Samuel’s Blog

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: APEC

I suppose I can have yet another go at running a weekly poll that only lasts for a week…it would be an interesting change.

To that end, $300 million dollars later…

A rather large cost, a city in lockdown, a bunch of world leaders in funny Drizabone coats and an “aspirational” Sydney Declaration. Whilst I probably should give it more time, my answer is definitely “no”, but I’m open to your opinions…perhaps you can find something useful that I overlooked.

Now, the results from the last poll.

It seems like an age since I started that poll!

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

September 10th, 2007 at 07:21am

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: The Murray Darling Basin

Weekly? Probably not…but I should at least try to make it weekly.

Anyway, this week’s question:

As fas as I’m concerned, the answer is yes, the water does not belong to Victoria, it belongs to everyone, and the only authority with the power to create laws to affect national property is the federal government. Apart from that, there is a precedent in place which will allow the federal government to take over control anyway, so all Victoria are doing by mounting a high court challenge is wasting an awful lot of taxpayers’ money.

That being said, I’m only one voice in many, so I look forward to your responses.

The last poll I ran had the following results:

I’m glad it’s not just me who doesn’t like not keeping to my plans!

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

July 30th, 2007 at 06:13am

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: Samuel’s Plans

Another lengthy break between polls got me thinking about this question:

It might surprise you to find out that my vote is “yes”, as I get annoyed when I don’t get around to writing things that I have said that I’m going to write.

The previous poll was:

I’m glad that the majority of people don’t want the Queen’s Birthday holiday to be on her actual birthday…it would be a logistical nightmare whenever the monarch changed, and it would further erode the balance of holidays throughout the year.

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

1 comment July 2nd, 2007 at 06:50am

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: The Queen’s Birthday

Today (Monday) is the Queen’s Birthday holiday in all states of Australia except for Western Australia, yet Queen Elizabeth II has her birthday on the 21st of April. Without going into a debate about whether the holiday should be forced on to a Monday, here is the poll question for this week.

Last week I asked the following question:

I have to admit that I was quite surprised that so many people share my view of television. I suppose it’s a good thing there is an “off” button!

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

June 11th, 2007 at 04:26am

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: Television Programming

I should have done this yesterday…the poll was online but I didn’t get around to writing all of this:

I used to watch a lot of television, now I watch very little because most of it is, in my opinion, junk. A lot of people absolutely love television these days, so I’d be interested to see what you think of the overall quality of television programming.

Last week I ran the following poll:

Well, who needs NewsPoll when you’ve got the much more reliable SamuelPoll? It’s either proof that NewsPoll are wrong about a Labor landslide victory, or I’m having too much fun running these polls.

It is very interesting to note the difference between the results of this poll and the results of NewsPoll and others though.

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

2 comments June 4th, 2007 at 03:53am

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: Two Party Preferred

Who needs Newspoll or a Galaxy Poll when you can have a Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll?

I’ve had just about enough of the constantly different twice weekly “x will win the next election according to the latest poll” headline news story, so I’m taking action, I’m going to run this poll, and the entire media can refer to it until the election…well OK, I’m joking, but it would be interesting to see how closely (or differently as the case may be) the audience of Samuel’s Blog resembles the sample groups of the various national polls.

I’ve decided to go with the two party preferred (with an “other” option) model as it would be almost impossible for anyone other than the coalition or Labor to win, but it would be interesting to see what percentage of the seats could belong to other parties and independents.

I’m not going to publish my opinion, or cast my vote just yet, as I don’t want to swing the vote too much. If you really want to know what I think, I will post my thoughts in a comment a bit later in the week…although I get the feeling that a number of you already know what I think.

Last week’s result surprised me.

I actually thought there would be stronger sentiment one way or the other…however it is possible that the low number of votes is the true indicator on this matter…it probably indicates that people are tired of David Hicks, and the less they hear about him, the better. I can honestly say that after correctly predicting that the media would be waiting breathlessly for David to emerge so that they could tell us what colour shirt he was wearing, I can understand why people are bored with the matter.

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

2 comments May 27th, 2007 at 05:20am

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: David Hicks

I’m pretty sure I used that title last time David Hicks was the focus of the weekly poll, on that occasion we discussed how long it would be until David Hicks would return to Australia, and now it looks like David will land in Adelaide in about three hours. The predictable government bashing statements that we got used to hearing on the news every day a couple months back have surfaced again, but now we have a new controversy for David…the aeroplane he is flying in.

Unfortunately in writing the question I had to choose the tense, and decided on the past tense on the assumption that David will be back in a few hours. I will change it to the future tense if David doesn’t return today.

According to the reports, David Hicks is flying back in to the country on a private jet at taxpayer expense, the cost of which is estimated at half a million dollars. Many of David’s strongest supporters (and I really get the feeling that they are whinging just to detract from the government’s involvement in getting David back, and in effect take full credit for it themselves) claim David should have been placed on a public commercial flight with a security escort, David’s father Terry Hicks even took on the role of psychic, saying that David wasn’t going to do anything.

Personally, I think it comes down to this. David is a convicted terrorist supporter who has spent the last five years in a facility filled with people involved in, and alleged to be involved in, numerous atrocities including September 11. I don’t think there is an airline in the world that would risk having David on their aircraft, not necessarily because of what David might do, but because of what others may try to do to free him from custody. If it were my decision, there would be absolutely no chance of David entering a public airport.

Also, the US government and the Australian government seem keen to keep David’s movements secret (probably for the above reasons), so why would they risk having David on a commercial flight where hundreds of people, including airline staff, would have the opportunity to leak David’s flight details? The same can be said of Terry Hick’s complaint about not being told where and when David will arrive…the governments aren’t telling the media that information, so why would they tell Terry? He would just tell the media anyway.

None the less, it will be quite a funny sight outside David’s rumoured landing site today, Adelaide’s RAAF Edinburgh…all those journalists jumping in to action every time a plane comes near the place.

Last week I ran the following poll:

A fairly predictable response there. The majority of people happy with a pretty good budget, and the rest either a bit miffed about the mandatory election year handouts, or just disagreeing with the government on everything anyway.

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

May 20th, 2007 at 06:12am

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: The Budget

Another week, another poll, and another one of these complex issue questions.

During the week I told you all about how I was happy with the budget, and Maritz, a Russian lady who now lives here, did much the same thing, however a poll out today shows that had an election been held yesterday, John Howard would have lost his seat to Maxine McKew. Of course political polls run in the last week (especially those with a sample group of 800 people) are of minimal value and we won’t really start to see the budget reaction until next weekend, but it does make for a fun headline…especially seeing as an incumbent prime minister hasn’t lost their seat since 1929.

One poll that is valuable though is last week’s Weekly Poll:

I was actually asked during the week why there wasn’t an option for “Exactly eight hours”…well people don’t really sleep like that, they might get eight hours sleep, but it will usually be just over, or just under…as it turned out, it was probably just under. The winning result was no surprise, and “Between eight and ten” was no surprise for second, but the number of people who regularly get less than four hours of sleep is a worry. It seems that very few get the luxury of the other end of the scale, and I can honestly say I wouldn’t want to sleep that much.

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

May 13th, 2007 at 06:03am

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: Sleep

One thing that has intrigued me for a while is how much sleep people need. I know that my sleep pattern varies wildly, and I tend to require more sleep if I sleep at night than I do if I sleep during the day. So, this week’s question is as follows:

Last week I ran a poll which was probably affected by external factors during the week.

What I noticed during the week was that the support for Labor’s policy had a large lead for most of the week, but near the end after the “fairness test” changes announced by the federal government, the support for Work Choices rebounded. As people who have already voted can’t vote again, it is quite possible that people who voted earlier in the week may have changed their mind since, but have been unable to change their vote.

As I said last week, I’m quite happy with Work Choices, but then again I’m not employed by someone who has taken unfair advantage of the laws. It’s a good thing in my view that the federal government has sought to fix up the holes in the laws, and for those who think it’s just a petty grab for votes, this isn’t the first time that laws have been changed to fix problems with them…both major parties have a good track record of doing that.

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

1 comment May 6th, 2007 at 10:18am

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: Industrial Relations

A fairly straight forward question with an awful lot of complexity behind it this week.

I’m personally quite happy with Work Choices, but that could be because I have a decent and fair employer. Ultimately I think Labor’s plans fly in the face of the constitution in a lot of aspects and will need serious adjustment before being viable. Even iff their planned reforms were viable, I still prefer Work Choices.

None the less, I’d love to hear what you think, perhaps you can see more merit in Labor’s plans than I can, if so, leave a comment below and let me know.

Now, the results from the previous poll.

That was an awful lot closer than I expected. I was expecting at least 65% “yes” but I suppose it is a very controversial issue, and there are some very interesting arguments on both sides of the fence.

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

1 comment April 29th, 2007 at 06:21pm

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: Gun Control Laws

Despite the fact that the new weekly poll is a couple weeks late, it is effectively early as I’m not waiting until tomorrow morning and the start of the new week, mainly because Samuel’s Persiflage will be released shortly and I want it to have the top spot for most of tomorrow.

It will be interesting to see people’s views on this. It has been one aspect of the debate following the Virginia Tech Massacre earlier in the week, and in my view the most important aspect of the debate. I would certainly welcome your comments on the topic.

Now, the results from the previous poll.

Based on these results, the competition should pan out like this:

1st: Rabbitohs
2nd: Storm
3rd: Titans
4th-5th: Cowboys
4th-5th: Knights
6th-8th: Bulldogs
6th-8th: Dragons
6th-8th: Sea Eagles
9th-11th: Broncos
9th-11th: Raiders
9th-11th: Tigers
12th-16th: Eels
12th-16th: Panthers
12th-16th: Roosters
12th-16th: Sharks
12th-16th: Warriors

I’ll keep this on file and compare it with the actual ladder after the grand final.

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

April 21st, 2007 at 07:23pm

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: 2007 NRL Premiership

It hardly seems like a week since the last poll started, but apparently it is, and therefore it’s time for a new one. I did promise that I would give the political polls a rest for a little while, so here is one which I’ll be interested to see the results of.

As always comments are more than welcome.

Last week I posed a question in the aftermath of the New South Wales state election, and the result wasn’t very surprising.

I feel that the following poem sent in to John Laws by Glen Peacock of Newcastle during the week is appropriate.

There once was a man named Morris,
Who had trouble keeping a promise,
He took City Rail,
And of course it did fail,
But we’re voting him back into office!

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

April 1st, 2007 at 08:01pm

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: New South Wales

The weekly poll is back, hopefully this will be the last political one for a few weeks.

Clearly the majority of people in New South Wales believe Morris Iemma is the best choice for the job, but given the track record of that government, one does have to wonder how bad people thought the state would be under a Debnam Coalition government.

As for me, well earlier in the week I was tipping a minority Iemma government, then I shifted to a minority Debnam government…wrong on both counts!

Samuel

8 comments March 25th, 2007 at 12:51am

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll Results

There isn’t going to be a weekly poll this week as the website is moving to new hosting, and there would be no reasonable way to regulate voting during the migration. I’ll explain the reasons soon, but first here are the results from last week’s poll.

Not surprisingly Jon Stanhope did not fare well in the poll, receiving what a Newspoll would probably call a “38% approval rate”. I did find it interesting that very close to the end of the week, votes started to sharply turn in the Chief Turnip’s favour. It’s fairly well known that Stanhope has a bunch of loyal followers who try to rig this kind of vote in his favour, so I do have to wonder if they were involved in the late turn in Stanhope’s favour.

The weekly poll will return next week when the migration to a new server is well and truly over.

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

2 comments March 18th, 2007 at 08:43pm

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: Jon Stanhope

This week’s poll, whilst hardly likely to achieve anything, should have an interesting result none the less.

Feel free to discuss the poll subject in the comments below. You need to be a registered member of Samuel’s Blog to comment, but anyone can vote. The system will attempt to prevent you from voting more than once, and whilst it might not always be able to do that, I request that you only vote once.

Disclaimer: This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you’re using these numbers to do anything important, you’re insane. That being said, I do try to keep the results fair and accurate, and I try to prevent abuse by unscrupulous voters, but I can’t make any guarantees.

Now for the results from last week’s poll.

It surprised me that so many people don’t think that David Hicks will ever step foot in Australia again, especially seeing as he isn’t facing a particularly serious charge. Of the others, more than a year was most popular, followed equally by the two options filling the three months and a day to a year range, then less than a month, and one to three months. All of that indicates to me that most people don’t expect to see David Hicks in this country for quite some time.

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

1 comment March 11th, 2007 at 01:38am