What A Load Of Old Polls

I've not been online since early yesterday, but now that I'm back I see that some of the most recent polls have not been very reassuring.

For a start with there's this morning's Populus poll in The Times showing that the Tories have more than doubled their opinion poll lead over Labour in the last month, with Macaroon's Marauders up two points on 38% while Blair's Babes tumble three points to a four-month low of 30%.

What's worse is that the results indicate an ever wider gap - 42% to 29% - if Gordon Brown were in No.10 and wider still if the new leader was David Miliband. And every single social, age and political group except Labour voters thought that Labour had been damaged by the "cash-for-honours" scandal.

That shows just how wrong all non-Labour voters can be!

Then there's the BBC World Service poll of wireless radio listeners (aka. old fossils with crystal sets) which according to Haaretz.com concludes that Israel is Satan's bastard child.

Respondents asked which countries had a "mostly positive or mostly negative" influence in the world, responded that the global "baddies" were Israel, Iran, the US and North Korea, in that order. And Israel was viewed negatively by the population of more territories in the world than any other country.

The good news from the polls is that my good friends in the opposition Australian Labor Party have surged to a massive popularity lead over John Howard's right-wing ruling coalition. The only little problem with that result is that it reflects the popularity of Labor's pledge to bring Australian troops home from Iraq if it wins the election.

If only voters understood the need for military strength, Trident replacement, creating democracy in Iraq, strengthening Israel, bringing down the world's dictatorships... and vote the right way as well. Then we'd really be getting somewhere!