Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Survey this

A long time ago (January?) I started a series of posts called 'Things I Don't Understand (But Wish I Did)' on another blog. It was meant to be an occasional series, and I must confess I have taken such liberties with it that I have not added to it since its inception in January (although there have been things, multitudes actually, and daily, that I have not understood).

So in an effort to address this terrible neglect I decided this morning to post the very next thing that mystified me, so here it is:

Not the easiest thing to read, is it? Sorry. I'll see if I can fix it.

Ok so apparently I can't fix it. Sorry about that (Alex help!).

Anyhoo, it's a survey that arrived today, one of those 'Tell us what it's like to live where you live, chump!' surveys. Now I love filling in a good survey, in fact I love filling in forms of all types (formgasmic), so imagine my delight when this giant 10-pager arrived.

I rattled through the pages, ticking boxes, strongly agreeing and mildly disagreeing everywhere. Then I got to the last two questions, above:

Question 42: How satisfied are you with the way democracy works in Australia?

and

Question 43: What is your favourite retail shop in your local area?

What the fuck? Seriously? Your thoughts on the effectiveness of Australia's political system, and oh, while we've got you, where do you buy your Tampax?

I'm guessing this is a State government effort.

19 comments:

Elephant's Child said...

You could be right - or it could be produced by the political party which prides itself on being there for the businessman. Probably not so much for the businesswoman. Preferably BIG business(man).
Oops, methinks my political prejudices are showing.

Kettle said...

I had a feeling what your political persuasions might be, dear TEC. Hey you been following the Stella Prize ado-ings? Exciting times.

Anonymous said...

I'm here Kettle. What is it you're trying to do? Make the image bigger?

I agree that it seems like an odd pairing, but I can't make judgment without knowing what the rest of the form was like.

What I can say is that it looks like the kind of form that winds me up. I hate having to tick boxes without any space for explanation.

Kettle said...

Alex I was trying to make the image bigger, but it would appear that changing the view in Paint does nothing in Blogger (nothing, I tell you!).

I agree that it seems like an odd pairing, but I can't make judgment without knowing what the rest of the form was like.

That's far too measured and reasonable a thing to say. There's no place for such a thing on this blog (no place I tell you!).

Actually the survey was written by the City of Sydney council which is our local council. It's possibly the most interesting survey I've filled out, some totally mundane questions (of course), but a few crackers in there too. And I totally love the fact the whole last page is only for the GLBT community. Respect.

Anonymous said...

If you go into the "edit html" tab when editing your post, you should be able to find your image's <img> tag. Within that tag, you should be able to find height and width attributes; eg: height="320" width="480". this means that the image will be 320 pixels high and 480 pixels wide. Change these numbers to change the image size.

If you want to make the image as wide as possible, change width to "100%" and remove the height attribute altogether; eg: <img scr="blah/blah.jpg" width="100%" />

Anonymous said...

Also, I'm tired. What is GLBT?

Kettle said...

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.

Thanks for the HTML wizardry; I'll give it a crack tomorrow - cheers.

Anonymous said...

So, how satisfied are you with democracy in Australia (it's all I could think about after I went to bed last night)?

Ramon Insertnamehere said...

Kettle, I'm surprised one of the categories for "how satisfied are you with democracy in Australia" isn't "despair".

Unknown said...

It looks like the kind of survey some of my ex-students have come up with. The pairing of those two questions is, as the kidlets would say "heaps fully random".

Kettle said...

Alex, like you mentioned last night, they give you a box to tick to answer these questions when what you really want to do is rail against the whole system for pages and pages.

Ramon, funny you should mention 'despair' because that was the first word that came to mind.

Alex, I've said it before after many hours at the pub, democracy does not work; the people wreck everything! Damn people. Mr Kettle and I have been working on formulating a whole new political system. We've been going for about 10 years and so far have half of a half-baked plan.

For the meantime, there's a box to tick for 'very dissatisfied'.

What about you? Are you satisfied with democracy in Australia? (And what's your favourite retail store?)

Kettle said...

Ha, EMS! Any of your students been on work experience in the public service up Sydney way?

Anonymous said...

Kettle, I must reluctantly agree with you on the democracy thing. You see it in free software development, too. Projects run by wise, pragmatic dictators often do better than projects who try to be all democratic and just devolve into bitter, stagnant factional-infighting. Very sad.

Favourite retail store? Well, there's this mob called Umart that have a few shops in QLD (and one in Melbourne, I think). They sell computer stuff and the idea is that instead of having a normal shop that you go and browse in, you browse online, put in an order and then either go and pick it up or have it delivered (like take-away food). I think it's a nifty idea and their lower costs means they charge less, too. I wish more shops offered a similar service.

How about you?

Kettle said...

Alex I'm down with wise, pragmatic dictators provided they bestow special favours on me, like unending book shop gift vouchers and bottomless cups of tea. Bring on the revolution, I say.

Now we've dealt with political systems we can move onto retail, just as smoothly as question 42 rolled on to question 43...

Hey your Umart sounds mighty fine. They do home delivery? Sweet.

My favourite shop? Better Read Than Dead, book shop on King St Newtown. A friend of mine once bought a book there for someone they were visiting in hospital. When my pal gave said person the book still in the bag with the shop's title, said person was offended, what with the reference to death and all. What do you make of that?

Kettle said...

[PS do you ever just feel so very, very tired?]

Unknown said...

Any of your students been on work experience in the public service up Sydney way?

Yunno, normally I'd laugh at this, but these days you never never know.

When my pal gave said person the book still in the bag with the shop's title, said person was offended, what with the reference to death and all. What do you make of that?

I'd find it amusing, but I should not offer boundaries for anyone's moral compass. No really. I shouldn't.

[PS do you ever just feel so very, very tired?]

Perpetually. That's how I know I'm doing it right.

Kettle said...

Perpetually. That's how I know I'm doing it right.

EMS that's the best thing I've heard all day - cheers.

Anonymous said...

Some people are just really touchy about their mortality, I guess. Odd when it's the only absolute certainty in life.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and in seriousness, if you're feeling tired a lot, you should see a doctor, or have a look at how much exercise you're getting. Serious.