I can't say I'm a big fan of the Léger Marketing group, a company that in my opinion, skates awfully close to the offside line in producing opinion polls that are tailored to provide results that clients demand.
Sneaky? Dishonest?
How about the way the company cleverly hides the French accent aigu (é) in their logo, preserving its Quebec pedigree here, while obscuring the fact that it is a Franco-Quebec company to clients in English North America.
There must be some research out there that holds that French diacritical marks on names are a turn-off to Anglophones, even the mighty
At any rate, Léger struck out rather badly in the last Quebec election, woefully underestimating Liberal party support, highlighting the fact that the four-percent margin error that they reserve for themselves, is a lot more critical than they intimate.
"With two days until Quebec's provincial election, the separatist Parti Quebecois remained poised to win a majority government, according to an exclusive Leger Marketing poll conducted for QMI Agency. The last QMI Agency poll before Quebecers vote on Sept. 4 placed the PQ in the lead at 33%, with the CAQ in second at 28% and the Liberals at 27%.We all know that the results of the election were much closer than Léger predicted and that the six percentage point difference between support for the PQ and the Liberals as predicted, was a far cry from the less than one percent (PQ-31.95%.....Lib -31.20%) which was borne out on election day.
The percentages for all three major parties remained unchanged since the last Leger poll, which was published on Aug. 24." Link
This incidentally was outside the margin of error, although I'm sure Léger would argue that it wasn't because the Liberal party strength was under-reported by about 4% and that the PQ strength was over-reported by 2%, both within the margin of error, when considered individually.
Adding the two numbers together the difference was indeed about 5%-6%, outside the margin, but I guess it's a case on interpretation.
You say ta-may-toe, I say ta-mah-to
Interestingly, when I spoke to Liberal party insiders, they told me that one of the reasons that Jean Charest called the last provincial election was because their own internal party polling numbers showed the Liberals and the PQ neck and neck.
Sadly, I'm pretty sure that the Léger poll actually affected the razor-thin outcome of the election, as some voters, considering the poll in the closing days of the campaign were motivated or demotivated to go out and vote.
There is also a minority of fence-sitters who actually are swayed to vote for the predicted winner.
Had Léger not published the inaccurate polling projections, we might very well have elected a minority Liberal government!
To be fair, other polling companies have done as abysmally poor of late, wrongly predicting the outcomes in both the recent Alberta and British Columbia provincial elections, in both cases botching the predictions so badly that they actually projected the wrong party as winners and this, not by a tiny margin. Read a story about these polling failures
All these polling disasters confirm the fact that polling has actually become less and less accurate over the years, something surprising in a world where technological breakthroughs has led to better and more accurate results in just about every field of human endeavor.
There are many reasons for this decline in polling accuracy. The cell phone age makes it harder to contact a targeted sample, where landlines of the past, pinpointed exactly where people lived. People today have also become less and less predictable, often changing their minds often before an election. Also, there is a dramatic drop in the number of people willing to participate in opinion polls, with privacy a very real and modern concern.
And so today, interpreting the shrinking numbers is as important as the numbers themselves.
Given the significantly higher numbers of undecided and non-responders, pollsters can no longer just ignore them and have to 'weigh' their impact, determining if they share a statistically significant disposition, substantially different form those who responded to the poll.
It isn't an easy task and we've seen pollsters in all three provincial elections badly misinterpret what information they had, where the undecided and unresponsive skewed widely towards the party that held power before the election.
Of all types of opinion polls, political polls should be the most accurate, after all, those being questioned are simply asked whether they will vote for party or candidate A, B or C.
Nothing complicated there, or so it seems and yet pollsters are getting it wrong at an alarming and expanding rate.
All this takes me to question the results of a poll that asks much more complicated questions, public perceptions on policy, where the nature of the questions may well determine or 'skew' the outcome itself, which is exactly what happened in the poll commissioned by the PQ and conducted by Léger, to 'determine' Quebecers' position in relation to religious accommodation.
This poll was commissioned by a PQ government with an agenda, wherein the poll is meant to validate and bolster support of their particular point of view over accommodations.
These types of polls are never be published if the conclusions aren't supportive and quite frankly, therein lies the rub.
Pollsters are expected to deliver supporting results and those that do are rewarded with repeat business, those that don't, are cast aside.
More often than not, the actual polling questions are dishonestly skewed to favour an expected result, it is the dirty secret of the industry.
Let us take for example this question;
"Do you agree that immigrants have a negative influence on our economy"
..and lets us compare it to this question;
"Do you agree that immigrants have a positive influence on our economy"
It is basically the same question, asked from the opposite point of view, but in a perfect world, we could expect that if 60% of respondents agreed with the first question , then only 40% of respondents should agree with the second.
But it just doesn't work that way at all, the nature of the question may very well result in 60% of the sample agreeing to both questions!
To be fair, the pollster should actually have asked this question;
"Do you believe that immigrants have a positive or negative influence on our economy"
In polling, the devil is in the question, and asking the right question is the crux of fairness, while asking a loaded question, an exercise in spin.
By the way, I'm not sure that even the third question above is indeed fair as well, because the question implies that immigrants are different.
We can reference Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle which tells us that the very act of observing, changes the result.
In fact a polling question that reflects bias, can never yield meaningful results.
- Do you agree that Jewish people are by nature controlling?
- Do you agree that devout Christians are intolerant?
- Do you agree that Pro-Life activists are dangerous?
- Do you agree that Native Canadians are lazy?
- Do you agree that Canadian Muslims pose a threat?
Can these loaded questions ever yield statistically valid data, or does the very nature of the question skew towards statistical manipulation?
And so we come to the poll commissioned by the Quebec government in respect to the debate over accommodations.
I must say, gentle readers, that I am outraged and furious at the crass manipulation and dishonesty of the entire Léger/Quebec government poll.
The very first question and the keynote of the entire poll is this gem.
Do you agree that:
"Putting an end to unreasonable accommodations favours social cohesion and integration"
Are you kidding me?
I haven't seen a more loaded and dishonest query, since the last referendum question.
If I was to answer the question, I would have to respond affirmatively because I don't believe in unreasonable accommodations, in fact who actually does?
Let me rephrase the question a little differently;
"Refusing to give into unreasonable demands by your children builds familial cohesion."
Who would disagree with that statement?
We all define 'unreasonable accommodations" differently, what is reasonable or unreasonable to one person, may or may not be to another.
But however we define 'unreasonable', we certainly would not be in favour of it!
I'm surprised anybody at all answered the question with a NO!
The rest of the poll builds on the same negative theme and cascades down to the point of ludicrousness where by the end, 60% of those queried, agreed that private schools should be included in provisions of a potential law that limits religious accommodations.
Think of the implications...
It would mean that private Catholic and Jewish schools would not be allowed to teach religion and that a Crucifix or Star of David could not be displayed nor worn by teachers! In a Muslim school, teachers would be barred from wearing a hijab and teaching the Koran!
And by the way, according to the poll, 62% of Francophones and 28% of anglophones believe that doctors should not be allowed to treat patients while wearing a kippa (skullcap) or hijab.
I could only imagine the international scorn such an interdiction would raise. Bizarrely, it would put Quebec in the same class as Iran and Saudi Arabia when it comes to religious tolerance!
How have we arrived at this intolerant juncture.
Well, the PQ has harped on the subject so long and so loudly, that Quebecers are actually now frightened by immigrants, egged on by a public debate over what good Quebecers should or should not tolerate.
Polls like this help fan the flames of intolerance.
Public discussions by politicians about how they are going to come down on Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and other minorities adds fuel to the already toxic level of xenophobia.
It's sad and disgusting.
The entire poll is crafted to yield certain results that the government wants in order to push ahead.
By the way, you can view the entire poll HERE, but it is in French.
......One last comment on the poll.
There appears to be a serious statistical error.
When the responses of 'Anglophones' and 'Allophones' are added to yield a combined percentage called 'Non-Francophones,' the results appear to be erroneous.
Simply put, Léger pollsters forget to put more statistical weight on the more numerous Anglophone responses.
As indicated in the poll, 58% of Anglophones and 70% of Allophones were in agreement with the statement. Combining the two yields, according to the Léger, yields 65%, which is statistically incorrect.
Consider two groups of people.
Group A consists of ten fat people averaging 200 pounds each.
Group B consists of six thin people averaging 150 pounds each.
In order to find the average weight for everybody, you'd have to add up all the pounds and divide by the total number of people.
Group A (10 x 200lbs,=2,000lbs.) + Group B (6x 150lbs=900lbs) = 2,900lbs divided by 16 people=181 lbs. average.
What Léger appears to have done is to just take the average between the 200lbs average of Group A and the 150lbs average of group B, yielding a 175 lbs., an error a first semester statistician would never make!
For those mathematically inclined here's a deeper explanation.
All the following numbers are extrapolated directly from the diagram.
Of the 324 Anglophones who were queried, 12% declined to answer, leaving 285 who did respond, of which 58% or 165 were in agreement with the statement.
Of the 179 Allophones that were queried, 6% declined to answer, leaving 165 who did respond, of which 70% or 116 were in agreement with the statement.
Between the two groups, 450 people responded, of whom 281 agreed with the statement.
That yields 62% NOT the 65% indicated in the poll.
With the error corrected, the grand total also changes from 70% to 68.2% By the way, this error is reproduced in every single question.
Readers, I promise you this.
Somebody at Léger is going to read this post and if I am wrong, I will hear about it immediately.
If I am wrong I will apologize.
If I am right, there will be a deathly silence.
Thanks for reminding me how boring statistics is, Editor. Thankfully I haven't taken a stats course in over 30 years, and I don't miss it one standard deviation.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Léger, Leger or Leh-jay? Ask me if I care! BTW, isn't Leger owned by one-time PQ cabinet minister, none other than Marcel Leger? The sky is blue, the grass is green and cheese is made from milk. Add to that the Leger Marketing Compagnie is biased towards the PQ. Didn't we already know this?
I hope you have an article better than this on Friday, Editor...
From the Rationalist:
ReplyDeleteMr. Editor, how much did Léger Marketing charge for this poll?
I posted this transcript of a conversation between CBC Montreal’s Senior Quebec political analyst Bernard St. Laurent and Mike Finnerty on an earlier thread but I thought that the portion dealing with this recent Léger Marketing poll warranted revisiting.
ReplyDeleteThe use of leading referendum questions almost seems to be ingrained in Quebec and it is wonderful to see that this is a practice that Scotland’s SNP is staying well away from with their referendum. Apparently, the PQ is banking on fooling their base with leading questions that direct them to the desired answers, and yet the PQ somehow remains perplexed as to why they haven’t managed to similarly fool the majority of Quebecers for nearly the past half-century.
FROM: http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/Quebec/Daybreak+Montreal/ID/2387014495/ (starting at 27:25)
Bernie, is it possible that what the PQ used to call the “Secular Charter” but now they want to call the “Charter of Quebec Values” could ride to their rescue in the opinion polls? Well, there is certainly an attempt to do that. You know, yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Bouchard-Taylor and by some bizarre coincidence, that was the day on which they released the Léger Marketing poll suggesting that’s what Quebecers want.
The poll is online at Drainville’s ministry but “if you look at the first questions, and I think it’s important because they set the tone for the other ones:” Reasonable Accommodations – is it still an issue today? So now we’re talking about ISSUES. Then the next question: is the question still pertinent today? Then we go to: Is it an important problem? “And here’s the kicker: so after having dealt with it this way, using these words, then they say: putting an end to Unreasonable Accommodations would favour social cohesion and integration? So they’re kind of leading the people who take the survey to the answers. Right.” So now you’re in the mind frame of Unreasonable Accommodations and that sets the tone for the rest of the questions in the poll. So essentially, what they’re doing is, if they couldn’t kind of create, I mean, they could jump on a couple of events to try to promote that, but by having this poll, Drainville can go out and the MNAs can go out to the corn roasts and the parties and the picnics this summer and say “Look! Look! See? See? This is what you wanted us to do!”
But what struck me, and everything you say of course is true, but when you get to the end of the poll, despite any kind of leading on to certain conclusions, when you ask people do they think action should be taken, the No’s slightly have the day over the Yes’s. And that’s why Michel David, a sovereignist columnist in Le Devoir, this morning is arguing “You know what? You blew it with Bill 14. You have to be careful with this charter because that may end up backfiring on you as well.”
Because the PQ had thought that, I think Pauline Marois said “We need to raise the Quebec flag high”. Yes, yes, that was in 2009, that was when they decided that identity issues were going to be the main thrust of their action. And a winner but Bill 14 for, I don’t know, you tell me, for whatever reason, we get this feeling it’s not really resonating with the francophones in this province and that’s what Michel David saying, it just hasn’t worked.
You know, people might remember the days when there were 100,000 out in the streets in Montreal, on cold winter days, denouncing the Bourassa government and pushing them not to move on Bill 101. There’s been absolutely none of that and David argues that if anything, this makes the PQ look even more intolerant. And, for your own supporters, if you can dilute the bill, as they suggest they will, then does that mean that French is really NOT in danger? And if it is a real danger, then these compromises are irresponsible. So they’re caught in a real bind here. And it’s become sort of a trial, I think he says, on whether the PQ is intolerant or not, which is not the ground they want to be on.
Apologies that this is not related to Léger Marketing’s skewed polling questions, but I thought Dan Delmar’s latest article merited a mention. Incidentally, for those who have been following the comments on the NP site for a while now, I have a very strong suspicion (unconfirmable, of course, unless he admits it himself) that JF Nadeau is one and the same as “student” on this blog.
ReplyDeleteDan Delmar: Parti Quebecois plans to double-down on intolerance
Dan Delmar | 13/06/03
Quebecers will be spending summer in the sun, distracted by government-subsidized comedy and music festivals, while indications suggest the Parti Québécois leadership is plotting to ensure the fall is as politically tumultuous and hostile as possible.
As the PQ approaches the one-year anniversary of its minority government in September, expect the party to become increasingly radical in tone. They haven’t exactly been docile up until now: They’re coming closer to passing a watered-down version of the anglophobic Bill 14, an extension of the Charter of the French Language which would further police language used by Anglophone small and medium-sized businesses. It was initially set to force the children of Quebec-based Armed Forces personnel to attend French schools (a proposal which may reappear in another bill) and, perhaps worst of all, prevent Francophones, already severely lacking English instruction for the most part, from attending Anglo CÉGEPs (junior colleges).
Hints from Bernard Drainville, minister responsible for democratic institutions, indicate that the PQ’s next task will be to fabricate a province-wide identity crisis; a tidal wave of intolerance, which they hope to ride into the next election campaign, toward a majority government and eventually a referendum on sovereignty.
Drainville, a former Radio-Canada journalist, seems to have sovereigntist strategy down to a science: Create conflicts, seemingly of paramount importance, between citizens or governments, get the PQ’s base riled up and hope that tribalistic voters will side with the separatists. His cunning, however, is outweighed by his arrogance: He keeps speaking publicly about the PQ’s open-secret strategy to divide and conquer.
“I don’t see how we can lose,” Drainville said during the election campaign last July. “If Quebec wins, it becomes stronger. If Quebec is rebuffed, the demonstration is made that there is a limit to our ability to progress in this country.” To that effect, the PQ set up a $1.5-million commission, co-chaired by parliamentary agitator and former Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe, to examine (read: antagonize) the federal government over their employment insurance reforms. But the PQ’s plans for the fall are more worrisome.
Drainville says he’ll be working on the PQ’s supposed secular Charter of Quebec Values over the summer, aiming to have a plan released in the fall. Quebec secularism, in case you’re wondering, can be defined as the prohibition of religious accommodations and symbols in the public sector, unless they are associated with the French-Catholic majority.
Drainville recently launched a “reasonable accommodation” trial balloon, in a throwback to the 2007 provincial election. After that vote, the former Action démocratique party leaped ahead of the PQ to form the official opposition, boosted by identity rhetoric. The town of Hérouxville famously passed a law aimed at practices it associated with Islam, sparking a province-wide debate on hypothetical moral quandaries involving minorities. Identity politics worked then and perhaps can work again, this time with Montreal’s Jewish community.
Bill 14, like Bill 101, does little, if anything to strengthen French.
Seemingly out of the blue, Drainville recently declared his objection to Montreal city workers covering up ‘no parking’ signs at festivities for the Jewish celebration of Shavuot; a long-standing accommodation for those who feel they cannot move their cars during the holiday. His statements garnered a massive amount of media attention. Drainville responded that he’d be contemplating the situation over the summer, and that the PQ’s secularism charter would contain those answers.
DeleteFor most, secularism ensures the neutrality of the state vis-à-vis religion, not the neutrality of individuals who make up the state and whose religious beliefs shouldn’t, for the most part, interfere with their activities in the public sector.
The PQ isn’t interested in secularism so much as uniformity and Franco-supremacy, an obsession with ensuring the supremacy of the French language, not only legitimately in the public sector (natural, given Quebec has one official language), but intrusively in the private sector and in the private lives of citizens. Péquistes genuinely believe you can use coercive legislation to force people into embracing the French language.
One of the most troubling parts of the updated Bill 14 isn’t what’s in it, but what’s not. The proposed law doesn’t contain a single provision that would enhance French instruction for Quebec students. Not only will a new generation of young Quebecers continue to receive often substandard French-language education in the public system, but they could be denied access to English instruction. With nearly half of Quebecers (49%) having trouble reading in French, if the government neglects the role of education as the only means of strengthening a language and culture, concern over the predominance of unilingualism will shift to one of zero-lingualism.
Modern Péquiste leaders, Marois aside, are generally aware of the importance of education and multilingualism; most, including former Premiers Bernard Landry, Lucien Bouchard and Jacques Parizeau, spoke English (and French, of course) fluently. But their love of language never translated into actions that would foster that same love among Quebecers. The gift of multilingualism tends to be reserved for those fortunate enough to be born into blended families or elites who send their children to private schools. Those who attend public schools, however, graduate – if they’re lucky – with a working knowledge of French and a barely conversational English, at best.
What happens when you share a space, or a society, with people you cannot converse with? Tension, confusion, misunderstanding and sometimes disdain. That’s exactly what the PQ is banking on: Create linguistic conflicts between unilingual people who, on the whole, share very similar values, but have very different conversations about politics.
DeleteBill 14, like Bill 101, does little, if anything to strengthen French. Instead, it compels citizens to accept a linguistic duality or conflict that wouldn’t otherwise exist without government intervention. French is not stronger, it’s just more visible in the most superficial sense. That’s Bill 101’s big lie: Despite conventional wisdom in Quebec, French has not become more relevant or vital in the past three decades. English, along with other languages and cultures, have just been weakened, leaving the false impression that the langue de Molière is flourishing. It’s addition by subtraction.
The PQ hopes to spread the same Franco-supremacist mantra to the reasonable accommodation debate, forcing Quebecers to make a false choice between an impartial, secular (read: French-Catholic) public sector and a chaotic multicultural mishmash where menorahs and hijabs are wedged in the spokes of government. It’s not a question of coming to a consensus on what precisely Quebec values are – that would be an exercise in futility since those values are diverse and subjective. It is simply an attempt to take a shortcut to sovereignty by manufacturing conflict, which is the hallmark of a successful Péquiste government.
Dan Delmar is the co-founder of Provocateur Communications and the co-host of Delmar & Dwivedi on CJAD 800 Montreal.
@delmarhasissues
Good gravy, R.S.! Without trying to be trollish about it, how many times did you doze off writing the above? Lying with statistics has been a core strategy of the PQ since even before they wrote that "Equal-to-Equal" drivel of a manifesto circa 1979, just months before the 1980 Referendum.
DeleteAs I wrote above, what do you expect when the founder of Leh-jay Marketing is a former PQ cabinet minister during the Lévesque years? Inevitably, they're part of the feds-screwed-us-up-the-wahzoo conspiracy embellished to the point of nausea back in the 70s, 80s, 90s...
So creating the false “visage” of a French-only Quebec has not pacified the ethnic nationalists. Quelle surprise. The passage that stands out for me:
DeleteBill 14, like Bill 101, does little, if anything to strengthen French. Instead, it compels citizens to accept a linguistic duality or conflict that wouldn’t otherwise exist without government intervention. French is not stronger, it’s just more visible in the most superficial sense. That’s Bill 101’s big lie: Despite conventional wisdom in Quebec, French has not become more relevant or vital in the past three decades. English, along with other languages and cultures, have just been weakened, leaving the false impression that the langue de Molière is flourishing. It’s addition by subtraction.
Immigrant children will continue to learn English despite having no choice in what schools they are allowed to attend. Francophone children will continue to receive substandard education in English in French schools (and wind up sounding like Quebec Soccer Federation director Brigitte Frot, who this week told Sikh kids that “they can play soccer in own backyards”, when she claimed that FIFA has a rule against turbans, which in fact it does not.
FROM THE FRENCH PRESS:
ReplyDeleteHere is Mario Beaulieu’s response to CRITIQ, recently published in Le Devoir, regarding his view of their effect on the imminent demise of French in Montreal.
Free opinion - A death sentence for a French metropolis
May 2, 2013 | Mario Beaulieu - President of the French Quebec Movement and of the Saint John the Baptist Society of Montreal | Quebec
The English lobby group Canadian Rights in Quebec (CRITIQ) recently orchestrated a lobbying campaign aimed at Montreal city councillors in order for the city to obtain bilingual status. This demand constitutes a serious assault that will definitively turn French users into a minority, in terms of their mother tongue as well as of the language of use and the language of work.
Government services have a crucial role to play in the welcoming and the Frenchification of newcomers. When government services are provided in English, it sends the message that Quebec is a bilingual State where it is not necessary to know French. Official bilingualism, whether institutional or social (and not individual), invariably favours the assimilation of minority languages [ED: This is untrue]. This is why, in most States, language legislation establishes an official language on a given territory [ED: This has previously been shown to be untrue as well]. It is in Montreal above all that we must make French the common public language. The metropolitan area makes up nearly half of the population of Quebec. It covers nearly 80% of the English-speaking population, hosts the headquarters of most major foreign subsidiaries and welcomes over 85% of newcomers who settle in Quebec. The fate of French therefore lies in Montreal.
CRITIQ considers the Charter of the French Language (Bill 101) as being retrograde on the social front, damaging in terms of the economy as well as a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights. This constitutes systematic disinformation, not to say demagoguery. Quebec’s language layout is much more generous toward the anglo-Quebec minority than that which prevails in the rest of Canada for francophones. Federal law on official languages decrees services in French only where numbers warrant, using criteria based on census data. Given that francophones outside Quebec constitute only 4.1% of the population by mother tongue (and but 2.5% by language spoken at home) and that they are spread over a huge territory, many of them receive almost no services in French. Moreover, in places where official language legislation does not apply, such as in provincial and municipal governments, services are generally available in English only.
And let us especially not forget that French, once upon a time flourishing in Canada, has over the decades, especially by unfair ethnocidal laws, been constantly flouted, reduced to a trickle and constantly undermined. Only Quebec has been able to resist the anglicization that awaits. Groups like CRITIQ, who aspire to tip Montreal over into institutional bilingualism, contribute to anglicization. Far from being a part of the solution, they are part of the problem.
Typical French media, lies, lies and more lies…just like the people…disgusting.
DeleteMy observations: Weighing statistical data in terms of demographics (or anything else) rather than response necessarily implies that the population sample of the survey is skewed, and therefore that the results are incorrect.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if a teeny-tiny acute accent is all that keeps a shred of identity for francophones, that would be a sad indictment that French culture no longer has any identity at all. In fact, francophones have a tremendously greater identity than that which is conveyed by an acute accent.
After all, is Finnish or Hungarian or German or Spanish (all great users of accents in their languages) dependent on displaying accents in order for them to attempt to keep a shred of identity in a globalized world? I think not, because they don’t have the insecure inferiority complex that we find here. This definitely falls into the “Proudly Canadian/Fièrement de chez nous” category.
And more good news for our already beleaguered economy:
ReplyDeletehttp://offislandgazette.com/news/story/2013/06/03/pq-and-language-laws-slowing-development-harden-group/
We just keep going down the tubes. Nothing is moving here in Gatineau either.
I hope this isn't a surprise to anybody, we should have all known exactly what to expect.
DeleteThis is exactly how things were between 1994 and 2003, when the PQ were in power. Very little private investment, no major projects, zero investment in our infrastructures, and Marois herself got rid of thousands of teachers, doctors and nurses, destroying our education and healthcare systems.
I find it amazing that we're still suffering the consequences of the last 10 years of PQ rule today, and yet so many people were stupid enough to let them back into power. I'm not just talking about the PQ voters here either, I'm referring to anyone who bought into the whole corruption and/or student tuition PQ propaganda.
It's too bad that so many people can't think for themselves. The PQ thrives on your ignorance.
Oh so true Quebecker - all you have to do is read the comments they put into every article that comes out showing the dishonesty and deceit of the PQ government. The separatists overlook everything negative ever written about them and prefer to live in a "dream state". Sad and pathetic. To get any business here we have to actually bribe them outright - no taxes for 10 years, cheap hydo forever, and on it goes. We can't even be honest about being dishonest! - lol
DeleteI find it amazing that we're still suffering the consequences of the last 10 years of PQ rule today, and yet so many people were stupid enough to let them back into power.
DeleteSo you think it would be less stupid to elect the same Liberals who were either complicit or ignorant of rampant corruption during their 9 year term?? People rightly punished the Liberals for their total mismanagement of Quebec from 2003-2012. By the way the debt increased by about the same under the PQ or Liberal governments..Charest period added at least 45 billion to the debt even though he promised to re-enginner the Quebec economy and reduce the debt. The only government that produced a surplus over the past 30 years or so was actually the PQ under Bouchard. So I think the results of the last election were perfect..the Liberals deserved to lose due to gross incompetence and negligence..and the PQ did not deserve a majority government.
I still believe the CAQ are the only party out there that are offering real change and some hope on making Quebec a more productive functioning economy. The problem is that there are too many leftist kooks living in Quebec who want the government to pay for everything and the anglos are too dumb/terrified to know the difference between the CAQ and the PQ.
They haven't proven anything yet - just because they say they are about different things does not make it so. Unfortunately it would take 4-5 years to find out they are still wolves in sheep's clothing. No difference at all as there is no proof. Sorry complicated - linguist peace comes at a high price in this province and if it takes the liberals, who haven't been proven guilty of anything as yet except fiscal mismanagement (as if every party in this province isn't), they will still get my vote. And since Bill 14 wasn't rejected outright by the CAQ, they have really sealed their fate with the anglos and allos in this province.
DeleteEven if by some miracle they are proven not guilty then they still were in charge for 9 years while all this was going on. How could they possibly be so ignorant in not even knowing about it?? If they were then its gross incompetence on their part..either way they fail miserably.
DeleteAll you care about is language language language..the real issues are the debt, the high taxes, the crumbling infrastructure, the corruption/mismanagement, powerful unions - the language is meaningless if the whole province goes bankrupt?? You think your house is worth little now just wait until that scenario. The Liberals have shown over and over and over over the past several decades that they are just as incompetent and maybe even more so in balancing the budget..they have done nothing to cut waste in the government..they have done next to nothing to help anglos..they have not stopped the decline in our crumbling infrastructure..the only thing they can say is they are federalist..whopppdeedoo. Give me a competent ex-seperatist any day over another useless incompetent federalist.
Complicated: Jacques Duchesneau (CAQ) was the chief of the Montreal Police from 1994 to 1998. So according to your logic, he was either complicit or ignorant to all the corruption that was going on back then. Which is it?
DeleteThe CAQ haven't proven anything yet, it's all talk so far. You'll have to forgive me, but I have a hard time believing anything that comes out of a politicians mouth.
You seem to think I want to defend the Liberals at all cost. I don't think they did the greatest job over the past 8 years. Unlike you, I am able to appreciate certain things that have improved, and I also understand that comparing 1995 to 2008 just doesn't work. I'll remind you that the global/north-american economy wasn't so great back in 2008.
As for corruption: they are politicians. What are you expecting? Honesty and integrity? They are all there to serve their own personal ambitions, and to help their little friends. I'd be willing to bet a good amount of money that the CAQ will be just as bad.
The CAQ's numbers will only drop (see: ADQ), and they will never have enough support to lead the province. You said it yourself, too many left-wingers who want everything for free, à la PQ.
So we're left with the Liberals and the PQ, and I'd rather not have separatists in power. Maybe you do?
Well I suspect that Mr.Duchesneau has some explaining to do..any one who is in charge for several years and pleads ignorance is either lying or somewhat incompetent. Dioes that make the entire CAQ party corrupt..I dont think so. But the corruption ongoing during the Liberal reign was epic..my impression is that its the worst in Canadian history so the Liberals have a lot to explain. Exactly how can the CAQ prove anything when they are not in power. All I hear from the anglos here are Bill 14..its always the same argument..if they dont vote against Bill 14 then they are seperatists..what simplistic logic. The CAQ already has stated they want many major changes to Bill 14..frankly all of these changes would more or less make Bill 14 pretty meek and of no real threat to anglos. The CAQ has to maintain its support among francophones and many francophones do believe that their language needs protection..whether you believe that or not..hence the CAQ is playing it pretty smart..they will force many major changes but likely wont in the end defeat the Bill. But the final Bill 14 will really be a toothless law by then. The CAQ maintain their support with francophones..maybe even increase their support as they show that they have some common sense..they may even pick up some anglo votes but due to the paranoid nature of anglos probably not.
DeleteThe Liberals had the luxury of being in power when the economy was booming across north america up to 2008..then the federal government intoduced massive stimulus spending for a few years afterwards..and our idiot central bank of canada governor carney lowered interest rates to near zero which cause the real estate bubble to grow even bigger. Even through these relatively good times the Liberals still couldnt balance a budget.
The message that anglos are sending to the Liberals is this - We dont care that you are incompetent..we dont care that you take us for granted and often ignore us, we dont care that you lie to us all the time, we dont care that you have done next to nothing to defend our interests, we dont care that you were likely involved in the worst corruption in canadian history, we dont care that you coudlny balance the books of a lemonade stand. All we care about is that you tell us you are federalists..all we care about is that you keep the big bad seperatists and even ex-seperatists out of power. So please go on lying, cheating, ignoring and abusing us..we like it.
Bravo anglos..you have created a monster..I wouldnt suggest raising your children in this manner..
I can't say I really disagree with anything you said.
DeleteHowever I'm not so sure that the corruption we've seen recently was anything special. Personally I think a lot of it was PQ hype in order to gain some votes. Without trying to insult you, it sort of feels like you fell for the PQ propaganda.. "Oh no, evil liberals!! "
Corruption / mafia are not new, before Charbonneau we had the Cliche commission, and hey if you want to talk about *real* government corruption in this province, we can go all the way back to Duplessis.
Perhaps the Liberals were playing "blind", and they probably could have done more, but that can be said of many groups and many people. It was the liberals, after all, who created both the UPAC and the Charbonneau Commission. Maybe you'll say it wasn't enough, or it wasn't soon enough, but you still can't claim they did nothing about it.
And you know, politicians and our Premier aren't gods - the corruption system has been in place for a very long time now and I'm guessing it's not something that's easy to fight.
Again, give me a better alternative and I'll be all for it. I'm not obsessed with the language issue, although I'm strongly against more legislation on that end, and I completely understand and agree with the fact that a political party cannot alienate the majority. It's why the "Equality Party" has no chance whatsoever.
The reality right now is that there is no third choice, unless you don't mind throwing your vote away. You know as well as I do that it's either PQ or Liberals. I'm simply making my choice between those two. If the PQ had less support, it would be great to send the liberals a clear message. This isn't the case, and doing that helps elect the PQ, which we're now living with.
I think where you err is when you believe that the CAQ have no chsnce of winning the next election. I think they have a reasonable chance of winning..likely only a minority. They came second to the PQ in many more ridings than the Liberals did..they were much more competitive with the PQ in francophone areas than the Liberals were. I know they are trailing in the polls now..but Mr.Couillard is in the honeymoon phase so many Quebecers are enamoured by him. However by 2014 if the CAQ play their cards right I suspect they will be very competitive. Unfortunately I dont think many anglos will give them the light of day..painting them as seperatists in sheeps clothing.
DeleteThis notion of there only being two choices was told to Canadians for decades and look what happened in the last election..an NDP breakthrough. The CAQ still have a solid 20 percent support..and have been as high as 25 percent in the past few months. I can understand if they were only polling 10 percent that you would write them off. Plus the charbonneau commission is not over..we may still hear more dirt on the liberals.
My prediction is that an election will be held in spring 2014 after the caq, liberals vote against the next PQ budget.
The CAQ is going to have to lean much more to the left if they want to gain support in this province, unfortunately.
DeleteThis is the land of free tuition, 7$ daycare, 4 day work weeks, legalized terrorism, unionized convenience stores, public inquiries for everything, etc...
You said it yourself:
"The problem is that there are too many leftist kooks living in Quebec who want the government to pay for everything"
The fact that Quebec Solidaire is gaining support is scary... It gives us an idea of where we're heading.
That is a big fear of mine. Thats why the CAQ is about as far to the right as could be possible in this province. Hence for all those who really want Quebec to turn to the right then the CAQ is about as good as it gets. And even the CAQ is somewhat leftist compared to the conservative party.
DeletePerhaps the CAQ will lean more to the left..they may have no choice in the end. Successive PQ and Liberal governments have given far too much to people over the past several decades and in effect created a society that expects all sorts of things for free or cheap.
Its the same story in France..strike after strike forced government after government to back down on making sensible changes. Now France has chronically high unemployment..factories closing down all the time...very high taxes..a large debt..and people still whining for more government handouts.
The problem is the people who have the time to march on the streets and cause trouble are the ones who dont work, the students, the union workers, etc. The people who pay the taxes and pay for everyone else dont have time to protest. We really need mass demonstrations in Montreal from the average taxpayer demanding lower taxes, a lower debt and a reduction in social programs.
Yeah - and that will happen in the not too far distant future. The cat-fat syndrome is alive and well in Quebec and will be until we face bankruptcy and they are FORCED to do something - then they will blame that on being part of Canada!
DeleteThey are not wolves in sheep clothing - they are wolves and are dressed as such - Bill 14 made that clear. They are franco supremists without a doubt and when you go online you will see everyone now knows it that gave them a chance last election.
DeleteFROM ED
DeleteCutie, You are so right. You could not have made it more clear. They do not try to hide it. They are actually proud of what they're doing. Ed
If the CAQ were such evil seperatists then they would have joined up with the PQ already. I would say they are probably the biggest thorn in the side of the PQ..they are constantly condemning them over all sorts of issues. Why would they would propose so many changes to Bill 14 if they were diehard seperatists?? They might ask for a few minor changes..but they literally are asking for all the meat of this bill to be removed. These are mot the acts of franco-extremists. Have a read at this post..sounds pretty reasonable to me overall..
Deletehttp://www.coalitionavenirquebec.org/bill-14-six-weeks-later?lang=en
They are playing this issue very well..read the following statement below from the CAQ website..doesnt sound extremist to me. Of course if you are a paranoid anglo I guess it doesnt matter what they say..the only thing that matters is whether or not they are all 100 percent federalists and that they do exactly as the anglo community wants..good luck with that when we are a small minority.
"We believe in promoting French in Quebec by making it an attractive and functional language, but not in a way that we shoot ourselves in the foot with a coercive approach and some of the useless measures contained in Bill, 14 and certainly not by infringing the rights of our anglophone compatriots as this bill currently does."
As other have pointed out..in the end..unfortunately..people often believe what they want to believe..see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. If you are a diehard lifelong Liberal or federalist then I guess you will never truly open your ears to anybody who is not a diehard 100 percent federalist. In your eyes its better to support incompetent immoral and useless federalists who have proven over and over and over that they cannot run this province. All the people whining on this forum about Quebec needing change will never get it if they keep voting for the same people..its not rocket science. Change by definition means doing something different than has been done before..how will things change in Quebec if we have the Liberals and/or PQ continuing to run this province???
Also good news for Miss Piggy fans:
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2013/06/03/the-headless-parti-quebecois-government/
Implosion Time = Yea!
SITUATION A :
ReplyDeleteFrench diacritical marks on names are a turn-off to Anglophones. So Leger Marketing hides the accent aigu in its name.
Reaction : Leger Marketing is sneaky and dishonest.
SITUATION B :
Foreign names are a turn off to franco employers. So a man looking for a job frenchifies his name on his resumé.
What would be the reaction :
1. The man is sneaky and dishonest.
2. It really shows how quebeckers are racist and xenophobic.
Je crois parfois que les intentions et les motifs qu'on prête à l'autre en disent plus sur nous-mêmes que sur l'autre.
I was about to say that someone who fakes his name in order to fit in is indeed (1.) Sneaky and dishonest, but not (2.) Indicating that Quebecers are racist and xenophobic.
DeleteThen it occurred to me that there is a master violin maker (the dean of Quebec violin makers, in fact) on Ontario St. west of St. Lawrence who calls himself Jules Saint-Michel, luthier. This is actually a French variation of his real Hungarian name, which is Gyula Szentmihály:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Master+violin+maker+shares+passion/7973880/story.html
While this is his own personal choice and therefore faultless, I now have the niggling impression that his feeling the need to change his name might indeed exemplify both (1.) and (2.) of Situation B. I don’t know why he doesn’t feel comfortable just using his real name.
Anybody who has ever worked with "immigrants" knows they often change their names for the sake of fitting in and making transactions easy.
DeleteMost Chinease/Japanease business people for example all choose an "english" name for themselves to put on the business card next to their real name.
Whatever their real names are they often use more familiar names like "Mike Xu" or whatever. The Mike part is often made up, and they choose based on movie characters etc.
Obviously to Quebecers hyper attuned to offense all of this is bad. Pretending to fit in with anglo's? Bad. Pretending to be part of another culture without fully embracing it's "values"? more bad.
It's really all pointless tho.
Any company that would give business to "Leger" was never going to give it to any other company anyway.
It's like the PQ govt going on and on about French rules for the banks etc.
Quebec banks though the "caisse". No matter what rules are made up or created, the business will never go to anyone else anyway.
Francopphones might liek to think that companies with a "accent" are discriminated against. This is utter nonsense. Nobody practices insular community quite like Quebec.
Canadian companies are interested in buying things for pricing/quality etc.
Quebec companies buy things that are made by French workers first. quality and price are not important.
What Yannik etc think is anti-francophone is really just common sense. You buy well priced products from companies that are in business to do business, not companies that are in business to promote social agenda's and second rate products and inflated prices.
In the mind of the constantly persecuted francophone these arguments don;t make any sense. They only see anti-francphone tendancies as opposed to supporting proper business at the expense of fake business.
Leger is a business like ths. they are in the business of making reports the seppies want to see.
They are incapable of hiding their bias and producing real surverys. This is EXACTLY the kind of company that the rest of Canada business community runs away from but Quebec embraces as "best in class".
Anti-french? Nope, just pure logic.
In Quebec, I would ascribe frenchfying of names to anti-immigrant animosity first, and a desire to fit in second, noting that it could be a combination of both also. Because despite being a majority in Quebec, the Quebecois population is not one which many immigrants want to dissolve into. Let's be honest: Quebec culture just does not have that kind of pull, even if it's made majortiarian by some administrative arithmetic.
DeleteIn anglicising one's name, the situation is more complex because the anglo-american culture does have a strong pull. So it could be the attractiveness of the culture as much as the fear of not fitting in, or anti-immigrant prejudice. It could also be a combination of all of the above. For example, I see strong enthusiasm for the anglo culture amongst many Asian youth of today, to the point that their anglomania is actually reaching pathetic proportions, as in the overly anglo names that some Asians pick - William, Jefferson, Candice, Daisy, etc...Totally ridiculous, especially when you then notice that their English is accented, i.e. it's not even their first language.
As for organizations, Leger did not anglicise its name, it left a semblance of an apostrophe to fit in Quebec, but it also hid the apostrophe to fit in the larger North American (and global market). Sneaky? For sure - it's about having it both ways. Dishonest? I don't know. Isn't just it being a polling agency enough to be skeptical about them? There is a great article on this by C.Hitchens from 1992: http://harpers.org/archive/1992/04/voting-in-the-passive-voice/ You need to subscribe to Harper's Magazine to get it though.
You are reading too much into it adski.
DeleteImmigramts and business people change and choose english names because that's the most useful no matter where or what they do business in.
I've yet to run into a "Jean Xu" but lots of "Mike Xu".
It's better in dealing with people from out of province (oh shit, immigrants and foreign business people should be prevented by law from doing this).
Most immigrants to Quebec have no idea they are joining a population under constant harassment from english and anglophone values.
They are more interested in not being killed for their beliefs back in the home country. Few bother to pay much attention to the laws an culture in quebec after moving in. They are too happy to be living happy productive lives.
The seppies constant unhappiness doesn;t resonate. Immigrants know what a good thing is unlike a born and bred PQ quebecer.
Yannik, that's crazy. Nothing sad about it.
DeleteI've been in Asia on business many times.
People over there think it's "fun" to choose their anglo names. It's like a nickname they get to use. Sometimes they change their anglo name after they see a movie they like etc.
They don;t have the francophone preoccupation with culture. They are secure in their own culture and it's a fun thing for them to do.
Imagine how funny it would be if Quebecers stated using "anglo" names! Now that would be silly and you could say it was "sad".
When somebody from China gives you thieir name and you can;t even write it down on a piece of paper, it's common sense to use a common language and their "anglo" name. Obviously this flies in the face of Quebec hangups on language.
It's only Quebecers that have these hangups.
I've spend many an evening in a bar in Asia where my hosts give me the background of how they chose their english name, what it means to them etc. Usually there is some tie in to a band or music they like.
I guess it's not something that Quebecers can understand. It's simply being efficient and pragmatic using a nickname that people can spell instead of somehting they can;t. Trust a Quebecer to find cultural offense where none exists.
If anything it's sad for us that we are so uneducated we cannot understand them. It's not sad that they choose an english name. that's just projecting Quebec cultural angst onto others.
Obviously educating us in "pther" language is bad. We don;t want to know anything about other culture or be able to communicate with them.
Really all this is just sad for PQ Quebecers. Asians have nothing to be sad about. They can learn new languages and are happy to integrate and learn things from other cultures. They don;t have the PQ disease where learning another language for commerce/culture is evil.
It's not for nothing that China will lead the world in the next 100 years while Quebec wastes away to a meaningless group of PQ supporters waving flags wearing old clothes and plowing the fields with horses again.
China will read about the pathetic "Quebec experiment" but people within Quebec much like North Korea are unaware of how the world has passed them by.
"but I can't help but feel sad when a chinese student would rather go by Crystal than by her real name."
DeleteI wouldn't be so harsh.
Consider this...
Quebec and Israel have a lot in common with a language and culture unique in the region.
Back in 1948 when Israel was born, it was an immigrant nation, with Jews arriving from all over eastern Europe.
One of the first government policies was to ask the newly arrived to adopt Hebrew names in the name of national unity.
Nobody was forced, but most wanted very badly to 'belong' and did so out of pride, not convenience.
...just saying.
"I see it as self-negation brought on by an inferiority complex, due to the hegemonic nature of anglo-american culture in today's world and yesterday's north america."
DeleteI agree. The best way to go is to master the English language for practical purposes without plunging into anglomania or some other form of anglo-obsession (including anglophobia).
"I mean, people are allowed to do whatever they want, but I can't help but feel sad when a chinese student would rather go by Crystal than by her real name. "
I agree. It's sort of pathetic.
Crystal actually see's herself as better educated and more worldly. She see's herself ABOVE the people she is translating for bot sad and pathetic.
DeleteQuebec only understand victimhood. Adski and Yannik you have absorbed the Quebec values well.
It's the two solitudes we see every day.
You can lead a PQ Quebecer to logic, but you can;t make them understand what they can;t understand.
PQ Quebecers see offense and cultural repression everywhere even for other people that arn;t interested in their cultural hangup rubbish.
Amazing to see Quebecers with the backwards logic yet again.
DeleteInstead of understanding that somebody who learns other languages has pride in their new skills and abilities they see it as cultural repression.
It's easy to understand how quebec people are unable of moving forward beyond where we have been stuck for 40 years.
They are trapped by this silly mindset where everybody has to be dragged down to the lowest common denominator.
Crystals parents are super proud of her which is what matters. she's learning a new language and going out in the world.
This contrasts harshly with the Quebec student building bonfires, demanding free education forever for any silly degree while unable or unwilling to learn a second language.
The asian parent congratulates the child on learning new skills and integrating and possibly having the opportunity to immigrate somewhere or do business around the world.
The Quebec parent constantly "reminds" the child anglos and conservatives have stolen their land and culture from them.
virtually all the skills that good parents in the rest of the world want their kids to learn are the very skills that Quebec tells us are the least important.
Pauline keeping her flock dumb and uneducated. Just the way they seem to like it.
There is a middle ground between the extremes of victimhood/anglophobia and anglomania.
DeleteThere are many anglos lost in the desert.
DeleteLook at all the people that voted NDP. Would you have ever though that many people had mental illness in our country?
Yannick said :"I may not have voted for the NDP, but I find your attitude both arrogant and condescending."
DeleteI'm guessing that you weren't a resident of Ontario during Bob Rae's years as Premier. My experience from that convinced me that there is never any reason to vote them. If they do what they promise, they'll destroy the place, and if they're not going to do what they promise, why would you vote for them? I realize that other provinces have had somewhat better experiences than Ontario, but it's too big a risk. Hell, Bob Rae wouldn't even vote NDP now. That should tell you something. I tend to be like a lot of Canadians: I don't vote for a party, I vote against a different party.
While those who make aliyah is a special case, I quite doubt that (gentile) Mr. Szentmihály would have felt the need to change his name to Julius St-Michael had he moved to Toronto or New York or anyplace else in North America. Although times were probably different then (he did arrive here in 1959, three years after fleeing the anti-Soviet revolution in Hungary via Paris, where he met his Canadian wife), francophones were paradoxically probably less insecure then than they are today. This is symptomatic of the fear and insecurity that afflicts some Quebecers who have embraced ethnic nationalism, which appears will always plague them, sovereignty or no sovereignty.
DeleteBy the way, the practice of using an English name is a Chinese phenomenon only (I remember knowing a Chinese “Aaron” who was often asked “Oh, are you Jewish?”, not having known that Aaron was seen as a being Jewish name). The Japanese most definitely do not do this, although they do tend to reverse their family and given names in English (for example, Yoko Ono is actually known as Ono Yoko in Japan). Thai people almost all have a one-syllable nicknames, which is practical since some names can be rather long.
because my English is almost perfect
To be brutally honest, Yannick, I think you might make more mistakes in French than you do in English. Just sayin'...
I should also say that I don't think the NDP voters are mentally ill, but I think they're generally people who think that there's no connection between the government programs they get and the tax dollars they pay.
DeleteLike many Quebecers, I voted for the NDP in the last election for the first time not out of conviction but because it became apparent that they (rather than the Liberals) were the ones who were going to block the Bloc. This turned out to be the right thing to do, as we’ve seen what happened to the Blocheads. Would I do it again though? I doubt it.
DeleteYannick: My apologies, however there is no need to feel defensive; I know that French is more difficult to write correctly. In fact, your French is far, far better than a great many unilingual francophones in Quebec who are unable to write French properly, and this despite some of them being proud anti-English nationalists. To clarify, I meant to say that your English is at least as good, if not better, than your French.
DeleteCool. Although, if I can offer a word of advice, don’t forget about that thing about pluralizing numbers incorrectly and then you’ll be all set… :)
DeleteRemember:
One dozen, two dozen, three dozen…
One hundred, two hundred, three hundred…
One thousand, two thousand, three thousand…
One million, two billion, three trillion…
I don’t know why; that’s just the way it is. *shrug*
Leger Marketing was founded by Marcel Leger, a life long separatist and PQ Minister in the 1970's. He is now deceased and his son took over the polling company. His daughter Nicole is a PQ MNA.
ReplyDeleteEnough said. A separatist friendly company which will fudge numbers.
http://www.legermarketing.com/canada_en/aboutus.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_L%C3%A9ger
Frankfort? The capitol of the Commonwealth of Kentucky? I actually forgot Marcel passed away, but then again, it's not a priority in my life. I thought he had an offspring that is active in the PQ. All in the family!
Delete"Frankfort? The capitol of the Commonwealth of Kentucky?"
DeleteNope I have been transferred from Calgary to Frankfurt, Germany.
I am un gars de calgary. After a year of competing for international jobs I've landed this German gig for 36 months. Frankfort is french.
Les immigrants et la souveraineté
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpimcHrCLrQ
Intéressant de voir par quel procédé les immigrants peuvent changer d'opinion...
Good for them. They arrived at this stage of consciousness and I respect that. All I want from them is for them to respect that I drew different conclusions. So when the guy at 4:30 is complaining that there is no "debate", or the guy at 4:43 who is lamenting that people shun from "discussion", they are missing the point. It's not that people are uninterested, it's that people focused on different nuances and drew different conclusions, and so they want to avoid "debates" with apostles of a secular religion who "know better".
DeleteThe apostles of Quebec's civic religion should maybe realize that when other people avoid them, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are not interested in the topic.
Which nation, Yannick? Canada, Quebec, or Colbert?
ReplyDeleteBrian Lamb: "Is the electorate manipulated by polls?"
ReplyDeleteChristopher Hitchens: "Yes. The people who invest all this money in polling are not doing it for nothing. They are not doing it just to find out what people think. They’re doing it to try to influence what people think. Who would spend all that money just to find out what was going on? They want to be able to predict it, and therefore to mold it. So it’s an intervention in the political process."
C-SPAN, 1992
I think all polls should be banned within 2 months of the election. There is no doubt that it influences the way people will vote. Plus as the editor pointed out its quite easy for a polling company to manipulate their results. Our whole electoral system needs to be changed..the first past the post system does a poor job of reflecting the will of the people. There are too many elections that are won by governments who did not win the popular vote..it cant get any more undemocratic than that. We have rural ridings with 1/3 the population of some urban ridings..we have ridings in which everybody overwhelmingly votes for one party election after election hence all the other votes in that riding count towards nothing.
DeleteI really believe we should have ranking system..where you rank your first second third and fourth choices. A candidate winds once he has over 50 percent of any combination of these ranks. Hence this would prevent vote splitting amongst similar parties allowing another party to squeak up the middle. A real possibility in the next federal election is the ndp and liberals splitting the left wing vote in many ridings allowing the pc to win by default. This used to benefit the Liberals in the past when the two conservative parties split the vote. A ranking system would eliminate this possibility and most people who vote Liberal first would likely vote ndp second and vice versa.
"I think all polls should be banned within 2 months of the election."
DeleteTotally.
"I really believe we should have ranking system..where you rank your first second third and fourth choices."
I agree.
FROM ED
ReplyDeleteR.S I don't see any advantage to publishing crap by Mario Beulieu or J.B.S. I believe the Editor warned about this away back. About quotes from Vigile or silly one liners like "They want to make a country out of this." He has nothing to say that anybody wants to hear, we know it's all lies.
By the way yannick, did you know Michel speaks perfect English. I too, like his posts but I don't read French. So I just skip them. Ed
I usualy try to comment in english. I will sometimes coment in french when I have difficulties finding the proper translation for my ideas. For instance, I did not really know how to say "prêter des intentions". (Perhaps Yannick could help me with this one...) (And I never know how to say "procès d'intentions"...)
DeleteI’m certainly not a professional but I do know that translation is always difficult because there is no one-to-one conversion for everything; rather, you often have to attempt to convey the same idea using different words. I’m sure you could have Googled it yourself had you really wanted to know, but I will indulge you anyway, even if I suspect that the examples you seek are very likely meant to be used to cast aspersions upon anglophones.
Delete“Prêter des intentions” could be translated as “ascribing such-and-such intentions” to someone (or “insinuating/attributing” them).
A “procès d’intentions” has no exact equivalent expression in English (perhaps because the English are more virtuous and tend not to indulge in this as much as the French? LOL). It refers to the assumption of unstated motives. “Trial by speculation” is one possible translation. You can find a discussion on how best to translate this expression at WordReference.com (here and here).
... if it *were* all the same, all the time...
DeleteIn the absence of Troy's pedantry, I feel obliged to point out this very common misuse of the conditional, for the common good. Yes, I do. Sorry. (Not really) Winky face ;)
The Cat,
DeleteGoogle Translate gave "trial of intent", which didn't seem right. I did not want to take time to look for a better translation, so I just commented in french, as I explained in my previous comment. There is nothing more to see into this.
"... I will indulge you anyway, even if I suspect that the examples you seek are very likely meant to be used to cast aspersions upon anglophones."
This is a nice and ironic example of a "procès d'intention"... : )
P.S.
"A “procès d’intentions” has no exact equivalent expression in English (perhaps because the English are more virtuous and tend not to indulge in this as much as the French? LOL)."
There was no exact equivalent expression in french for "french kiss" (until the recently accepted and little used "galoche"...), but it is not because we are not into it french kissing... :) (There is of course "Rouler une pelle" which means what it means, but lacks elegance...)
@michel
Deletei think impugning motives is what you're looking for, mate.
many such examples here.
dan delmar's got a few:
"...the Parti Québécois leadership is plotting to ensure the fall is as politically tumultuous and hostile as possible."
"PQ’s next task will be to fabricate a province-wide identity crisis; a tidal wave of intolerance, which they hope to ride into the next election campaign..."
cutie003's is a faithful as well:
"...then they will blame that on being part of Canada!"
un gars bs de frankfort:
"A separatist friendly company which will fudge numbers."
all good examples of bad arguments.
I don't agree with Ed RS. Thank you for the articles - I want to see what my enemy is saying so I appreciate everything that you post. No one can possibly keep up with all the lies out there and I, for one, like to see the punch coming and where it's coming from.
ReplyDeleteFROM ED
DeleteIYou have every right to give your opinion, but why do you post it against me. Just give your thought why drag me into an argument.
Now I feel obliged to remind you Editor asked us not to post items from Vigile. If that means nothing to you, say so but leave me out of it. Ed
Ed - I posted it "against" you because you are the one that made the comment. Don't take everything so personally - I appreciate his efforts and wanted him to know that I do - that's it, that's all. The Editor may have asked us not to post items from Vigile but it was probably before my and/or RS's time. He will post it again as he has new readers all the time so if it bothers him, I'm sure he will let us know.
DeleteFROM ED
DeleteThen Cute tell him you appreciate his efforts, there's no reason to involve me. If R.S. did not like my post it's up to him to say so. You do not have to answer for him. Ed
I appreciate R.S’s articles too. It’s not very helpful to just say “Pequistes are lying” without knowing what those lies are, specifically. Especially when people here are interested in CRITIQ, it’s interesting to know what rebuttals are being proffered and get a feel for what worries the opposing point of view.
DeleteFROM ED
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I am not against people posting in french. I simply don't have time to read it. I am not sitting on No Dogs all day but I am constantly working on line for different subjects.
I do a lot of income tax for people who can't afford H.R.Block. When you work for free you have lots of customers. I help solve their problems (French and English) and encourage them to have Faith
and be content with their lives. I search out depositors for local food banks, ( restaurants and grocery stores) I work with ex Verduners, many who went out West in the seventies asking help in locating old friends and families. Along with No Dogs I connect with two other chat rooms.
In the seventies my wife and I worked as advisers to a group of 'Gays and Friends of Gays' for teens and youths for seven years. I carried on for another three years after her death. I still have many of these, now adults with families who come to me for advice or simply to ask about me or a problem to solve.
I try to watch the CTV news at either noon or 6pm. I watch 'Price is right" at 11am because their happiness when they win turns me on. I love the smiles and laughter and I play Jeopardy at 7pm trying to beat the contestants answering before them.
I speak french but will not write or read it as I simply don't have time. In English I can speed read in French my translation is too slow and I run out of patience .
And yet another:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.troymedia.com/2013/06/04/i-love-quebec-but/
As pointed out in the article, for centuries (until the 1970s) the word “Québécois” referred exclusively to the inhabitants of Quebec City. The rest of the province consisted of “Canadiens”; only later was the term “English-Canadian” created, in order to refer to the Loyalists who fled the American Revolution and distinguish them from “French-Canadians” in Lower Canada. Only relatively recently did péquistes co-opt the word “Québécois” for themselves alone, to create this notion of a “nation” (i.e. a “people”) that has only existed now for a few decades at most.
DeletePéquistes are also cowardly in that, for all their supposed concern about “saving French”, they don’t genuinely care about preserving French in North America but only in one province. They have completely abandoned the “fait français” by determining that the interests of French Canada should be represented by a single province.
In fact, it’s such a good article, I think it deserves to be re-posted here for posterity’s sake.
I love Quebec but . . .
DeleteTroy Media columnist Nelson Peters says goodbye to Quebec
http://www.troymedia.com/2013/06/04/i-love-quebec-but/
Jun 4, 2013/ Troy Media/ –
I’m sick of writing about Quebec politics. For professional reasons I have left the province, although my personal attachment to it remains strong. However, I will not miss:
The political folly
Quebec’s political parties continue to manoeuver against each other, each promising to borrow more money than the other. The political discourse has lapsed into incoherency, disillusioning its youth. It overseers fiddle while the Welfare State burns. In the words of W.B. Yeats, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
The contradictions
On the one hand, it fiercely claims independence while at the same time accepting huge amounts of transfers payments from other Canadian provinces. It desires self-sufficiency while refusing to exploit its natural resources, such as petroleum deposits on Anticosti Island or shale gas reserves.
Its relationship with Canada
Quebec is and has always been a Canadian creation. Quebeckers, in fact, are the original Canadians; until the 1970s the word “Québecois” referred to an inhabitant of the Quebec City region, and has only recently taken on the sense of a culture, or indeed nationality (the appropriate French word would be “un peuple”).
The term “Canadian” is French in origin; the hyphenations of “French-Canadian” and “English-Canadian” came into use in order to differentiate the British Loyalists who fled north to what is now Ontario in the wake of the American Revolution. Up until the Act of Union in 1840, what was formerly New France was referred to as “Lower Canada”; only after Confederation in 1867 did the political entity of Quebec come into existence.
The equality question
Quebec prefers to see Canada as an equal relationship between two founding “nations”; a marriage of sorts, from which a party can remove itself through a divorce.
The problem? It completely abandons the “fait français”; by determining that the interests of French Canada should be represented by a single province. Quebec cowardly abandons francophones from St. Albert to Port-aux-Basques.
In fact, I prefer the perspective of Preston Manning, who described our country as a union which took place in 1867, producing four children (each province); with each new province a new addition, or “child” joining the family.
The unequal partnership
This difference in vision has resulted in an unequal partnership that has undermined the Canadian federation.
For most of recent history, Quebec has been a partner only too happy to take, rather than give. The failed Meech and Charlottetown Accords were rooted in overtures to Quebec that would have permanently established an inordinate and disproportional amount of political influence for the province.
What is more, the notion of partnership in the context of minority rights seems only to apply to others. Immigrants to Quebec often find integration especially difficult, and often take flight to other Canadian provinces or the multicultural island of Montreal as soon as they can. Furthermore, the English-speaking population in Quebec has been the object of persecution, its hospitals and schools closed, its population decimated by emigration.
The importance of Quebec’s economy to the national scale has allowed it, until now, to keep up the self-deception; but as the economic and political centre of Canada shifts West, as Quebec’s infrastructure crumbles, as its productivity sinks, and its streets swell with mobs of unruly students, this ruse can no longer hold.
Talk of independence
DeletePerhaps the solution would be independence for Quebec. But in what sense? In today’s wired, connected world, interdependence is the new everyday reality. Even if Quebec were to achieve some kind of formal statehood, its economy would remain dependent on trade with its Canadian counterparts. Jacques Parizeau has said that the final decision would be made in Paris and Washington, betraying a colonial mindset that only knows how to serve a master. Quebec would not free itself from the rest of Canada, but would instead annoy and perturb its most valuable trading partners, a movement that is as foolish as it is futile.
The fear and insecurity
Sadly, Quebec nationalism is rooted in fear and insecurity: Fear of losing their language, Fear that English Canadians will abuse their political majority; Insecurity over their culture, which they seem to think is not strong enough to survive without passing laws to protect it, Insecurity regarding their national identity which they are quick to proclaim but unable to agree upon. It should be noted that this phenomenon is not particular to Quebec. Almost all nationalism is the fear of losing oneself were it not for others like them; the fear that without others like oneself a person’s own self-identity would not be adequate.
The village mentality
After all of these years, Quebec in many ways still sees itself as a backwards outpost, surrounded by myriad hostile outsiders.The walls around Quebec remain, today and for the foreseeable future. And yet I cannot help but admit that I too am a product of Quebec. A critical voice perhaps, but with a twinge of an accent to it, a dip of maple syrup into the sauce.
I am proud and privileged to have attended Université Laval, one of the best law faculties in the world, where I was able to study closely with some of the very jurists who helped create Quebec’s legal system. Canada would indeed suffer without Quebec. Its departure would leave a giant gaping hole in the middle of Confederation, both geographically and psychologically. Quebec has been by far the most dynamic member of Confederation, responsible for such dramatic and necessary innovations as the Provincial Court system, a provincial revenue agency, and the most staunch advocate of greater provincial self-determination.
I feel in many ways that my perspective on Quebec has been tainted by a simple matter of bad timing. One of my best friends’ fathers came of age in Montreal during the 1970s, and regaled us with stories of Mountain Street in summer, rubbing shoulders with Leonard Cohen and Pierre Trudeau; the Habs won the Stanley Cup back then, every year. If I had been so fortunate to have experienced Quebec during those days I doubt that I would be accused of being negative towards the province.
For some time I dated a girl who grew up on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Many times I accompanied her to her family home, located in a small village east of Montreal. I never really fit in with her family; I couldn’t understand the machine-gun delivery of her father, much less the stammering of her grandmother’s boyfriend (although I was much relieved to hear that even they had difficulty understanding him).
People always used to ask me if dating someone who spoke a different first language caused problems. I always replied that it helped, more than anything else. When you have to make efforts to communicate clearly there is surprisingly less room for misunderstandings. Nonetheless, our time together was tumultuous, full of breakups and reunions. Through it all, every few months we took to Highway 20 to return to her village, to visit the family for holidays, or an Épluchette de blé d’inde (Corn roast).
The last time we went was this past Christmas. The extended family was meeting at a restaurant in the next village, all three dozen of them. We snuck outside to smoke and take swigs from a hidden bottle of wine. Her father knew what was going on, but never said a word. I guess he didn’t want to kill our buzz. Before returning to Quebec City her parents asked us to stop by the house. With only a few days’ notice (we had only recently gotten back together) they were kind enough to give me a Christmas present. Token items, yes – socks from the functional father, a diary for my thoughts from the spiritual mother – but for the first time I felt something like home in Quebec.
DeleteWe have since parted ways, and it seems this time for good. But, upon reflection, I realize that what made us work when we were together, and what makes Canada as a country work are the solutions we create to the problems we face. We are a Métis nation; the three founding nations of the country, Native, French, and English, provided the basis for the cross-cultural success that we are today, in which each of us participates on a daily basis.
The experimental American band Ween, named its 2003 album “Quebec”. I have wondered why a band from Pennsylvania, reputed for its wild behaviour (members were known for consuming copious amounts of psychedelic mushrooms during performances, and they once wrote an entire country album for a joke, incidentally one of their best records) would choose such a name. And then I realized how strange and magical and unique Quebec is. For an American, or for that matter myself, as a Manitoban, discovering a land where the women are beautiful and know how to dress and the corner stores sell beer, where cannons line the same streets where industry bustles, where in the span of a few city blocks you can see where Roosevelt and Churchill planned the end of the Second World War, where Charles Aznavour and Bob Dylan performed and hung out, where Brian Mulroney lived as a law student and René Lévesque lived as a Premier, where our nation was founded, I cannot help but feel grateful for having been in some way a small part of it.
The world has enough walls dividing people. Now is the time to start building a Bridge.
Troy Media syndicated columnist Nelson Peters is originally from Manitoba. He has spent much of the last five years in Quebec, where he completed a degree in Civil law at Université Laval and served as Editor-in-Chief of the faculty student law review from 2010-2011.
Beyoncé
ReplyDeleteI suspect that part of the reason the opinion polls are off sometimes is that respondents give the pollsters false answers. In an average campaign, our house would get called 2-3 times. Since I loathe the very concept, I typically give them some highly inaccurate answers to their questions and I can't believe that I'm the only one to do so.
ReplyDeleteIf I want to have some fun with them, I'll sometimes ask them how much they're going to pay me for my answers. When they get flustered and answer "Nothing", I explain that they're being paid to make the call, their employer is being paid to conduct the poll, and the party or media outlet is getting the results of the poll, so it doesn't seem very fair that I, the source of the information they all want, should get nothing out of it, while everybody else if benefiting. Then I say "aw, I'm just pulling your leg" and operating under the principle of "you get what you pay for" I give them the B.S. answers they deserve. If anyone were to actually pay me, I'd give them honest answers, but as you can imagine, that has never happened. What is interesting is that after my "what are you paying me" speech, they still want my responses.
How would you make that argument? If anything as they're being paid they'll pay more attention to the survey and answer it more truthfully.
DeleteBeing rewarded for participation is not a conflict of interest unless the pollster informs you of the intended findings. Paid and unpaid participants both suffer from participant fatigue, it is possible that those who aren't being paid will more likely rush through just to get off the phone, while those that have signed up for a service will answer more diligently as they don't want to be removed from the service due to responding with junk data (not sure what Angus Reid's policy is for this but its fairly easy to spot junk data).
DeleteAs you say all methods have their issues, however a sufficient enough sample size, which would be easier to get with a paid participant pool, will negate random error. You haven't really made a case for why paying participants or more money won't yield a more representative sample. If anything as you said with this system they can choose the specific demographics they want to get, and with enough money they could get a sample large enough to make a the confound of "signs up for study" if there is such a thing, insignificant. meanwhile on the phone if you're looking for anything more complicated than one or two demographics variables to go on you're going to have a hard time finding participants, as with the internet the phone is biased to those that actually have a landline phone, will pick it up, will have time to do the survey, choose to do the survey etc; there's no guarantee to get anything in the right amounts, and then you ca get weird results like the Leger poll in the article which some how 78% of respondents said they didn't have children even though 73% of respondents were above the age of 35, which makes no sense to me, and where anglophones were skewed towards being older compared to francophones.
Ultimately money, either in funding the study to have more participants, or more of the specifically sought after participants will yield more representative results than traditional random phone calling (especially with cellphones, and caller ID) assuming that the researcher is competent and there is some oversight as to the participant database. It will only become more representative as internet adoption increases, thought considering it was at 65% in 2003 its probably way up there by now.
Many good points RS - thanks.
ReplyDeleteFROM ED
ReplyDeleteDiogenes, Do you realize that by giving wrong answers to polls you are also fooling us. Wasn't Diogenes the man who carried a lantern through the world searching for an honest man. Tsk Tsk HeHe Forgive the ramblings of an old man.
R.S. I remember after the war many immigrants were encouraged to change their names because people couldn't spell or pronounce them. We've come a long way with immigrants from the mid east and Arabic names. Some I knew were suggested a new name by the Officer writing their names down as they came into this country. Perhaps your vioin maker friend has been encouraged by people who felt it would help him or them.
Has anyone noticed how ignoring the trolls is working today. Only on e lousy post from S.R. out of 56. Great
Une Gars de Frankfort thanks for the info and the link. Congratulations on your new position. How do manage with the German tongue. Ed
You've got me Ed! As I said though, if they paid me I'd give them an honest answer because I would owe them that as an employee. I rationalize it because I'm on the "Don't call" list for telemarketers and it used to irk me that pollsters are exempt. Despite being on the list, I still get a ton of other telemarketing calls. I'm slowly culling the herd, though. I now treat them as a source of entertainment. It's much more fun than getting p.o.ed at them.
DeleteYou can't weight based on population statistics unless you do so in the recruiting of participants, once you have your sample, that's it, you give weight based on the demographics of your sample, anything else would be just wrong, much like taking the mean was.
ReplyDeleteI'm just surprised internet explorer hasn't sued Leger over the e.
ReplyDeleteRadio-Canada change de nom pour Ici
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lapresse.ca/arts/television/201306/05/01-4658068-radio-canada-change-de-nom-pour-ici.php
Bonne idée...Fini Radio can
Le prochain vérificateur général devra parler français
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique-canadienne/201306/05/01-4658132-le-prochain-verificateur-general-devra-parler-francais.php
Contrairement à Michael Ferguson, le prochain vérificateur général du Canada devra obligatoirement être bilingue pour décrocher ce poste prestigieux. Car ce sera écrit dans la loi
Let's see what comes out of this:
Deletehttp://www.cjad.com/CJADLocalNews/entry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10553091
Si les policiers devaient se retenir pour ne pas rire,je crois que le juge aura du mal à se retenir aussi :D
DeleteEvelyn Samantha Donis is a cowardly franco-supremacist who does not assume responsibility for her actions. Typical.
DeleteOMG - These separatists have so much nerve - everyone else in the whole country is to be bilingual to get a job but they themselves do not have to learn the other official language - by law. James Wolfe, our once in awhile contributor, may have struck the gold vein in his posts. No wonder the ROC are fed up with this stinking province. Why should be these highly paid people have to be bilingual when quebec wants English completely wiped out, legally? Until quebec stops isolating the anglophones and allophones in this province, the unilingual anglophones in the ROC should be able to hold any job in any government position that they like. I hope some highly qualified person that was interested in these job(s) takes this bilingual nonsense to the highest legal authority in the country based on discrimination.
DeleteFROM ED
ReplyDeleteYou mention the Jews changing names to feel accepted in Zion. Many American Jews changed names for acceptance by people in show business. Jack Benny, Edgar Bergan, Milton Berle, George Burns, Woody Allen, Carl Reiner , Phil Silvers, Mel Brooks, Danny Kay and even Bob Dylan changed their names to what they felt would be more useful to them. One can't help but noticing that Jews created the basis of the American entertainment industry we enjoy today. Irving Berlin , one of the greatest song writers even started ASCAP in 1914 to prevent Artist from being ripped These were great men who dedicated themselves to giving enjoyment to others. Whatever the reason for changing names it sure worked for them. Ed
Not only that, but there were whole generations who somehow believed that Tchaikovsky, Rudolph Nureyev, Marcel Proust, John Maynard Keynes, Jean Cocteau, John Gielgud, Christian Dior, Cole Porter, Jean Genet, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, Alan Turing, Eleanor Roosevelt, James Dean, Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Anthony Perkins, Dirk Bogarde, Malcolm Forbes, Yves Saint-Laurent, Gore Vidal, Andy Warhol, Richard Chamberlain, Long John Baldry, Dick Sargent (“Darren Stephens” on Bewitched), Will Geer (“Grandpa Walton”), Ellen Corby (“Grandma Walton”), Canadian Raymond Burr (“Perry Mason”/”Ironside”), Robert Reed (“Mr. Brady”), George Takei (“Sulu” on Star Trek), Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly, Elton John, and Liberace were actually heterosexual. At least they didn’t have to change their names to feel accepted. Oy vey!
DeleteHa ha ha!
ReplyDeleteLes policiers de Montreal se sont trouves un nouveau trucs contre les carres rouges et autres manifestants anarcho-marxistes:
http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/montreal/201306/05/01-4658166-montreal-confirme-lachat-dun-camion-blinde.php
Say what? Just like the other loudmouth troll, you are not very sympathetic at all by insisting on writing in French on an English blog about anglophones.
DeleteWhy do you do this anyway? It’s extremely bizarre.
There are plenty of French blogs where you can mock francophones in French, as is obviously your wont.
I wonder whether your employer knows that they have hired such a strange individual as you are and whether they are aware whether they are spending their money on you wisely or not.
I assume that your obvious pride in mocking people means that you won’t hesitate to identify yourself. Right?
"It’s extremely bizarre."
DeleteTout à fait à l'image du faux pays qu'est le canada,non?
What's your definition of a real country?
DeleteFROM ED
ReplyDeleteWeirdo says, "I wonder whether your employer knows that they have hired such a strange individual as you are and whether they are aware whether they are spending their money on you wisely or not."
They do know, that's why he's in Germany. Ed
Leger is the second sleaziest businessmen I heard about. Does he have any pride in his work? How low is his business ethic? I am going to write to Leger Marketing to ask for comment. If this story turns out to be true, this businessmen company would be exposed as a fraud, and Leger as a sleazy business owner.
ReplyDeleteFROM ED
DeleteLiam, That ship has sailed. "this businessmen company would be exposed as a fraud, and Leger as a sleazy business owner."
That's exactly what Editor has done. He has also exposed the undependency of polls. Ed
Arvind Pradhan
ReplyDeleteLetter to the Gazette
The current uproar against the courageous stand taken by the Quebec Soccer Federation on Sikh players wearing turbans needs to cool down. I applaud QSF for taking this far-reaching decision. As a former boys soccer coach, I have first-hand experienced the humiliation that Sikh players can inflict on their opponents in soccer (and in other sports). I distinctly remember a boy named Sandhu scoring five goals against my U-12 boys team and drumming us out of the pitch.
This must not be allowed to continue. We must disallow Sikh players in every sport, under any flimsy excuse.
No matter if the rest of the world laughs at us and considers us racists, xenophobes and intolerant.
Wow - we have to wonder where in the world we are going. What does wearing a turban have to do with the kid scoring goals? What am I missing here?
DeleteI suspect Arvind Pradhan's letter to the (Gazette) editor is meant as sarcasm, a way to mock the Que. Soccer Federation's policy. At least, that's how I read it.
DeleteFROM ED Re:Arvid Pradhan
DeleteEither way there's a lot left unexplained. Why would a turban make a difference to a soccer player. It would make sense if helmet's were required but the law seems to be only against the religion. One would think that if God wanted the turban worn at all times he would have created one permanently attached. Then the seps could not object. There is a Sikh teen on the next street to me who takes it off and stuffs it in his bag on the way to school. If his parents knew............ Ed
FROM ED
ReplyDeleteAre soccer players not required to wear helmets? Ed
No Ed
Delete