Editor:
Re: Surrey scrapes by with average grades, Oct. 9.
The scorn heaped on Surrey for “scraping by” with just an average grade is highly misplaced.
And that because the grade was based on a totally deceptive study; deceptive because the results came from a voluntary, Internet survey.
As any experienced pollster will attest to, the absolutely worst procedure to get the overall view of a large number of people is a write-in poll.
Those who have any negative feelings, or who have had any problems, are quite likely to take the opportunity to write in and grouse… voluntarily.
The contented folks are likely to ignore the poll and traipse along with their lives. The outcome is automatically skewed towards the negative.
Also, in B.C., about 25 per cent of the masses do not have access to the Internet, so the views of that group do not make it to the results column.
I hereby award the City of Surrey a grade of two levels above “average”!
David Poole, Surrey