Are people’s viewpoint snapshots more reliable predictors of election outcome than horoscopes or reading tea leaves? Should they be allowed in elections? In the run-up to elections and in between, the public is bombarded with surveys and polls revealing views of random samples of voters, snapshot opinions of think-tanks, focus groups and ordinary men and women in their guises as social types, income earners, marrieds, homeowners, benefit recipients, taxpayers, consumers. This is a regular marketing tool, but in elections, the real question is: do poll findings drive public opinion or accurately reflect it? If on a given day, say, 79% of single mothers answer the voting intention question by saying it’ll be Party A, does that influence other single mothers to believe … Read entire article »

Big Brother systems watch each UK citizen 3,000 times and record over 3,000 pieces of personal information, every week. These figures were unearthed by the Daily Telegraph in August 2008, and on one level are strangely reassuring – more cameras (one for every 10 people) should mean less crime. Channel 4 News estimated in 2004, Britain had 4 million public and private cameras, 20% of the global total. However, more crime is being committed, so are Brits being watched to meet other agendas? When people feel watched by eyes on posters (like recently at the rail station in Brighton, England), the effect is beneficial. When motorists see a cardboard cut-out of a police car at a roadside, they reduce speed instinctively. Either way, watching eyes, … Read entire article »

What Politicians Said and Didn’t Say, But People Think They Did Politicians love to coin a winning catchphrase, but often the media do it for them, even if it wasn’t what they actually said. That can be a great political help or not. Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was lampooned mercilessly for saying: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know”. In the context of government and war, it is possibly factually correct. Things That They Actually Said For him, it was but one of many gems, (‘the way … Read entire article »

Changing Time in Our Lives is a Trap for Any Government Whether it’s abolishing British Summer Time, fixing Easter Sunday or changing school terms and day timings, governments undertake such controversy at their peril. Christmas Day is fixed, Remembrance Sunday is always the nearest one to 11th November. So how hard is to agree on Easter? Well, an Act of Parliament of 1928 allows it to be the nearest Sunday to 12 April, but it requires agreement of the churches. In the meantime, our Easter floats variously between 22 March and 25 April each year. Scrapping British Summer Time As governments run out of time, they sometimes focus on issues they hope will distract public and media. The old idea of abolishing British Summer Time … Read entire article »