; - I know I put in complains against different shows. I suspect they had a secret meeting and decided unilaterally that they were not about to carry-the-can for what CONSERVATIVE Boris intended to announce over Christmas 2021, so they all "tested positive for COVID" to remove themselves from the fray. Without ITV on board, Boris and the BBC chickened out of their plans to cancel another Christmas. Then on behalf of England, Boris was the first national leader to announce the end to lockdowns and almost in the same breath, he announced an imminent war between RUSSIA and UKRAINE using the exact same blue and yellow colour scheme as COVID-19. A domino effect then took place as other countries followed suit, replacing COVID-19 with the UKRAINE war.
Blast from the past, a reminder of the slowly-boil-the-frog LOCKDOWN strategy that was being uncoiled worldwide in December 2021 before Boris suddenly decided "we had to live with COVID".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-59733716
WHO urges cancelling some holiday events over Omicron fears
BBC NEWS ENGLAND - 21 December 2021
The World Health Organization has urged people to cancel some of their holiday plans to protect public health, as the Omicron variant spreads globally.
"An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled," said WHO head Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, adding that "difficult decisions" must be made.
A number of countries have acted to try to halt the spread of the variant, including imposing travel curbs.
In the US, Omicron is now dominant, accounting for 73% of new infections.
President Joe Biden is expected to address the nation on Tuesday but the White House said he was not planning on "locking the country down".
The country's top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, earlier warned that Christmas travel would increase the spread of Omicron even among the fully vaccinated.
Americans are now advised against travel to more than 80 nations that appear on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Very High list for Covid-19, including almost all of Europe.
France and Germany are among the nations imposing travel curbs to tackle Omicron, while the Netherlands has introduced a strict lockdown over the Christmas period.
In the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that the government needed to "reserve the possibility" of bringing in new rules in England as Omicron cases surged, but did not announce further restrictions.
New Year's Eve celebrations in London's Trafalgar Square have been cancelled "in the interests of public safety", Mayor Sadiq Khan said.
And on Tuesday, New Zealand postponed its phased reopening to international travel until the end of February at least.
Ten days earlier, LABOUR Welsh First Minister, Mark Drakeford,
remember him, was getting ready to pull the exact same stunt he did the year before.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-59580047
Covid: Christmas plans fears amid Omicron concern
BBC NEWS WALES - 11 December 2021
People fear having their Christmas plans scuppered for a second year amid concern over the Covid variant Omicron.
Wales' coronavirus rules are now being reviewed weekly instead of every three weeks in response to the new variant.
The organiser of a group Christmas Day lunch to combat loneliness said those attending would be "devastated" if it was cancelled by new restrictions.
About 50 international students in Vale of Glamorgan who are unable to travel home will stay on campus for Christmas.
Wales' Health Minister Eluned Morgan has said it is too early to say if there will be festive restrictions.
But the Welsh government has urged people to take lateral flow tests before going shopping, to Christmas parties or visiting others, and extended guidance on mask-wearing to pubs and restaurants, when people are not eating.
Last year, plans to relax Covid rules from 23 to 27 December to allow people to meet loved ones were scrapped with just a few days' notice.
Instead, only two households were allowed to meet on Christmas Day only.
While there is no official guidance telling people to cancel party plans, health officials at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board have urged people not to attend parties, after huge demand at A&E departments.
But getting to my point regarding opinion polls, here in the UK, "opinion polls" specifically by YouGov, were use extensively to tell us everyone was in favour of lockdowns, taking the vaccine, and punishing refuseniks. When we open that can-of-worms we find some interesting faces. Firstly, the former UK Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi, the man who oversaw the rollout of the COVID-19 shot in the UK. I've
mentioned him a few times in this thread already. Guess what, he's the co-founder of YouGov. Fancy that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouGov
Wiki: YouGov
YouGov is a British international Internet-based market research and data analytics firm, headquartered in the UK, with operations in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. In 2007, it acquired US company Polimetrix, and since December 2017 it has owned Galaxy Research, an Australian market research company.
It was a major player in statistical gathering of COVID-19 data.
https://yougov.co.uk/covid-19
YouGov COVID-19 Public Monitor
As a
global public opinion organisation, YouGov is privileged that so many people around the world share their views and behaviours with us every day. At this time we’re putting that full focus on
gathering information about COVID-19, asking people to share their experiences of the global pandemic and using that unique insight to provide health organisations with data that helps them understand and fight the spread of the virus. Data from the
COVID-19 behaviour tracker by Imperial College London and YouGov is accessible on GitHub.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/internation ... g-covid-19
These are the countries YouGov claim to collect opinions from.
Also there is Peter Kellner, he was the face of YouGov for many years. We usually see him on general election nights giving his analysis on results based on voter swings. From the information below we discover he owns 6% of YouGov, has his fingers in many pies and has just received a CBE in the 2023 New Year Honours.
Peter Kellner
Formerly the political analyst of the
BBC Newsnight current affairs programme, Kellner was engaged by YouGov's founders, Stephan Shakespeare and
Nadhim Zahawi, in December 2001. When YouGov floated for £18 million in April 2005, Kellner owned 6% of the company. He has been President of YouGov since 2007, and was its Chairman from 2001 to 2007.
From 1969 to 2003 he was a
newspaper journalist with The Sunday Times, the New Statesman, The Independent, The Observer and the Evening Standard.
He has also been a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and the Institute for Policy Studies, London and has advised several large corporations. He was the chairman of NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations) until 2019 and visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe.
In 2011, he received a Special Recognition Award from the Political Studies Association in recognition of his achievements in
"bringing polling and intelligent use of numbers and figures to election coverage".
Kellner was
appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for charitable services as chair of the NCVO.
So it's taken long enough to get to this point. But I want the reader to realise, while I deal with this topic in a trivial way, I don't put this stuff out without knowing a bit about the backgrounds of these people and their unbelievable bios. So the next double grab is from the BBC's 1997 General Election Special. We see a shot of the younger Peter Kellner doing his statistical analysis as the results come in. But if we back up the tape a bit, before Peter Kellner appears, we have then CONSERVATIVE MP Michael Portillo doing some political analysis before going off to his constituency count to see if he retained his seat. Portillo exits stage-right on the one hour mark, and Kellner enters stage left at the two hour mark. This is the election that gave Tony Blair his majority. But we see five years previous, the exact same setup, both talking-heads a different points in the broadcast.
- 1997 General Election
- 1992 General Election
It is obvious to me that Peter Kellner is wearing a plastic head, and Michael Portillo, in those grabs, it's his cheeks that look padded out.