On 17th April on Radio 4's satirical programme “The Vote Now Show” Jon Holmes presented a pre-recorded piece with the aim of seeing if he could find anyone to predict the result of the forthcoming UK General Election.
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He first visited the polling company YouGov followed by David Cowling, Editor, BBC Political Research. Neither could give definitive answers.
He then visited, well, let Jon take up the story... [Transcription below]
So, to recap,
1 The job of an astrologer is to keep him/herself popular by Making Positive Predictions which everybody likes the sound of;
2 Astrologers can be very successful if their predictions are so vague that you could read anything you wanted into them;
3 If they are sufficiently vague they can never get into trouble;
4 Being vague is something astrologers should be proud of;
5 Astrology is balls.
You can catch the full episode on BBC Radio 4 Extra for the next few days and on the iPlayer for the next three weeks here.
Transcription:
JH The polls can't tell me, he can't tell me. Where next? The next logical step, of course. Time to meet Jonathan Cainer the astrologer from the Daily Mail
JC Of course the trouble predicting an election or the outcome of any competitive sport or activity is that you deeply upset the people who'd rather wish that the event went the other way.
JH Yes, I suppose you do but that's part of the job though isn't it so you've got to, um...
JC Not really
JH Oh
JC The thing is you... The job of an astrologer is to keep yourself popular by making positive predictions which everybody likes the sound of. If I were to stick my neck out and predict the result of this election not only would I upset all the people who didn't want that to be the result but at the same time I'd lay myself open to terrible mockery should I turn out to be wrong.
JH But again, isn't that part of the risk of your job anyway?
JC Not if you can avoid it, I mean Nostradamus made a very successful career out of giving his predictions in cryptic French and Latin puzzles and therefore anyone could interpret anything into (sic) and so he was always right when you wanted him to be right and never got into trouble for saying anything which you could hold him to account for.
JH Which is basically saying astrology is balls and so I just say what I think people will like. But on your behalf I persisted.
JH So the answer is that you can't predict the outcome of the General Election
JC Astrologers have a long, proud tradition of being vague wherever possible and I would be absolutely insane to stick my neck on the line for it.
JH But look, I wasn't going to give up right 'cause he's got mystical powers, so I asked him again outright, “Who is going to win the Election?”
JC I'm trying to steer as clear as I can of answering that question.
JH I can tell that, yep. What's the... I'm Taurus
JC Are you?
JH So what's the... what am I typically? What are typical Taurean...
JC To be a Taurean is to be tenacious; it's to be very fond of...
JH Asking questions that people don't want to answer?
JC Absolutely, you wouldn't give up. So this could be a long interview.
JH It wasn't because I've stopped him there. You know, fat lot of help that was; we're still no closer.
Posted by @christheneck
Posted by @christheneck
