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Where Have All The Voters Gone?
The decline of turnout in British elections in the last few years has created something approaching a panic in the political establishment and has left the Electoral Commission and other interested bodies with an acute problem in political marketing. What has resulted is both the commissioning of research to explore the reasons for non-voting and a rash of suggested solutions. This paper discusses newly-published evidence about the way the public views voting and how this is related to other attitudinal and behavioural characteristics commonly treated collectively as components of "activism" or "good citizenship". It also considers the implications of these and other findings for some of the suggested solutions to the turnout problem.
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A Question of Identity?
Eight in 10 (80%) of the adult British population say they are in favour of ID cards, and slightly more (83%) say they would be happy to carry the card at all times — according to a MORI survey carried out for specialist IT consultancy Detica [note 1].
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New Labour And Delivery
Received political wisdom is that modern governments, especially the present British government, are and will be judged by the public on whether they have "delivered". So "Has New Labour delivered?" will, it is suggested, be the key question on which the outcome of the next general election may turn (assuming, of course, that the opposition has regained a sufficient degree of political credibility for anybody to take them seriously as an alternative). Sir Robert Worcester analyses.
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Workplace Discrimination
Age is the largest determinant of whether a person is likely to be ill-treated in the workplace, according to new research from MORI. The survey — Diversity Matters — conducted for The Guardian and TMP Worldwide, shows nearly a quarter (23%) of British employees claim to have fallen victim to discrimination, bullying or harassment at work. This rises to 37% of older workers (over 55s). Ill treatment because of age is higher than that due to gender, race or sexuality, and is marginally higher than that because of disability.
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Changing Values (2): Work & Leisure
Some further comparisons of British attitudes half-a-century ago, around the time of the coronation, with the way we think today, this time concentrating on work and leisure. (As before, for the 1950s we are heavily reliant on surveys from Gallup, the only pollster then publishing regular public opinion surveys, the findings of which survive in book form - George H Gallup, The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls: Great Britain 1937-1975, New York: Random House, 1976, and Anthony King and Robert Wybrow, British Political Opinion 1937-2000: The Gallup Polls, London: Politico's, 2001.)
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Young People And Citizenship
This week, the nation's children returned for the new school year and the first ever National Curriculum lessons in Citizenship.
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Two-fifths of the British public are unaware that anaesthetists are doctors
Survey of GB adults examining attitudes towards anaesthesia.