Now we all know that polls and surveys are the tabloid media’s stock-in-trade; they love them as much as Ant loves his Fleshlight gags. But basing whole stories - or worse, a sweeping coverage of a significant issue - on a single survey is lazy, unimaginative and fundamentally dangerous. Today the Herald Sun is running a spread on the ’findings’ (ie. whatever controversial stuff it can extract) of a recent survey of serving Victorian police officers. A precis of some survey results can be downloaded here (note the filename). In short, the survey expresses a need for greater police numbers (fair enough) a need for more men in the force (the ratio of female officers has soared to 23 per cent!) and a lack of confidence in chief commissioner Christine Nixon (she’s a woman too, you see).

And how many serving police officers responded to this optional survey? A total of 3459, or 30 per cent. That’s right, 30 per cent. This posturing, fulminating attack on the hierarchy, composition and methodology of our police force is based on the views of less than one-third of its members. Out-bloody-standing.

There’s a good portion of police members in Victoria hark back to the days of ‘Squizzy’ Taylor, larrikins and pushes, when policing was more simple and criminals were confronted head-on. Courts were strict, prisons were brutal, the coppers were a paramilitary group who took on villians en masse and knocked ’em all over the heads with truncheons. Policemen were tough because they had to be, so the force was gruff, insular and - because it was ugly business with no place for ladies - it also became strongly misogynistic. Thankfully those days are over and the police force has become far more professional and community-minded, a fact that some police members are yet to come to terms with.  In offering this survey as evidence of the state of our police force, even though it reflects the views of 30 per cent of all police, the Herald Sun is pandering to the views of a dubious minority and inviting panic, paranoia and a loss of confidence in Victoria Police itself.

I now invite the Herald Sun to commission an independent survey of all its employees, where they will be asked questions about their working conditions, processes, application of journalistic ethics and, importantly, confidence in senior editorial staff and Uncle Rupert. And if a disgruntled minority at the Herald Sun - and believe me, there is one - come to dominate the survey, will the organisation report this as representative of a crisis in its own ranks?

We love to slag off taxi drivers for being unable to drive, unable to find major landmarks, and unable to speak English. I’ve done it. But honestly try to put yourself into the shoes of a Melbourne taxi driver and understand just how utterly shithouse the job would be. First there’s the pay.

[T]he driver, having split his fares 50/50 with the operator, will earn $8.50 an hour after tax and GST. For the shorter version of a standard 60 to 80-hour week, for full-time cabbies that’s $450. Hardly a rich reward.

That’s when you’re even getting paid the fare.

Three weeks ago, my driver was affable Ranji Mullick, from India’s Punjab, who said, “I’ve had a good run,” before checking himself. “Well, I’ve had two runners, the last one a woman in her 20s, who I drove from Chapel Street (Prahran) to a block of flats in Kensington. She got out, went into the flats to get money to pay me and, of course, I didn’t see her again.”

Plus you have to question whether the paltry coin makes up for the risks.

TAXI driver Praboj Rhani heard the racist insult on a Saturday night, about the same time his shoulders became footrests for one of the three young men in the back seat.

Mr Rhani had collected his passengers in King Street just before midnight, about the time pubs and nightclubs start disgorging the first of their well-tanked clientele. “Drive us to Sunshine West, brown c—,” he was instructed.

As the invective flowed, Mr Rhani, from Rawalpindi in Pakistan’s west, knew he’d be doing no such thing, and pulled over. His firm “Please leave my cab” was met with “Make us, c—”.

So where are the police when passengers get abusive and threaten violence? Oh, that’s right. Victoria’s finest aren’t really the finest.

[Rhani] got out and was met on the pavement by a young policeman, who asked him what the problem was. “My passengers are abusing me, sir, and I don’t want to carry them. This is a dangerous thing, I don’t want to be involved with them.”

Mr Rhani said his entreaties and the policeman’s command to “get back in and drive the cab, you’re a taxi driver, take them to where they want to go” became repetitive. Finally, the policeman became impatient and said: “Get back in the cab and drive the f—ing thing.”

To protect and to serve. Apparently.

Of course, Premier John Brumby has the power to, you know, make laws that increase the safety for taxi drivers and the quality of taxi services but he’s just employing the tactic that is working so well with teachers at the moment: bitch about the quality of those doing the job but do nothing to help those people do it better.

Shortly after becoming Premier, John Brumby said the two worst things about Melbourne were a 42-degree day and the city’s taxis.

Why not do something about it, John?

1) Sunrise
They love Channel Seven’s Sunrise at my gym. It’s on all the televisions and I can’t escape the brain cell-killing, journalism-defiling, populist mundanery when I’m there before work in the mornings. Last week I saw two things that had me groaning out loud:

* A news item voiceover went something like this: “A new survey reveals that Victorians are becoming more tolerant of Asians. It shows that we are more accepting of them in our communities.” The overlay pictures? A smiling white man purchasing groceries from a smiling Asian woman in a corner store.

* The sports “reporter” told us about his experience at the V8 Supercar launch the previous night, spending about 30 seconds on the cars and drivers and two minutes on the V8 Supercar XXXX dancing girls (complete with overlay footage of XXXX dancing girls consisting almost entirely of gratuitous closeups of the girls’ wiggling arses.) After the “reporter” threw back to Cocky Kochy we saw Mel holding her head in her hands. Kochy — being the SNAG we all know him as — asked the “reporter” to talk some more about the XXXX girls. So he did. For another minute. With the footage playing on a loop.

2) Cops with cultural awareness
Whilst walking my bike home the other day I witnessed Victoria’s finest displaying their celebrated cultural sensitivity. A cop on a motorcycle pulled over next to an Asian man in a car at the lights. The cop asked the man to turn left and pull over. The light turned green and the man drove straight through the lights and pulled over. The cop pulled up behind the man, got off his motorbike angrily and stormed up the driver’s window.

COP: (screaming) Why did you drive straight through the lights! I told you to turn left!
MAN: (confused) Uuuh…
COP: (still screaming) When a police officer tells you to do something you have to do it!
MAN: (confused) Uuuh…
COP: (getting hoarse) So if I told you to turn left why did you go straight ahead?
MAN: (panicking) Uuuh…
COP: (normal speaking volume) Um, do you speak English?
MAN: Uuuh…

3) ABC branding
ABC TV has introduced new logos to differentiate between its current and future television channels. As with everything else on ABC this idea has been imported from the UK’s BBC.

Now, watermarking (the faint or not-so-faint white translucent station logo in the corner of the screen) is not a new phenomenon but the ABC have started slapping the new logos on their stream at about 20% transparency and about 150% the size they should be. Fucking distracting, to say the least.

4) Cloverfield
Went to see Cloverfield last night. It was okay — not crap, not brilliant, just okay. The motion sickness thing that I’ve heard all about is totally true because I’ve never seen so many film walkouts in a non-film festival film. I reckon easily a dozen people left, including the girl sitting next to me (not McBec, who was sitting the other side of me.) This poor woman felt so crap that she emptied her giant popcorn on the ground and held the empty container under her face for a while before getting up to leave.

I’ve got to admit that I felt a bit woozy at times and even had to close my eyes once or twice when the handycam wobble got a little bit too much for me. However, McBec, who is the ultimate carsick chick, didn’t feel a thing!

5) Orthographic fascism
When we got home from Cloverfield we watched the end of Ghostbusters on Channel Ten (great film) and the first twenty minutes of Bad Boys just to laugh at Will Smith’s ’90s haircut and Martin Lawrence’s ’90s clothes. In this time I noticed two errors:

* A sign at the entrance to a helipad read: “Authorization Personnel Only”
* A title on a computer screen read: “Guards desk”

I’m so anal I disgust even myself.

The horror:

Prize-wielding Victorian police will be on the lookout for law-abiding cyclists in October in a bid to cut the number of people injured on the roads.

[...]

Cycling gear and accessories will be awarded to cyclists spotted by police as being responsible road users. Those spotted will have their names placed in a draw for the prizes.

I’m tellin’ ya, if the cops pull me over for stopping at a red light with my helmet on while I’m riding to meet Billybob for squash tomorrow and try to give me a Captain Supa SafeT Award I’m gonna go postal. Can you imagine the indignity of being pulled over by a couple of smarmy, cynical cops so they can take your details to put in the prize draw?

How about Victoria Police allocate a few cops to booking the motorists who try to smash me to the ground with their door opening antics or turn in front of me when I want to go straight and have the right-of-way?