They didn't ask enough Conservative voters.
Well, I never. But surely that was the question rather than the answer. These days we are regularly offered empty platitudes as if they are wisdom and expected to be grateful that now we understand. But we don't. We are just told we understand.
I go to some lengths now to avoid hearing football pundits, or football itself, but still hear the explanation that such and such a team are not doing very well 'because they don't score enough goals'. Of course, scoring goals is the object of the game and so that much is obvious but the answer required would include the reasons why they don't score enough goals.
Some time ago I heard on the radio that some research done in a university had discovered that women like shopping but men like watching football. Whether this was a serious piece of work or satire was hard to tell but it didn't serve the purposes of demolishing stereotypes. And it wasn't even true.
But, why would anyone tell an opinion poll about their voting intentions anyway. Perhaps too many are flattered to be asked. But it's a secret ballot, we understand. I have once declined the opportunity to answer a telephone opinion poll and once pointed out to a party representative outside a polling station that it was a secret ballot and I was disappointed that their party didn't respect British democracy.
There is nothing quite as satisfying as a free hit and a chance to occupy the moral high ground.
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I'm delighted that The Times continues with its Latin crossword, my record number of answers filled in still being the six I achieved in the second one but I don't pursue it for very long because there is no chance I'll ever finish one. But today I did pursue the main crossword even if I got off to a slow start. It's fulfilling and rewarding to keep at it, if self satisfaction is a reward you enjoy, and today it was all in place well before the racing started, with no artificial aids.Then all the horses ran and none of mine came first or anywhere near it until Duke Des Champs strolled into the distance ahead of his rivals in the last at Ascot and made the day a slightly profitable one.
What more can one ask of a Saturday.
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2016 looks like being another good one for Portsmouth's thriving poetry community. The small but select gathering that discussed the poetry of Rosemary Tonks at PPS on Wednesday did a fine job but with pamphlets by Pauline Hawkesworth and Denise Bennett likely to be launched by readings later in the year, we should also be welcoming the reading for South magazine's Autumn issue to the city in October. There will be more news here, and on South's own website, when that is confirmed.
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But, I was looking for something in Philip Larkin this week and, as ever, came across so many things that I wasn't looking for that were better than the thing I wanted.
I have expressed doubts a number of times about just how much of the mining of Larkin's writing he would have wanted to see in print, particularly in respect of The Complete Poems but also that there was no need of a Selected Larkin because he did the selecting before putting anything into print in the first place. And so it was good to find in Required Writing, in the interview with The Observer,
A bibliography of your work has just been published. What do you feel about being bibliographed?
On the whole, very flattered, as long as no-one thinks I thought all these things worth exhuming.
So, Quod Erat Demonstrandum. It might be a good idea for some pop svengali to decide what should be the next Taylor Swift single but for an artist of Larkin's stature, it was for them to decide what is published and not an editor.
Larkin's reputation has survived the accusations of misogyny, misanthropy and misearabilism that followed the publication of his letters and going back to these pieces that were available long before only emphasize what enormous common sense he had to say about poetry. I wouldn't have the same twelve poets that he did within arm's reach and neither would I endorse his view of Margaret Thatcher but he told it how it was about poetry and how it really still should be and we should be grateful for that.