British public wrong about nearly everything, survey shows (sorry but that's the real headline!)

[LeftishBrit]

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....

(more at link)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-public-wrong-about-nearly-everything-survey-shows-8697821.html


If we are so badly informed, we didn't get all that wrong info out of thin air; and, much as Govey might want us to, we can hardly Blame the Teachers! I'm afraid that much of it stems from our media earning lots of money by lying to us!

[Sanity Claws]

1. If you ever look at the Daily Mail online, you can see why people are so misinformed

Mass media is nothing but a propaganda tool. It has lost any facade of being an educational tool.

[LeftishBrit]

3. This just about sums up the Daily Fail:

http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/11/28/best-daily-mail-corrections-column-ever/

The Sun (Murdoch) sells even more than the Hate-Mail and between them and the Express, they spread enough lies to make Pinocchio's nose extend right across the Atlantic (which could be a good symbol for what the Murdoch media does).

In the UK, it's not just a question of seeing it online; these tabloids are everywhere. And though the broadsheets are generally better than the tabloids, they are not perfect, and in the last few years the Daily Telegraph in particular has gone from being the 'Torygraph' but generally reliable for news, to a far-right propaganda sheet, with a lot of obvious collaboration with American Republicans.

Our TV news is much better than what Americans seem to get (i.e. Fox News); but our newspapers are worse.

[truebrit71]

5. The folks that read that rag, and post on it's online site are collectively the dumbest people...

...on earth....

Really, really, REALLY fucking stupid people...

[Laelth]

2. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Plus: The Guardian cannot construct a decent test of whether people are wrong

I took their test: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/quiz/2013/jul/10/britons-wrong-are-you

and got 8 out of 10 right. One I got wrong was "what percentage of people voted in the last general election". It turns out they wanted the figure for the turnout, ie percentage of registered voters (so, only over 18s, not those in prison, not those unregistered for some reason). The 'incorrect' answer I chose, while lower than the actual figure for percentage of people, was actually closer than the one the Guardian wanted. Lots of people complained in the associated article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/reality-check/2013/jul/09/crime-teen-pregnancy-religion-statistics-perceptions

It now reads "What percentage of the British electorate voted in the last general election? "

[The King of Prussia]

6. I got 9/10

over-estimated the penetration Twitter has achieved

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. The other one I got wrong was 'spending more on transport, or policing and criminal justice'

And it turns out that's arguable too. The survey they gave the public says they got the figures from The Guardian's own Datablog - the survey puts it as "policing and criminal justice £5.63bn, transport £12.37bn". But it you look at the Guardian's pdf, it shows the Dept. of Transport as £12.73bn (so I suspect a misprint there for '37' v. '73'), and 'crime and policing' as a section of the Home Office, at £5.63bn - and the Ministry of Justice as separate from the Home Office, with a budget of £8.55bn - which includes prisons, probation, courts and tribunals service, criminal legal aid and so on - al of which I'd say come under 'criminal justice'. The £5.63bn figure in no way covers all of "policing and criminal justice".

[LeftishBrit]

7. I got 8 out of 10

I overestimated the proportion of people who are single parents as 13 per cent (I think I treated it as the proportion of people of parental age, rather than out of the total population of the UK including children and elderly people); and I underestimated the number of people on Twitter.