Polls, polls and damned statistics. Or The demise of Malcolm Turnbull

I still remain committed to the idea that Malcolm Turnbull will tire of the political game playing. In reality it takes too much energy to master the polls and the statistics and this constantly detracts from the important stuff. Yesterday's polls in The Australian (see full article here) show only slight improvement in his standing as preferred Prime Minister. Coming off a very low base it would be hard to get any worse.
What is perhaps more disconcerting is that Peter Costello is still seen by more Liberals as a preferable leader despite the fact that he has disqualified himself and is on the way out. Similarly laughing Joe Hockey, who also says he is not in the running. The desperate cries (or perhaps "sighs") of the Abbots and the Pynes become less and less convincing; they two are very ambitious people and I swear I will scream if I hear Pyne say yet one more time "All I want to do is to serve the electorate of Sturt"
I guess Malcolm is a big boy and will know when enough is enough. Till then it is all a bit sad.

Do you want to know a secret?

It will come as no surprise to anyone that early opinion polls about workplace agreements will not be released for general public consumption. Indeed they will be kept secret (here).
Apparently the PM thinks that the electorate will be confused by the figures.
The oft touted line by both sides of politics that the Australian electorate is sufficiently intelligent to be able to assess such information only appears to be true when 'information' supports your particular side.
I think, any way, that forbidding the reading (as always) makes us surer about the content, and I suppose we will all be much more eager to get our hands on red hot copy, which will turn out to be as dry as dust!
I don't mean to be particularly pedantic, but I have blogged about this twice in the last fortnight (here and here). We are being treated like idiots and need to not take this sort of manipulation. It will only get worse.

On a lighter note, I have suggested in a letter to the press that the curious idea that William Windsor (a British Rock Concert Promoter) would like to become GG of Australia should nto be dismissed out of hand. But as in the case of those who want to become elected politicians who, like William, happen to be British citizens he should first be required to renounce his British citizenship!
Flinty, that urbane professor of the monarchic cause, thinks it a spiffing idea of course (here), and it would attract attention to Australia. Strangely, I thought that our recent experience would suggest to us that attention is the last thing we want our GGs to generate.