From one West Texas girl to another.

Born to rich parents? Check.

Privately educated? Check.

(Head cheerleader? Check.)

History degree, Yale University? Check.

MBA, Harvard? Check.

And yet…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7809160.stm

I was going to list a couple of the most priceless, but this, predictably, proved impossible. So much for “adding value”. Still, no pseudo-political blog would be complete without them. Enjoy – only eight days left! Something tells me that Obama isn’t going to be misunderestimated in quite the same way.

Joey Lucas, Iraq, Bush’s shoes? Pollsters are as scientific as me…

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the Telegraph disagree with my previous post.

In all honesty, it’s unlikely that anyone from the Telegraph (or anyone who reads the Telegraph) has read my post – so it’s less me they’re disagreeing with, and more the Guardian’s poll.

But yesterday – just four days after the Guardian had the Tories on 38 and Labour on 33 – the Telegraph revealed (on its front page, incidentally) that the Conservatives are now on 42, and Labour on 35. Brown’s bounce (get excited kids, it’s alliteration), the Telegraph tells us, is coming to an end. Oh how very Alan Partridge.

If you don't know who Joey Lucas is you should. Go away and watch the West Wing.

Now I’m no Joey Lucas, (and perhaps it is because of this that I think the following) but it seems to me like there’s something fishy about all this polling business. In just four days a number of things have apparently happened: Cameron is, apparently, the King of the Castle once more, Labour have gained two points, and the poor old Lib Dems are dying.

This would be perfectly acceptable if something dramatic had happened in politics in the last four days – something with an especially dramatic effect on the Lib Dems and Tories, for instance. Let’s have a quick look at what’s happened this week shall we:

Someone threw some shoes at Bush (yey – see below!) and was then allegedly beaten (boo!).

95,000 pensioners were overpaid (see further below).

Rhys Jones killer got life.

The closure of Woolworths stores was announced (boo!).

Brown announced his Iraq pull-out (yey!).

Brown warns about volatile fuel prices, and is then labelled “confused”.

Now, with the exception of the Iraq pull-out story, none of these “top stories” appear to have huge political ramifications. To add weight to this flimsy conclusion of mine I asked my brother whether anything in the news this week has made him feel particularly lovingly about the Tories or negatively about the Lib Dems. He replied with: “No, I don’t read newspapers.” Helpful.

Regardless, I think it’s fair to conclude that polls, be it the Guardian/ICM poll, or the Daily Telegraph/You Gov poll are fishy. And that’s before we even consider the fact that the polls commissioned by each paper rather conveniently, I must say, returned results perfectly in-tune with their readership’s political allegiances.

I reckon that polls are about as accurate and scientific as my ruler-manoeuvrings of the previous post. Then again, my ruler-manoeuvring was quite fun. Maybe I should become a Joey Lucas after all.

And just for kicks. Ha, kicks – could be tenuously linked to shoes: