Saturday 28th October 2000
Dak the Hamster reports on the recent opinion polls


There was a swing, they said, amongst modern post-middle age inheritors of a pre-nuclear dawn.

That was all well and good, I squeaked, but what did it actually mean in real terms? I mean, just what proportion of the population accounted for this group?

Not many, the pollsters told me, and probably not as many as those who wore plastic underpants on Sundays in June but, nevertheless, it was there - the swing was happening.

That was great, I squealed, but as I didn't know how many people wore plastic underpants - not even on any day of the week let alone Sundays, and certainly not the ones which fell in June - how was I to know what that meant in real terms?

I didn't have to, they assured me, that wasn't what counted. It was that there was a swing and that it had been charted and recognised and that it was happening.

Did this mean there would be a hamster in the Whitehouse in 2001, I asked them, seeing as that was all that was important?

It didn't mean that, they insisted, but neither did it not mean it. It meant only that the modern post-middle age inheritors of a pre-nuclear dawn were coming over in their droves to the hamster candidate. And that couldn't be bad news could it?

No it certainly wasn't bad news, I retorted, but neither might it be good news if, contrasted, senior pre-school adolescent voters who listened to Boyzone were leaving our ranks for the Republicans or Democrats.

But who are they, they questioned, that were reported leaving? How many were there numbers and when had they started leaving?

That was my point, I countered, I hadn't the foggiest how many either camp represented and couldn't get my mind around whether in real terms the news was good or bad.

But it was good news if you were a hamster, they assured me, that people were committing themselves to vote hamster though perhaps not as good news as if there was no one leaving the voters' numbers for others. Then it would be good news, not so good news, good news tinged with a dark lining or just the whittling away of the supporters depending on how one looked at it.

And how did they look at it, I asked, was it...whatever?

Yes it was whatever, they smiled, most certainly whatever and almost precisely.

Well at least that was a comfort to know, I concluded, cos I was beginning to think we were talking at cross purposes. It was good to know we were making perfect sense, we could be happy that whatever was happening and that it was a positive attribute of the campaign.

Yes, they said, but could I clarify just what it was that we were talking about?

Dak the Hamster writes for the Rodent Weekly.
This article appears courtesy of that paper.

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