Well done government and the media

The statistics surprised me Bluebell but it just goes to prove we are constantly drip fed these pieces of information by the media that would have us believe the worst of everything.

Yes Gilly - we could call it misinformation!! Ian Duncan-Smith does it all the time with benefit figures. I can't help but see it as part of a right wing conspiracy and it shows the importance of reading a newspaper that has some integrity.

Name one, Bluebell!

Not a newspaper, but a fortnightly magazine - I trust Private Eye.

I think we have seen in some of the debates on this forum that some people will continue to believe that benefit fraud costs billions, no matter how often we give the correct figures. People will believe whatever supports their own prejudices.

Private Eye doesn't always get it right Greatnan. Sometimes they are misled by the 'ring of truth' as R. Ingrams used to call it.
They supported Dr Andrew Wakefield for years over his claims that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism - he has since been discredited and struck off the medical register.

Good article. Makes a pleasant change from the propaganda churned out by the majority of our papers.

I see it came from an Ipsos Mori poll. Personally I refuse to do phone surveys as do many people I know, so I wonder if the sample was truly representative.

Feetle- I can name two - you know very well what they are so stop being provocative

The last phone survey I took part in was definitely the last for me.
It started off with perfectly normal questions which then degenerated into what sort of tights was I wearing and how the interviewer would like to get his hand inside my knickers

Grace - I agree there is a debate to be had about polls in general but as for telephone v face to face, there is some evidence that people are more honest on the phone because its more impersonal. I suppose I accept the findings of this survey because it chimes with my experience of people getting these facts wrong ( and of governments and most of the media feeding this rubbish)

I don't dispute your point Bluebell - just making the point that surveys can be, shall we say "slanted" towards certain conclusions. I assume telephone surveys are names taken at random from the phone book - but many people are ex-directory or perhaps from other databases, but again so are those dratted PPI claim calls. I would be interested to know how any "representative sample "was arrived at.,but as I said, don't necessarily dispute the findings - the opinion of the man on the street or the Clapham omnibus is rarely infallible and as for accuracy in the media - you only have to know a little about any topic to spot glaring inaccuracies in newspaper reports.

These polls are very well controlled. They would have finished up with a cross section of society.

I guess it just shows that people prefer to look on the black side than actually get at the true facts. No one is to blame. It's just the way people are.

People are tied up with their own lives. I bet more people read the lifestyle/sports pages of newspapers than the politics sections. You can't blame the government, or the media. The facts are out there.

From past experience of door-to-door political canvassing, I am not at all surprised at these findings. People will believe whatever confirms their prejudices.

I think the Kinsey Report and that by Shere Hite were both compiled through voluntary questionnaires. It occurred to me that women who had no interest in sexuality would simply not respond and this would skew the results. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.