british public wrong about nearly everything, survey shows

[alasdairm]

british public wrong about nearly everything, survey shows

Research shows public opinion often deviates from facts on key social issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration

A new survey for the Royal Statistical Society and King's College London shows public opinion is repeatedly off the mark on issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration.

The research, carried out by Ipsos Mori from a phone survey of 1,015 people aged 16 to 75, lists ten misconceptions held by the British public. Among the biggest misconceptions are:

- Benefit fraud: the public think that £24 of every £100 of benefits is fraudulently claimed. Official estimates are that just 70 pence in every £100 is fraudulent - so the public conception is out by a factor of 34.

- Immigration: some 31 per cent of the population is thought to consist of recent immigrants, when the figure is actually 13 per cent. Even including illegal immigrants, the figure is only about 15 per cent. On the issue of ethnicity, black and Asian people are thought to make up 30 per cent of the population, when the figure is closer to 11 per cent.
...

(source: the independent)

well, what do you have to say for yourselves?



alasdair

 

[One Thousand Words]

That can't be right surely

 

[BlindHelperMonkey]

kiwis would be even worse


and nobody knows how many illegal immigrants are carwashing their way around the country. thats the problem. certainly more than 2%, though. i dont know where they pulled that from



on the whole though, i would agree

 

[Ceres]

see BHM, you are wrong about nearly everything.

 

[Marmalade]

Isn't this the thing that Ben posted about yesterday? He gave us charts and graphs and everything.

You just posted this so we'd notice your fancy new title, go on, admit it.

 

[Pagey]

Isn't this the thing that Ben posted about yesterday? He gave us charts and graphs and everything.

Yeah that's what I was thinking.

 

[Myshkin]

You just posted this so we'd notice your fancy new title, go on, admit it.

It is one hell of a fancy title though, ain't it?

 

[The Liberal Media]

british public wrong about nearly everything, survey shows

Research shows public opinion often deviates from facts on key social issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration (source: the independent)

well, what do you have to say for yourselves?



alasdair

You have a bloody cheek, your bloody Scottish !!!

Many years of that Sacramento sun has obviously fried your brain

 

[The Liberal Media]

nice to know 0.7% of all benefits are fraudulant

The way the Daily mail goes on about it you would think it was 70%

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/jan/08/uk-benefit-welfare-spending#data

Benefit spending is constantly in the news but how much do we really know about where the benefits money goes in the UK?

Well, we have collected the data as part of our annual analysis of UK public spending. It shows how benefit spending dominates the UK's budget each year - but it also breaks it down in detail.

What it shows is that the Department for Welfare and Pensions is the biggest spending department in the UK - spending £166.98bn in 2011-12, which is Of that huge sum, £159bn was spent on benefits - an increase of 1.1% on the previous year. That is 23% of all public spending.

Ask people where that money goes and the assumptions might be on unemployment or incapacity benefit. In fact, 47% of UK benefit spending goes on state pensions of £74.22bn a year, more than the £48.2bn the UK spends on servicing its debt.

It's followed by housing benefit of £16.94bn (+5.2%) and Disability living allowance of £12.57bn (+3.3%). Jobseekers' allowance is actually one of the smaller benefits - £4.91bn in 2011-12, an increase of 7.6% on the previous year.

 

[Urbain]

Because the majority of the British public read The Sun newspaper, and thus believe anything written in bold lettering.

Why have people forsaken the desire to find out information for themselves? Insted, heads are filled with rediculous misinformation and naievity.

 

[Marmalade]

It is one hell of a fancy title though, ain't it?

It is, but I can't help but add something like .. 'for the Ministry of Silly Walks' straight after it.

It's almost like it's one of those non-positions

 

[BlindHelperMonkey]

so presumably benefit fraud is now eradicated, they knowing exactly who's doing it and all




and ceres, eadd's very own expert on white, middle class nonissues. benefit doesnt just mean posh-do for a charity, you twit

 

[alasdairm]

Because the majority of the British public read The Sun newspaper, and thus believe anything written in bold lettering.

Why have people forsaken the desire to find out information for themselves? Insted, heads are filled with rediculous misinformation and naievity.

willful ignorance and lack of circumspection are criticisms leveled at americans all the time but, in my experience, they're criticisms which no longer apply (or ever applied) solely to americans...

alasdair

 

[knock]

Because the majority of the British public read The Sun newspaper, and thus believe anything written in bold lettering.

Why have people forsaken the desire to find out information for themselves? Insted, heads are filled with rediculous misinformation and naievity.

Newspapers are actually read by fewer and fewer people.

Out of 63 million people, 2.5 million buy the Sun. Edit: Admittedly a lot of that 63 million are infants! 51 million are adults.

I saw one today though. The cover story was about some footballer with a drug problem. Yawn.

Here's a better statistic.

The Sun readership estimates for survey ending June 2012

Reach:
It was read by 7,244,000 adults.

Percentage reach:
It was read by 14.4% of the adult population.

 

[class-a-team]

Eejits!

 

[One Thousand Words]

aussies will be all out for 150 today. we always piss up the batting on the first innings of a series, theyve had their chance. no mercy

No wonder William hill will never go out of business

 

[StrutterGear]

Anyone who has time to do a phone survey probably isn't that intelligent anyway tbh

 

[BecomingJulie]

I've never trusted anything people say in surveys; and especially not since hearing that according to surveys, men have sex with women twice as often as women have sex with men.

It's just human nature, if not to lie outright then to embroider the truth a little on surveys. We're pack animals underneath, and the instinct to please other members of the pack manifests itself as a tendency to answer questions as one thinks the asker wishes to hear rather than 100% honestly. A well-designed experiment would ask different groups of people essentially the same questions, but phrased differently so as to eliminate this bias. A corporate-sponsored survey, seeking to reflect a particular idea, would deliberately exploit it by asking leading questions .....

 

[Ismene]

black and Asian people are thought to make up 30 per cent of the population, when the figure is closer to 11 per cent.

Perhaps if you take into account the entire population of the UK including the scottish highlands it's 11%, but if you get into big cities like Leicester then it will be 30-50% immigrant. So I think you could argue the public are about right on that one.