Giants stomping on anthills.

Hey Scott, great to see you taking up the cause along with Saskboy and myself.  With any luck, you’ll be getting a visit from our good friend any day now

If you want to read the original paragraph, you can e-mail me and I’d be more than happy to send it to you privately so you can read it yourself.

Cheers,

Paul

Oh, P.S., just a quick correction, my blog’s address is paulitics.wordpress.com, I don’t own the domain name paulitics.com.

Paul: I changed it to make it reflect what your blog is actually called.

Oh look at all the tough Ipsos critics! You want to smear an organization that stakes its business on its reputation, and you wonder why they threaten legal action?
I once posted a rumour on my blog mentioning that a certain prominent political hack had been fired by the consulting firm they worked for. I got an email notice from legal counsel less than an hour later asking me to remove it or risk legal action. I took it down, because they were right: I was making a serious allegation, and I had no proof. It taught me an important lesson: don’t say anything on your blog that you aren’t prepared to stand by.
It seems that you, Scott, and paulitics and several others, want to have it both ways: you want to besmirch the reputations of people and businesses as you see fit but not suffer any consequences. Sorry, but that’s libel. It wasn’t just acceptable for John Wright to demand it be taken down; as the VP, its his job to look out for the reputation of the company.
Bottom line: if you don’t have the testicles to stand behind what you say, then don’t say it.

Um, of course the Paulitics site was wrong.  Which is what my entire comment was about.  I mentioned you, because you <i>defended</I> what Paulitics did, instead of acknowledging it was over the line.  You can’t have it both ways.  I wasn’t accusing you of saying the sorts of things Paulities did about Ipsos; if you had, you’d have probably been given a warning by Ipsos as well.  Questioning a polling organization’s results (which you never do, of course, if you <i>like</> the results) is fine, but if you say “they are deliberately biasing their methodology/samples/numbers to get a misleading result” that’s a different matter. That’s basically alleging that they are being paid off to fabricate numbers.  So one statement is about unintentional inaccuracies.  The latter is a much more serious claim which can destroy a business’ reputation.  And since you brought up my profession, yes actually I do happen to know something about the subject.  Probably a little more than you do. 
As for your usual dismissiveness of anything I say on account of my "partisanship", a cursory reading of my blog will clearly show I’m more critical of Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party in any given week than you’ve ever been of anything Liberal or progressive in your entire blogging life.

As a consumer of the news, I often remind myself to always remember, that statistics are an excellent source of evidence, however Ineed to examine them for relevance, validity and authority before accepting them as the truth.

"Political tacticians are not in search of scholarly truth or even simple accuracy. They are looking for ammunition to use in the information wars. Data, information, and knowledge do not have to be true to blast an opponent out of the water."
—Alvin Toffler

Uh, no Aaron. Until a court tells him he’s wrong, or that he’s guilty of libel, he isn’t. As he said, he changed things gratuitously, which means he isn’t admitting any guilty action on his part.

Oh really? I’m curious then Scott, if he (and you) are so sure it isn’t libel, why don’t you reproduce it on your blog?  Or how about you, Saskboy?
Any takers?

Such a bunch of cowards.

ALW what you are missing in all of this and one of the main reasons J Wright’s behaviour was so reprehensible is that he has the might of a multimillion dollar company behind him and can afford to tie someone up in court for years if he wants to. The threat of legal action against a poor university student who can’t afford to hire a lawyer to defend his rights is called bullying.  It happens all the time.  Big corporations stomp all over the little people because they can.  Don’t you find it interesting that the threats were made on the poor student’s blog and NOT on the National Political Party’s site even though he admits it was really the posting on the Green Party site that he was upset with.  Now why do you think he chose to make the threats on the student’s blog instead?  We can only imagine his motivation.  However, it is a common bullying tactic used to keep the "little people" in line. You can have the weight of the angels on your side and an almost guaranteed chance to prevail in court and still not have the money to fund the legal expenses to do so. If you think corporations don’t know this and often take advantage of this sad fact then the Tooth Fairy is not your biggest blind spot.PS:  Pointing out the actual differences between polling companies when there are some significant ones is not smearing his company. Paulitics’ posting never ascribed "motives" of any kind to the anomalies. Perhaps you have some history with Scott that is clouding your vision.

Paulitics,
I don’t need hypotheticals.  Didn’t you read what I wrote regarding my own experiences? I was threatened once too.  So I pulled what I wrote.  Not because I was being ‘bullied’.  Because I realized the other side was right.
Obviously, businesses with deep pockets will engage in litigation threats more easily than you or I will.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong.  Damage to their reputation could cause a company like Ipsos a ton of money, so no wonder they protect it fiercely.

Well put, Saskboy.