This entry was posted on
Friday, March 4th, 2005 at
9:06 am and is filed
under UK General Election 2005.
I’m still busy and may be too busy to blog until early next week… but there’s lots of groovy stuff on the way.
Send me money, buy some stickers or start/join a MeetUp group if you need something to do.
The first cheque donations arrived by post yesterday and we can now withdraw money from our Paypal account. We’ll be able to write cheques and make stuff happen from this time next week.
BTW, I have a few promising ideas for next Tuesday’s London MeetUp, and there may be a sneak-preview of Video 2 available if someone would care to bring a laptop with a USB port.
Cheers all.
PS – The Lib-Dems have just launched a new site (that’s *not* why I’ve been busy, by the way). You may find this item/promise on cold-calling interesting.
For the record, I’m registered with the Telephone Preference Service and I’ve received a cold-call from a ‘survey company’ representing Anne Milton, the local Tory candidate (her early posters and pamphlets carry the bold and comforting message… Anne Milton: Mother. Nurse.)
The caller claimed to be working for company called Geneva, and got a bit funny when I tried to find out more about what this company was and what its relationship was with Anne Milton and/or the Conservative Party (before finally cutting me off when I asked if he was calling from an overseas call centre).
The caller claimed:
– that he couldn’t give me any further details about the company
– but he could tell me that it was both a corporation and a charity
– that he was not paid to do this survey, but that the company was doing it out of the goodness of their heart
– that Anne was from Sussex, not Surrey (she was born in the former and now lives in the latter, as it turns out)
– that Anne was a doctor (as opposed to a former nurse)
(UPDATE – As it turns out, Geneva is a Tory Party call centre. Now I have enough information to file a complaint. Cheers to Luca’s Ade for the heads-up.)
I’ve also heard of a chap who had a letter about Anne Milton published in the local paper (with their name and address). The result was a Tory party representative knocking on their door wanting to discuss the letter.
Milton had best watch her step. She may end up being the target of some hysterical bullying if she’s not careful.
PS2 – Oh, you’re going to love this latest thought from Gareth Davies and these Google results will cheer you up no end (well done, Tim Worstall).
PS3 – I’ll never get any work done at this rate! Guido quotes Strobes on the subject of a past life as a prostitute and its possible impact on your future in the Labour Party.
By Luca's Ade March 4, 2005 - 10:04 am
Tim, it seems that Geneva is run by the Tories from an air conditioned suite in central office no less…http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=involved.geneva.page
By Manic March 4, 2005 - 10:14 am
Steady on, now… we wouldn’t want to spread any bogus conspiracy theories.;o)PS – I sent an email to Anne Milton listing everything above. She promised she would ‘investigate’… but that was nearly two months ago. Does it really take 2+ months to get an answer from your own campaign headquarters? Perhaps I should contact David Douglas and find out.
By Russell March 4, 2005 - 10:38 am
What do we think of the new Lib Dem website?
By What You Can Get Away With March 4, 2005 - 11:38 am
I’m calling from…noting official, of course
Just to put my party political hat on again for a minute and plug this Liberal Democrat campaign to stop nuisance calls. A £5000 fine for each call? That’s a good way to blow your campaign budget in a few seconds.Tim – and you really think that m…
By JonnyB March 4, 2005 - 12:00 pm
Hmmm.I had huge blazing rows with a market research company earlier this year. Three calls a day from them, etc. Nothing to do with any political party.The TPS doesn’t, I came to understand, have anything to do with anything other than sales organisations. ‘Market Researchers’ are free to call whoever they like. Some consult the TPS list out of courtesy, some don’t.My argument – that they were mad not to include TPS opt-outs because no matter what the small-print was they’d be ringing and annoying people who didn’t want to be rung – fell on deaf ears. I suspect you might have the same issue.
By Anthony Wells March 4, 2005 - 1:20 pm
Johnny’s right. The TPS applies to all organisations, but only stops them calling people on the TPS for sales or marketing purposes. They are free to call anyone they so desire for market research purposes.If they call and say “Who are you voting for?” that’s legal. If they call and say “Vote for Bloggs, he’s ace” then they are being naughty.There is a good reason why pollsters call people on TPS; while it’s annoying, opinion polls simply wouldn’t be accurate otherwise. Pollsters need to draw a sample from as near as possible to the whole population. People who sign on the TPS do tend to have different views to those who don’t sign up to the TPS, an opinion poll would be faulty if it left those people out. (In a similar way, people with ex-directory numbers are more likely to be Labour voters than those with numbers in the directory, hence pollsters can’t randomly chose numbers from the phone book because their results would be biased towards the Tories. The same thing would happen with TPS.)Not everyone minds anyway, I am on the TPS because I loathe salesmen calling. I’d be perfectly happy to answer an opinion pollster (obviously I don’t know about Jonny’s particular experiences, but the reason he was being badgered may have been because polling companies will tend to ring back between 8 and 10 times over a course of 2 days if they can’t get hold of you to try and avoid non-response bias.)