Pollies Coming from the Polls

Recent podcast from The Guardian, but could come from anywhere, talks of “sixty-five percent” (or was it “eighty-five percent”?) said that cost-of-living was their greatest concern.

I view this statement with the greatest concern

(a) In the first place I do not know how the sample was made (of folks to be interviewed). Were they lackadaisical lay-abouts lounging around street-corners? Were they employees of The Guardian (“It is freezing outside; I’m staying indoors today”)? Were they middle-aged housekeepers emerging from the local supermarket? We do not know and we can do nothing about that sample; the data is collected and the people interviewed have dispersed.

(b) Cost-of-living has to be the greatest concern of whoever holds the purse strings. The average rich guy does not pump gasoline or shop for groceries. Nor pay the household staff. But for those of us who walk to the supermarket and lug a bag of groceries home (the bulk of the population), we study this week’s bill with gloom, alarum, and despondency.

(c) My greatest concern in that politicians deny that they listen to the polls. If your constituents say that cost-of-living is an issue, then you respond to that comment if you want to be reelected in a few month’s time.

It is all coming back to me: The podcast discussed Scott Morrison and the upcoming Federal Election in Australia; cost-of-living had pushed climate change off the agenda.

The short-term hurdle of cost-of-living seems to be more important to the average public and Scott Morrison, than the future of the human race.

Here’s the problem, and it bears thinking about:-

Half the population is below-average intelligence.

Not you and me, of course; we are above-average intelligence.

I have my doubts, though, about the pollies.

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