Irish Times Poll
dublin |
bin tax / household tax / water tax |
news report 
Thursday October 16, 2003 15:05
by Socialist Party
Do you think the bin tax protesters are holding the capital city to ransom,as suggested by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen?
Vote online now at www.ireland.com
Comments (33 of 33)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33"Do you think the bin tax protesters are holding the capital city to ransom, as suggested by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen?
74% YES 26% NO (so far)"
Vote No!
Link is below, poll is on lefthand sidebar:
"YES, without a doubt the Socialist rabble has again got the wimp, do-nothing, shower of cry-baby government against the ropes. Government is rapidly losing the little respect the public has for it by caving into the "hand-out" craving hoards. I bet those leeches leave their illegal picket lines, jump into their Mercs and head off into the sunset when it comes time to collect their social welfare! It's time for government to put everyone of those insurrectionists into jail for years. The honest people who pay their legitimate bin charges and have a contract with the Dublin City Council for their waste desposal ((BS to double taxation, you marxist morons)) must demand their bins be emptied even at the cost of a little collateral damage to the heads and bodies of the snake-skined, knuckle dragging Cro-Magnons! If the Gardai are not capable of handling a few dozen old ladies (heck their bones will break easy since the government hasn't really warned them about how smoking 40 fags a day causes osteoporosis yet) then call in a Batallion of the Defense Forces and give 'em some first hand training in crowd supression before they hit the Iraqi turf."
eddie-the Aggravator, Ireland/ex USA
Does this sound fascist to anyone else? And the line about Merc driving social welfareites is just inspired.
It makes common sense, something you communists know nothing about. It's what people imn Irelamd really think. mary Harney said it exactly right, a recipe for anarchy.
a Greenie has come out in SUPPORT of the Pee fucking Dee's - the captains of industry and the pillars of privatisation!
The only recipie for anarchy here is the privatisation of the bin service.
What about the bit about breaking old women's bones?
"If the Gardai are not capable of handling a few dozen old ladies (heck their bones will break easy since the government hasn't really warned them about how smoking 40 fags a day causes osteoporosis yet)"
Or the call to jail all protestors?
"It's time for government to put everyone of those insurrectionists into jail for years."
Or the stereotypical fascist depiction of of leftys as sub-human?
"snake-skined, knuckle dragging Cro-Magnons!"
None of that sounds even the slightist bit fascist to you? Are you a member of the Greenshirts?
Its down a bit to 71% : 29 %
Anyhow the semi hysterical reactions from the media the establishment and their idiot savants above are all to be expected. They convey one piece of information. The blockades have been highly successful and effective. Lets remember that!
As to tactics how about a poll on
1. They started with bribes - free cars etc
2. then threats - legal action
3. More threats - non collection
4. They changed a law designed to preserve health and safety and implemented non collection
5. They told any worker who agreed with us they were off the pay roll
6. They ran over us at high speed in the streets
and still we stand - stronger than ever
The ranting hysterics of Harney et al are a glowing testament the courage and creative genius of ordinary folks when pushed to action. She's right it is anarchy. Long may it continue !
Conor
.
Despite peoples protestations about the Marion Finucane phone in poll taken yesterday morning,
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=61664&PHPSESSID=df90cb3de00f17b4fae134587b2facf8
the Irish Times poll very closely confirms the results. Nevertheless these are very ad hoc polls but do indicate, I reckon, a flavour of the public mood.
Marion Finucane Phone In Poll yesterday morning - 13,000 calls taken:-
"Do you think you should pay to have your bins collected?"
74% voted YES
26% voted NO
Irish Times poll as 5:40pm:-
69% votes YES
31% voted NO
I am generally behind the bin protests but I think the protest is failing to address the environmental issue. Personal rubbish needs to be recycled as much as possible and charging people for their rubbish is the best way to encourage people to do this.
Saying this, in general I am totally against a flat rate of tax whereby a rich person pays exactly the same as a poor person.
how much was spent on this new 'race against waste' government campaign? I'm no expert at these things, but the new Ad (rats, flying rubbish, cars turned upside down etc) seems to have a lot of CGI in it, and that sure as hell don't come cheap.
I'd say its somewhere in the millions.
And I seen Cullen on the News last night, with some pretty girl in templebar launching the campaign. Does no-one else find the excessive use of female models (at least once a week there is pic of some FF/PD hack with a model in the papers) by this Govt very sexist? Do the govt now accept that having a pretty face in a campaign is essential for advertising or something? (C'mon Mary, all these skinny women must be making you feel like a right fat cow, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!)
Are extremely susceptible to manipulation by resource rich bodies, because the 'electorates' are self-selecting and because the same people are allowed to vote multiple times. In particular when there is a bitter divide on the issue, manipulation is common.
Even if there was no manipulation, the population being polled bears no resemblance to the general population. In the two polls quoted, the relevant populations are:
1. Listeners to Marian Finucane show who bother ringing in to a poll. This population is disproportionately rural (where RTE has a much bigger share of the market due to lack of competition), older and conservative (due to the cross-section of the population that listens to the show).
2. People who choose to repsond to an IT website poll. This population is some type of intersection between irish times readers and people with a lot of access to the internet. On a socio-economic level what this means is that the poll has close to zero representation from the poorer 50% of society and even among the rest is severely loaded towards the wealthier echolons of the social scale. It also contains a large number of expatriates who have no idea of the situation on the ground or the arguments of the campaign as these have almost zero visibility outside of the local areas where the campaign has been active. To be honest, achieving over 30% in this poll would indicate to me that support for the campaign must be enormous.
Still, these polls have precisely zero worth in gauging the feelings of the population towards the bin tax. They have no scientific value whatsoever and would be best ignored. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about here.
I agree Chekov 30% indicates a large amount of support but even as it stands in this unscientific poll, and same with the Finucane programme, it still means we have more support than the government! So Cullen who is the small unrepresentative rabble?
There really have only been two occasions in the 1000 and so years that Dublin has been a city when one could reasonably argue that the city was being held to "ransom". There are a further nine more occasions (all in the Viking and immediate succesor kingdoms) when one could suggest that Ransom was "being demanded" of Dublin.
It's like after a ,long and hard day's activity doing my thing, I really hate to log onto the indymedia round of updates on the little rascals, the mammy Harney, the yanky bastards, the students, the communists, the smart arse anarchists, the really misunderstood Bellfield women and read this sort of shite.
Thus shall I move quickly to the specifics:
Dublin as a city considered in quasi-state terms, has never been worth more than [in modern money] 4 billion Euros.
I have not read any media report or party political propaganda that has suggested that payment or non-payment of the Bin Tax comes even close to 4,000,000,000€.
I have through the appropriate and indeed inappropriate channels reminded you all that congestion in Dublin and the stopping of normal infrastructral prejudice (the private car owner/user) is worth at top 4,000,000€ a day.
Applying soft maths we see that even if RTS Dublin accompanied by every student, communist, anarchist, mad republican, misunderstood woman and in short _all the enemies_ of the little rascals, mammy Harney, bastard Yanky imperialists went out and paralysed Dublin for 24/7 356 days a year, we still would fall a crucial 2,000,000,000€ (approx) of the ransom.
I have my targets.
I shall work to them.
%-)
The media propaganda campaign is having an effect outside Dublin. Not about the environmental issues, but they have nurtured an attitude of "We pay so why shouldn't they".
With both polls it would be interesting to see what percentage of dublin people would be yes and no.
is reporting that 4 groups involved in the bin-tax campaign have released a statement saying that they called off pickets of depots, but will continue them on estates.
it is presented as a "breathing space" and a chance for reconciliation.
is this true?
I'll leave it as an exercise for you to guess who it was.
no, i think not. the depot blockades were just a reminder to the govt/friends of the POTENTIAL power of the campaign. workers and activists united. (and already this has tried to be undermined). the blockades continue in the estates. i think the ABTC were actually expecting the unions to move on the issue (more fool them). this has not happened. therefore, by my reckoning, if no conscessions are granted within probably the next week, the depot blockades will be back for good.
its all about strategy, i reckon.
as they say down the country BATE DE BIN TEX!
“On a socio-economic level what this means is that the poll has close to zero representation from the poorer 50% of society”.
Calling it “close to zero per cent” is another way of saying that virtually none of us poor sods (literally) read the Irish Times. Just cos I’m poor, don’t make me out to be dumb.
“It also contains a large number of expatriates who have no idea of the situation on the ground or the arguments of the campaign as these have almost zero visibility outside of the local areas where the campaign has been active.”
You won’t find the word “expatriates” or even “expatriots” is any self-respecting dictionary – it’s a word the Brits made up sometime during the past twenty years (I’d say) to make themselves feel important when abroad. So don’t use it. More importantly, what the fuck are you on about? A) What percentage of the Irish Times on-line poll do you estimate (know, even) to be composed of “expatriates”? B) I presume you define “expatriates” as Brits and Yanks living here (correct me if you don’t). Or to put it another way, you probably don’t include people whose first language is anything but English (since it’s unlikely that YOU would expect them to be browsing the Irish Times website). Or to put it another way, you distinguish between Brits/Yanks and “others” – people, might I suggest, of colour? People from, for instance, Nigeria? Or even a light shade, such as that associated with people from Romania. Or to put it another way, you subscribe to the racist definition (can’t think what else to call it) that gives us “expatriates” and immigrants. Speaking as an immigrant, I resent my inclusion in this second division of foreigners (there’s not even hope of promotion, like in the football league). More seriously, it’s a terrible mistake to subscribe to this apartheid system devised by governments (in this case, EU governments) and the media, which – for obvious and sinister reasons – prefers to distinguish between “expatriates” and immigrants (white OK; black BAD). Which brings me to C) “as these have almost zero visibility outside of the local areas where the campaign has been active”. Right – you’ve checked the “visibility” of “expatriates” in these areas have you? Almost zero visibility, is it? And, of course, any “expatriates” (see immigrants, or don’t see immigrants, I dunno) from outside these areas would “have no idea of the situation on the ground”. Yet, apparently, 30% who voted in the poll support the campaign. So, either the 30% came exclusively from the areas involved, or the 30% is made up of people from the affected areas and elsewhere, but with no “expatriates” among them, cos we know nothing!
“Believe me, I know what I'm talking about here”, says our demographic/polling expert.
Believe me, you don’t.
n. (-t, -t)
One who has taken up residence in a foreign country.
One who has renounced one's native land.
[Medieval Latin expatrire, expatrit- : Latin ex-, ex- + Latin patria, native land (from patrius, paternal, from pater, father. See pter- in Indo-European Roots).]
Chekov is clearly talking about Irish emigrants using the IT to stay in touch with the oul' sod, not immigrants into Ireland, when he uses the word.
It takes real talent to misunderstand a comment that badly. You should be proud.
The main points of Chekhovs statement concerning uncontrolled polls are true. These polls are pseudo-science as miffed should know and if he/she doesn't then thats sad.
The pedantic nonsense about expatriates is childish. I unerstood the word expatriate in Chekhovs statement to refer to Irish people living abroad who keep in touch with home via Irelan online. There is nothing sinister in it at all. And before you get all pedantic with me about the meaning of expatriate please note that there is such a thing as figurative speech where words don't necessarily conform with some academic's dictionary definition.
"This population is some type of intersection between irish times readers and people with a lot of access to the internet"
Which is categorically not saying that poor people don't read the Irish times, it is saying that the segment of the population that has a large amount of internet access and reads the Irish times has a statistically tiny representation from the poorer half of our society. This is pretty obvious.
The second misunderstanding is partly my fault. It would have been clearer to have said 'emigrants' rather than ex-patriates, although in this context ex-patriates is also accurate (ie somebody who used to live here). I was refering to the fact that a large number of the respondants to the online polls are Irish people who have emigrated abroad. Browse through the IT comments pages and you'll see what I mean. Hopefully that clears up the confusion.
When I said that I knew what I was talking about, I was only really refering to the usefulness of online polls in gauging opinion -and that is something that I do know about.
Despite the fact that I've been living in Germany for 14 years I took the trouble to vote "no" on the Irish Times poll, hope you don't mind...
Apart from participating in activities relating to the anti bin tax campaign while in Ireland last month I have since addressed meetings in 3 different cities reporting on the situation, encouraging people to show their solidarity and support and to follow the example of the people in Dublin who are fighting for their interests.
Having nothing better to do I decided to write an article for the German Indymedia today (see link)
but both these newspapers demand subscription rates. I haven't been able to read an Irish Times article in over two years. They went subscription in October 2001. Actually they froze all the ipsiphi ireland emails account on the 13th of September to be precise. I got garbage every time i logged in for almost a month. And El Pais went subscription in the last eigtheen months.
This effects the content and advertising of both daily publications.
So: only "profiled" and brand loyal subscribing readers got to that poll, which with the application of soft mathies means "very few".
Ask a IT worker how many log-ins go to that corner of the desktop.
Ask a cognitive specialist how many log-ins keep going back.
Most repeat "falsifications" votes in online polls are achieved by the "Alt+arrow right" Microsoft shortcut.
If you have a unix based program you have gone beyond soft mathies and can probably pre-arrange your votes, enabling a program to automatically search the internet on a daily basis for all online polls and cast a representative 50 votes either way and a most important 144 votes in the "don't know = don't care" section.
am I an expatriate? I'm very worried about it.
like if I had a right to vote in the constituency of my birth like all the other European State citizens I'd feel less useless to modern tippy toppy Irish democracy and online market research.
%-)
gut gemacht.
would you like the right to vote in the constituency of your birth just like all the German citizens you must see around you?
I didn't mean to say that all expats are uninformed, just that they are statistically even less likely to have access to both sides of the story than people living in Ireland.
Why do I sometimes get the impression that people are going around trying to mis-understand points on indymedia?
I don't see why I should be allowed to vote in Ireland just because I happened to have been born there. The people who will be affected by the actions of those elected should be allowed to decide who makes the rules that they themselves will be expected to obey.
I'd much rather have a say in who gets elected in Germany to make the laws that affect my life than in Ireland where I no longer live. Make voting rights dependent on residence rather than citizenship.
Why do ye f**kers always parrot the same old tired cliched line that we expats - or "d'jasporrahs" if you prefer since some pillock was objecting to the term expat - don't / can't know what's happening on the ground .... did it ever occur to ye that many of us still have contacts back home and even visit the place from time to time ..... ? Or that thanks to the wonders of the Internet and e-mail it's a wee bit easier to keep up to date than in the days of yore ........
But that'd be too much to expect from ye ...
In any case it's not too hard to work out what's happening "on the ground" back in the old sod:
The plain People of Ireland are been ridden good and proper by the gombeen "bizniss-men", the land speculators, the wunch of bankers in AIB, BOI etc and their agents in the form of the wee double-breasted suited leprechauns of the ruling FF-PD Free State junta ....
Same as it ever was ... plus ca change .....
Apart from the fact that Squire Charlatan Haughty and Albert "three card trickster" Reynolds have been replaced by Bertie "Pint of Plain"-"One of the Lads" Ahern ...... my God such profound changes in the political landscape ... how could we poor ignorant "d'jasporrahs" ever hope to keep up with it all .....
(Or will someone now tell me that double-breasted suits have gone out of fashion among the FF-PD mafiosi ..... holy God where will it all end ...... ?)
For someone so against 'market/research/opinion polls' you make the most startling assumptions about the poorer classes. That 'a tiny number' of low-earners read the Times. Did a survey on that, did you?
Were your ill-informed claptrap true, why would newsagents in the poorer suburbs stock the Times each day? In my (poor) suburb, rakes upon rakes of Times are sold each day, bought by the poor, lower-classes. How shocking for you.
you and the rest of your pretend-socialists are in dreamland if you think most people agree with the bin tax protesters.
If only you cared as much about the manky, disgusting Irish attitude to waste and litter as you did the hobby horse of a few out-of-work, shit-stirring, bonnet-jumping protesters.
Miffed gets his/her (probably his, lets face it) knickers in a twist:
"B) I presume you define “expatriates” as Brits and Yanks living here (correct me if you don’t). Or to put it another way, you probably don’t include people whose first language is anything but English (since it’s unlikely that YOU would expect them to be browsing the Irish Times website)."
Yep. Chekov is a racist too, as well as being against the future of the planet. Anarchists, eh? Lucky there are real moderates in the Dail (and those who love them) to hold the line, and maybe even pick up Il Duce McDowell's seat next time (since he was out of the office when they agreed to spend everybody's money saving pedos and those who cover up for them from examinership).
From "No Extradition" to "Lock Em All Up, Its the Only Language They Understand". I understand the logic, even as a poor victimised expatriate. Guess what, the Greens will get more votes in the leafy suburbs than in the "bolshie" inner-city areas (I lived there, they've been to environmental damage, urban sprawl, and urban decay like you UCD Greens have never seen, big shout out to Cabra Park y'all. You'd never guess I was raised from Limerick, would ya?)
In other words, get a fucking grip you twerps who think the poor need the lash of a few days (months?) in Mountjoy to save Mother Earth. It may appeal to the Olivia Mitchell constituency. Good luck and all. See you after the revolution.
I'm speaking as a former (not very) poor middle class sod who ended up in the shadow of Dalymount and really sincerely wanted to recycle. Recycle what? Dublin Food Co-op my arse. When I had the money to NOT shop at Tesco I spent it at the pictures and the off-licence. So fuck off. I love the spin from NO'B (surely a nom de plume??) about how the Greens hate all those multinationals, as long as they are safely far away in where ever Monsanto is. Small business is great though. Ever worked in one not state-subsidised (much) or owned by yr ma?
Resistance starts at home. Those flaming radicals in the British Liberal Democrat party have been calling for a local income tax, to really put some power in the hands of city and county councils. Of course, that could just makes things worse. But at least it has the POSSIBILITY of being progressive. Where are the Greens? Regressive taxes and the Auld Triangle. Nuff said.
As for the ex-pats, the Irish Examiner, www.examiner.ie, is free. And my ma reads it, even when it was called the Cork Examiner and didn't matter. And has superfluous right-wing editorials disguised as "Irish news". But I'm assuming any "ex-pat" reading this has an ounce of cop-on and can read between the lines?
If you work in Dublin's (still) substantial electronic MANUFACTURING and DISTRIBUTION sector, as well as the fast-paced and exciting world of SUPER-VALU, CENTRA and the like, you would have immense amounts of time to give yr opinion online. I know I did, without an internet connection on the Cabra Rd, where we all loved Bertie, and were in a position to pay Joe Costello's friends and relatives on the Phibsboro Rd the (actually quite reasonable) internet access fees.
Whereas if you work at the IFSC, you are too busy playing the markets, and accounting for the bad luck/bone-headed stupidity of the investment manager in far distant London, for whom you are providing a tax-advantageous brass plate service. With no free internet access at all, or a political bone in one's body. Which is why the hoi polloi dominate those damned internet polls.
All in good fun of course. Not like it matters or anything.
"The Irish Times website, ireland.com, remains the most popular Irish newspaper on the Internet with more than 115,000 Irish readers accessing it regularly 70 per cent of which are ABC1, according to the first JNIR survey focussing specifically on the online market in Ireland." I'm awarding prizes for people who can interpret this to prove that I am: 1) Racist 2) Insulting ex-pats 3) Insulting the intelligence of working class people.
So - according to your own statistics, 30 % of ireland.com readers are C2DE. Which would be roughly 40,000 people. hmmn. hardly a 'tiny number' is it?
nobody said you were insulting to 'working class' people - just patronising.
Somewhere about 40% I think. Therefore, the poorer 50% of society probably have about 20-25% representation in this survey. Considering that 54% of Ireland.com's readership consists of expats, that would leave approximately 10% of readers being from the poorer 50% of Irish society. My original point holds true.
As for the patronising charge, that's just ridiculous. I don't think there is anything remotely worthy about reading the IT, which is a shit paper. However, I'm sure that you'll still find some way of interpreting this to have a go at me. I await in a state of nervous trepidation. Oh what will they call me now?
good point about multiple voting in online polls.Speaking as someone who regulary votes, surfing the internet all day bored out of my mind in my desk bound job,I vote at least ten times if I feel strongly about something, I can only presume others out there do the same. about Chekov's other comments, cannot believe the abuse he is getting on this one...Touchy folk out there
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