Why is the National Statistics Office working for the president’s foundation?

I absolutely cannot bear the way incongruous situations are presented to the public as perfectly normal, and no questions are asked.

In the course of the last few days, the President’s Foundation for the Wellbeing of Society (this is Marie Louise Coleiro Preca’s specially-created Eva Peron vehicle) has informed the press twice of ‘studies’ it is carrying out, one into the effect of the internet on young people’s lives, and the other on ‘couple relationships’.

In each case, it transpires that it is not the President’s Foundation which is working on the studies at all, but the National Statistics Office which is working on them for the President’s Foundation.

Where do these people get off thinking that anything marked ‘government’ is at their personal service?

The National Statistics Office is there to research and report on national statistics for state purposes only. It is not there to do private work for a foundation set up by a president.

Secondly, the National Statistics Office deals only in statistics: in other words, hard facts and numbers and not opinion polls. When you ring round people’s homes to ask them what they think about their internet use or their relationship as a couple, that is not statistical research. That is an opinion poll or survey.

Research into the relationship between couples cannot be conducted by telephone surveys carried out by the state office of statistics. That is the work of academic researchers.

The same goes for the effect of the internet on young people’s lives. It is definitely not the stuff of telephone polling by people sitting at desks.

And that is quite apart from the fact that the NSO shouldn’t be put to work for Marie Louise Coleiro Preca’s foundation in the first place.

Unbelievable.