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The 'Phinnancial' side of 'Prophet' Phinn
Wignall's World
Mark Wignall
Sunday, July 01, 2007
At just about the same time as the newly appointed prime minister told a congregation of churchgoers that she was appointed by the 'Almighty' and that they had a 'duty' to support such an appointment or 'the whip would fall' on them and not on her, it came to us that she had had an additional guarantee from 'divine sources' in the form of a man who called himself 'Dr Phinn', 'Pastor Phinn', or 'Prophet Phinn'.
As we were made to understand, he had been her 'spiritual adviser' for many years. Phinn had been regularly giving 'readings' to those who were into that sort of thing and, based on his empowerment via the PM, his stocks had soared into the stratosphere.
Months ago I was told by a woman who worked in a government office that Pastor Phinn had been a regular visitor there, usually from one to three pm. She told me that he had been holding 'services' and giving 'readings,' some quite disturbing to the gullible who sought them. I e-mailed the pastor, but as expected he did not respond.
At about that time I also heard that the 'prophet' was into Foreign Exchange trading. How could this be, I thought, considering the man's much publicised power. If he really had the power to determine the exact or best announcement/election date the prime minister should chose to guarantee an electoral win, was it necessary for him to face the vagaries of the international money markets, considering that FX trading necessitated considerable knowledge of those markets, with the requisite skill and experience needed to wade through waters which could be treacherous if one was a mere tyro dabbling and hoping for beginner's luck?
Why not just choose a 100 to one odds horse due to race at Caymanas Park? Certainly, with his prescience, he would be able to determine the win date. Then, with his clout, it should be no trouble for him to convince the money movers and shakers in Team Portia to 'invest' a few million in the race. In quick time Caymanas Park would make the biggest payout of its life, and goodies for the PNP election train would hit the road stronger than the real manna from heaven.
In recent years, there has been a lot of buzz on FX Trading. One man/company has come forward as the authority on it and that is David Smith/Olint. Although I know that Olint operates on its own and not through any agents, I still made contact with persons close to Smith in an effort to determine if there was some special arrangement between the 'prophet' and Smith/Olint whose experience in FX trading has been paying out to its club members not less than 10% per month over the four years of its sojourn in that market.
Again I was told in no uncertain manner that Phinn is in no way associated with accepting investment funds on behalf of Smith/Olint.
Sometimes the pressures of life make it necessary that God and Mammon must merge. If the prophet has stepped it up a notch and is either doing his own thing or acting as the agent for another, he needs a 'shout out' to those of his flock who are operating under the burdens of his 'prophecies' but are seeing less of his skills in making key 'Phinnancial' investments.
He needs to tell us about this other side of himself. Maybe he could start by telling us if he studied business administration at just about the same time he was earning the 'doctorate' which gives him the added title, 'Doctor' along with 'Prophet.'
Suppressing the Polls
With all of the hype associated with using polls as part of the political propaganda in the present election campaign, at times we seem to forget that there are 2.7 million men, women and children in this country, most of whom are looking to those in the political jungle for effective leadership.
The ruling PNP has had an unbroken stretch of 18 years and from my assessments, the majority of the voting population in this country is about to give it a send-off come the next elections. At one level there are those who will be saying to it, thanks for the highways and the huge hotels and some housing benefits through the NHT.
Others will be saying to the PNP that in its time it has institutionalised corruption, and government has been nothing more than a gang of mostly men and some women who have gathered for the sole purpose of raiding this country and enriching themselves.
We are pretty much on the eve of an election and neither of the two main political parties has released a manifesto. That, of course, is a dead giveaway that producing a manifesto has nothing to do with presenting policies to those in the electorate who are interested in such matters. A sad fact is Jamaica is pretty much a nation overrun with ignorance, and the best place to hide anything of value is between the pages of a book.
That aside, both the PNP and JLP are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the manifesto question, trying to upstage the other with the more impressive list and layout. The party which produces the manifesto last can simply co-opt the first and 'refine' its policies based on plagiarism.
In recent weeks, the Observer has come under fire by some in the PNP who have accused it of hiding poll numbers which have been flattering to the PNP. Either before or in the interim, the Observer, through Gorstew Limited, parted company with the Stone Team, the organisation which had been run by Rosemarie Stone, my sister, and myself since 1993 but sold over a year ago to Gorstew.
As I understand it, as of now the Stone Team is dormant. The Observer now has the choice of reappointing managers and operators of the polling outfit, or it can contract with other pollsters as it did recently with Don Anderson.
Further down the road, the Gleaner has been using PNP pollster Bill Johnson to conduct its polls. Johnson has conducted close to 20 constituency polls on behalf of the Gleaner and about five of those have been published. It seems that the Gleaner has decided that it is best to publish the findings of a national poll done by Johnson instead of the results of the remaining constituency polls.
As I have pointed out in recent columns, I have problems with the length of Johnson's questionnaires and his poll questions. I cannot comment on his methodology because I do not know it. The methodologies of pollsters can be laid bare for all to see, but once one hits the ground, those who have been tutored in survey methodology in middle-class, urban settings will have a rude awakening, as realities outside of the classroom present themselves as the most pressing challenge in conducting research in the Jamaican setting.
Even with that, if a pollster has been lucky enough to be funded to the extent of 20 constituency polls, there ought to be some, if not direct, correlation between the results at the constituency level and the findings on the national front.
For weeks the PNP has been feeding some of us misinformation on constituencies where very strong JLP candidates have been operating. The PNP has been telling us that in West Portland Daryl Vaz is about four percentage points behind the PNP's Abe Dabdoub. In St Andrew North-West the PNP has fed us a diet of the JLP's Derrick Smith getting tired and on the verge of losing his seat. PNP spin doctors have targeted Karl Samuda in North-Central St Andrew and it has told us that he is about to lose the seat to a PNP contender that very few people know about.
In North-East Manchester the PNP has been doing an excellent job of misinformation by spreading the 'news' that the JLP's Audley Shaw is on the way out.
The reality is, the JLP candidates named, Vaz, Smith, Samuda and Shaw are very firm in their constituencies, with newcomer Vaz set to topple the tepid but nasty politics of Dabdoub.
A recent poll said to be conducted by Johnson shows favourability preferences as follows:
Favourable Vaz 39% Favourable Dabdoub 30%
Unfavourable 30% Unfavourable 40%
Likely voting on candidates
Probably PNP 15% Probably JLP 8%
Definitely PNP 20% Definitely JLP 33%
Totals PNP 35% JLP 41%
That is not my poll, just something 'pushed under my door'. And that does not indicate a 4% lead for Dabdoub.
For many weeks now I had been hearing that the famed and well-liked PNP man Roger Clarke had been having terrible experiences in Central Westmoreland, a constituency which is called PNP country.
Another poll, said to be a Bill Johnson one, was again pushed under my door and it indicated the following:
Person whom you would most like to win:
The JLP's Hammond 34%
The PNP's Clarke 34%
Favourability preferences
Favourable Hammond JLP 42% Favourable Clarke 35%
Unfavourable 30% Unfavourable Clarke 30%
It is quite clear to me that the Gleaner has made a decision not to publish poll results which are favourable to the JLP. Just prior to the upcoming elections, battle lines are drawn and corporate Jamaica is head and toe with the politics.
The fact is, the PNP's own numbers, even those most kind to the JLP, are indicating a MINIMUM of 34 seats for the JLP. Not my numbers. My numbers begin at 37 seats for the JLP.
In addition, the big concern in the PNP is that the JLP is making more than a showing in seats where it ought not to, simply because these seats have been known to be solid PNP seats. The very fact that these polls (there are more, some too shocking to the PNP) are not being published speaks to fear in the PNP camp and, at the national level, the recent record of Bill Johnson in polling in the region.
One person sent me the following; a record of Johnson's recent polling:
"Bill Johnson's track record at predicting actual results is very poor:
"In the Bahamian general elections of May 2002 Johnson's poll for Hubert Ingraham's Free National Movement assured them of a comfortable margin of victory. The opposition Progressive Liberal Party of Perry Christie won by a landslide with 51.8% of the vote compared to the FMN's 40.9%. The actual margin was 10.9 percentage points. So Johnson was off by at least 11 percentage points.
"In 2002 Bill Johnson's poll done for the PNP on October 12-13 2002 he found PNP 42% to JLP's 29% or a predicted outcome of PNP 59% to JLP 41% . The actual outcome on Election Day, October 16, 2002 (three days later) was PNP 52.2% to the JLP's 47.2%. Johnson was off by seven percentage points. Johnson had also predicted a 74% voter turnout. He was 16 percentage points off the mark.
"In the St Lucia General Elections of December 11, 2006, Bill Johnson predicted that Kenny Anthony's St Lucia Labour Party would win by at least eight percentage points. The actual outcome was that John Compton's UWP won with 51.4% to the SLP's 48.2%. Johnson was off by 10 percentage points. In fact, for the St Lucian election, Bill Johnson had confidently predicted that the SLP would have won the seat count 14-3. The actual outcome was 11-6 in favour of the UWP."
Bill Johnson has been on radio denying that certain results of constituency polls are his. Are they mine? No. Are they Don Anderson's? Does not seem so. Then who else do they belong to? Which other major pollster is there conducting these very expensive surveys?
The reality is, the PNP and its surrogates are playing politics with the polls simply because they know that my findings are more reflective of the actual count on the ground.
The PNP is in trouble in North-West Clarendon, Central Westmoreland, Western Portland, Western St Mary, South-East St Mary, North-West St Catherine, North-West St Ann, South-East St Elizabeth and East-Central St Catherine to name a few.
Years ago, the PNP would have safely banked these seats as 'safe'. Not anymore.
Phinn planning vigil with PNP politicians?
The information I have is that on his return, some in the PNP, that is, those who believe in the nonsense, would like Phinn to pray with them, or, he has been able to convince them that they need to be taken closer to God. Amen for that!
As I understand it, the plan is to take them to the 'mountain top' where they will be that much closer in communion with God. Amen for that!
My suggestion is that 'Prophet' Phinn should take some of those from the media house 'down the road' along with a certain pollster. They need the anointing too.
Mad man policeman
What is really wrong with us? Police chase a man of unsound mind onto the Ardenne School compound, shoot him and in the process wound a student and traumatise the entire school population. That is not the result of poor training. That is sheer stupidity and madness!
In the past, policemen have shot up buses and this is not the first time that they have chased a person onto a school compound and shot the person dead. Some years ago, Dr Dennis Minott witnessed just such an incident.
Ardenne is one of our better schools, and it just did not need this type of intervention. In fact, what business is it of the police to be chasing down (with guns) someone said to be of unsound mind?
The real mad persons are very obvious to see. They operate close to us and they are really scary. And they have guns too.
Congrats to Commissioner Lucius Thomas who has been operating much along the lines of trying to patch the bottom of the basket given to him to tote water. He acted swiftly, and it is a pity he did not have the power to fire the cop/s involved.
Wignall's World
Mark Wignall
Sunday, July 01, 2007
At just about the same time as the newly appointed prime minister told a congregation of churchgoers that she was appointed by the 'Almighty' and that they had a 'duty' to support such an appointment or 'the whip would fall' on them and not on her, it came to us that she had had an additional guarantee from 'divine sources' in the form of a man who called himself 'Dr Phinn', 'Pastor Phinn', or 'Prophet Phinn'.
As we were made to understand, he had been her 'spiritual adviser' for many years. Phinn had been regularly giving 'readings' to those who were into that sort of thing and, based on his empowerment via the PM, his stocks had soared into the stratosphere.
Months ago I was told by a woman who worked in a government office that Pastor Phinn had been a regular visitor there, usually from one to three pm. She told me that he had been holding 'services' and giving 'readings,' some quite disturbing to the gullible who sought them. I e-mailed the pastor, but as expected he did not respond.
At about that time I also heard that the 'prophet' was into Foreign Exchange trading. How could this be, I thought, considering the man's much publicised power. If he really had the power to determine the exact or best announcement/election date the prime minister should chose to guarantee an electoral win, was it necessary for him to face the vagaries of the international money markets, considering that FX trading necessitated considerable knowledge of those markets, with the requisite skill and experience needed to wade through waters which could be treacherous if one was a mere tyro dabbling and hoping for beginner's luck?
Why not just choose a 100 to one odds horse due to race at Caymanas Park? Certainly, with his prescience, he would be able to determine the win date. Then, with his clout, it should be no trouble for him to convince the money movers and shakers in Team Portia to 'invest' a few million in the race. In quick time Caymanas Park would make the biggest payout of its life, and goodies for the PNP election train would hit the road stronger than the real manna from heaven.
In recent years, there has been a lot of buzz on FX Trading. One man/company has come forward as the authority on it and that is David Smith/Olint. Although I know that Olint operates on its own and not through any agents, I still made contact with persons close to Smith in an effort to determine if there was some special arrangement between the 'prophet' and Smith/Olint whose experience in FX trading has been paying out to its club members not less than 10% per month over the four years of its sojourn in that market.
Again I was told in no uncertain manner that Phinn is in no way associated with accepting investment funds on behalf of Smith/Olint.
Sometimes the pressures of life make it necessary that God and Mammon must merge. If the prophet has stepped it up a notch and is either doing his own thing or acting as the agent for another, he needs a 'shout out' to those of his flock who are operating under the burdens of his 'prophecies' but are seeing less of his skills in making key 'Phinnancial' investments.
He needs to tell us about this other side of himself. Maybe he could start by telling us if he studied business administration at just about the same time he was earning the 'doctorate' which gives him the added title, 'Doctor' along with 'Prophet.'
Suppressing the Polls
With all of the hype associated with using polls as part of the political propaganda in the present election campaign, at times we seem to forget that there are 2.7 million men, women and children in this country, most of whom are looking to those in the political jungle for effective leadership.
The ruling PNP has had an unbroken stretch of 18 years and from my assessments, the majority of the voting population in this country is about to give it a send-off come the next elections. At one level there are those who will be saying to it, thanks for the highways and the huge hotels and some housing benefits through the NHT.
Others will be saying to the PNP that in its time it has institutionalised corruption, and government has been nothing more than a gang of mostly men and some women who have gathered for the sole purpose of raiding this country and enriching themselves.
We are pretty much on the eve of an election and neither of the two main political parties has released a manifesto. That, of course, is a dead giveaway that producing a manifesto has nothing to do with presenting policies to those in the electorate who are interested in such matters. A sad fact is Jamaica is pretty much a nation overrun with ignorance, and the best place to hide anything of value is between the pages of a book.
That aside, both the PNP and JLP are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the manifesto question, trying to upstage the other with the more impressive list and layout. The party which produces the manifesto last can simply co-opt the first and 'refine' its policies based on plagiarism.
In recent weeks, the Observer has come under fire by some in the PNP who have accused it of hiding poll numbers which have been flattering to the PNP. Either before or in the interim, the Observer, through Gorstew Limited, parted company with the Stone Team, the organisation which had been run by Rosemarie Stone, my sister, and myself since 1993 but sold over a year ago to Gorstew.
As I understand it, as of now the Stone Team is dormant. The Observer now has the choice of reappointing managers and operators of the polling outfit, or it can contract with other pollsters as it did recently with Don Anderson.
Further down the road, the Gleaner has been using PNP pollster Bill Johnson to conduct its polls. Johnson has conducted close to 20 constituency polls on behalf of the Gleaner and about five of those have been published. It seems that the Gleaner has decided that it is best to publish the findings of a national poll done by Johnson instead of the results of the remaining constituency polls.
As I have pointed out in recent columns, I have problems with the length of Johnson's questionnaires and his poll questions. I cannot comment on his methodology because I do not know it. The methodologies of pollsters can be laid bare for all to see, but once one hits the ground, those who have been tutored in survey methodology in middle-class, urban settings will have a rude awakening, as realities outside of the classroom present themselves as the most pressing challenge in conducting research in the Jamaican setting.
Even with that, if a pollster has been lucky enough to be funded to the extent of 20 constituency polls, there ought to be some, if not direct, correlation between the results at the constituency level and the findings on the national front.
For weeks the PNP has been feeding some of us misinformation on constituencies where very strong JLP candidates have been operating. The PNP has been telling us that in West Portland Daryl Vaz is about four percentage points behind the PNP's Abe Dabdoub. In St Andrew North-West the PNP has fed us a diet of the JLP's Derrick Smith getting tired and on the verge of losing his seat. PNP spin doctors have targeted Karl Samuda in North-Central St Andrew and it has told us that he is about to lose the seat to a PNP contender that very few people know about.
In North-East Manchester the PNP has been doing an excellent job of misinformation by spreading the 'news' that the JLP's Audley Shaw is on the way out.
The reality is, the JLP candidates named, Vaz, Smith, Samuda and Shaw are very firm in their constituencies, with newcomer Vaz set to topple the tepid but nasty politics of Dabdoub.
A recent poll said to be conducted by Johnson shows favourability preferences as follows:
Favourable Vaz 39% Favourable Dabdoub 30%
Unfavourable 30% Unfavourable 40%
Likely voting on candidates
Probably PNP 15% Probably JLP 8%
Definitely PNP 20% Definitely JLP 33%
Totals PNP 35% JLP 41%
That is not my poll, just something 'pushed under my door'. And that does not indicate a 4% lead for Dabdoub.
For many weeks now I had been hearing that the famed and well-liked PNP man Roger Clarke had been having terrible experiences in Central Westmoreland, a constituency which is called PNP country.
Another poll, said to be a Bill Johnson one, was again pushed under my door and it indicated the following:
Person whom you would most like to win:
The JLP's Hammond 34%
The PNP's Clarke 34%
Favourability preferences
Favourable Hammond JLP 42% Favourable Clarke 35%
Unfavourable 30% Unfavourable Clarke 30%
It is quite clear to me that the Gleaner has made a decision not to publish poll results which are favourable to the JLP. Just prior to the upcoming elections, battle lines are drawn and corporate Jamaica is head and toe with the politics.
The fact is, the PNP's own numbers, even those most kind to the JLP, are indicating a MINIMUM of 34 seats for the JLP. Not my numbers. My numbers begin at 37 seats for the JLP.
In addition, the big concern in the PNP is that the JLP is making more than a showing in seats where it ought not to, simply because these seats have been known to be solid PNP seats. The very fact that these polls (there are more, some too shocking to the PNP) are not being published speaks to fear in the PNP camp and, at the national level, the recent record of Bill Johnson in polling in the region.
One person sent me the following; a record of Johnson's recent polling:
"Bill Johnson's track record at predicting actual results is very poor:
"In the Bahamian general elections of May 2002 Johnson's poll for Hubert Ingraham's Free National Movement assured them of a comfortable margin of victory. The opposition Progressive Liberal Party of Perry Christie won by a landslide with 51.8% of the vote compared to the FMN's 40.9%. The actual margin was 10.9 percentage points. So Johnson was off by at least 11 percentage points.
"In 2002 Bill Johnson's poll done for the PNP on October 12-13 2002 he found PNP 42% to JLP's 29% or a predicted outcome of PNP 59% to JLP 41% . The actual outcome on Election Day, October 16, 2002 (three days later) was PNP 52.2% to the JLP's 47.2%. Johnson was off by seven percentage points. Johnson had also predicted a 74% voter turnout. He was 16 percentage points off the mark.
"In the St Lucia General Elections of December 11, 2006, Bill Johnson predicted that Kenny Anthony's St Lucia Labour Party would win by at least eight percentage points. The actual outcome was that John Compton's UWP won with 51.4% to the SLP's 48.2%. Johnson was off by 10 percentage points. In fact, for the St Lucian election, Bill Johnson had confidently predicted that the SLP would have won the seat count 14-3. The actual outcome was 11-6 in favour of the UWP."
Bill Johnson has been on radio denying that certain results of constituency polls are his. Are they mine? No. Are they Don Anderson's? Does not seem so. Then who else do they belong to? Which other major pollster is there conducting these very expensive surveys?
The reality is, the PNP and its surrogates are playing politics with the polls simply because they know that my findings are more reflective of the actual count on the ground.
The PNP is in trouble in North-West Clarendon, Central Westmoreland, Western Portland, Western St Mary, South-East St Mary, North-West St Catherine, North-West St Ann, South-East St Elizabeth and East-Central St Catherine to name a few.
Years ago, the PNP would have safely banked these seats as 'safe'. Not anymore.
Phinn planning vigil with PNP politicians?
The information I have is that on his return, some in the PNP, that is, those who believe in the nonsense, would like Phinn to pray with them, or, he has been able to convince them that they need to be taken closer to God. Amen for that!
As I understand it, the plan is to take them to the 'mountain top' where they will be that much closer in communion with God. Amen for that!
My suggestion is that 'Prophet' Phinn should take some of those from the media house 'down the road' along with a certain pollster. They need the anointing too.
Mad man policeman
What is really wrong with us? Police chase a man of unsound mind onto the Ardenne School compound, shoot him and in the process wound a student and traumatise the entire school population. That is not the result of poor training. That is sheer stupidity and madness!
In the past, policemen have shot up buses and this is not the first time that they have chased a person onto a school compound and shot the person dead. Some years ago, Dr Dennis Minott witnessed just such an incident.
Ardenne is one of our better schools, and it just did not need this type of intervention. In fact, what business is it of the police to be chasing down (with guns) someone said to be of unsound mind?
The real mad persons are very obvious to see. They operate close to us and they are really scary. And they have guns too.
Congrats to Commissioner Lucius Thomas who has been operating much along the lines of trying to patch the bottom of the basket given to him to tote water. He acted swiftly, and it is a pity he did not have the power to fire the cop/s involved.
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