AS a cynical old hack I’ve never had much faith in opinion polls.

They were getting it wrong in the early days of the sport and they’re still getting it wrong.

Back in 1948 a major poll had Thomas E. Dewey winning the race for the US presidency with a landslide.

Harry Truman laughed all the way to the White House.

Over there today there are more rows flaring over poll forecasts than over policies.

The poll on the Pennine Reach “rapid bus transport” proposals strikes me as being distinctly odd and probably a waste of our £30,000.

The plan is still being thrown around and rewritten and yet back in June residents were being asked what they thought of it all.

Apparently just over half of the 1,500 telephoned thought it was a good idea. Thought what was a good idea?

That was 1,500 from a population of around a quarter of a million in Darwen, Blackburn, and Hyndburn so it was a very small sample.

It was a lot smaller when you count people who had actually heard about the up-in-the-air scheme – about 470, apparently.

Most of the rest hadn’t a clue what it was all about.

So, of that 470 how many live in Darwen? Dunno. But let’s be generous and say 80.

Well, together with a few friends, I have been carrying out a poll around town and, of the dozens we spoke to, not one has been in favour.

The Pennine proposals haven’t gone down well in Darwen or elsewhere.

No one could understand their mail-shot and local folk made it clear exactly what they thought of it all at those con-sul-ta-tion meetings.

It didn’t take the Rotary Club long to collect more than 3,000 signatures against the plan which includes a bus lane into Blackburn with nowt coming the other way, don’t forget.

I noticed that that particular gem wasn’t highlighted in the survey report – all 50 pages of it – which is available on the council web site.

I have never studied statistics although I am conversant with jargon such as “weighting” and “response bias” and “reliability coefficients” and “statistical noise”.

I don’t feel qualified to be too critical of the poll, but it did rather go on, and on.

There was quite a bit of softening up. “Do you agree or disagree that peak-time traffic congestion is a problem?”

That sort of thing. And I would imagine that anyone not quite comatose towards the end would have agreed to anything to halt the torture.

I took part in a computer survey at a large store at the weekend.

By question 34 I was fed up and told the young lady politely what she could do with her survey.

“Oh, you’re nearly there,” she gushed. “I’ll finish it for you.” And she did.

I haven’t a clue what I was about to agree to as I staggered out, blinking, into the fresh air.

I do hope I wasn’t giving the nod to the £50m Pennine Reach road scheme.