If you take your view of British public opinion from the impressions reflected in the media, this has been something of a roller-coaster few months for the standing of the Monarchy and Royal Family.
This morning's widespread press discussion of last night's Commons vote to allow adoption by unmarried couples (including same-sex couples) makes much of the political ructions that the issue has caused in the Conservative Party, but there is little reference to public opinion on the issue.The issue is not yet resolved. Separate amendments defining that a couple can be of the same sex or different sex will be voted on next week; and the final bill may still be blocked in the Lords.
Now the dust has settled from the Chancellor's tax-raising budget, let us take the opportunity for a wider view of what we know about public attitudes to "tax and spend".
Last November we conducted a survey of British Asians on their attitudes to the military strikes in Afghanistan and to the War against Terrorism for Eastern Eye, a weekly newspaper aimed at Britain's Asian community. Over a third of the interviews were conducted by Asian interviewers. Therefore, in an interesting spin-off to the research we decided to look at whether or not the ethnicity of the interview made a difference on the answers given i.e. was there an interviewer effect? A number of studies in the United States and the in UK have been carried out looking into this phenomenon and several show that where the ethnicity of interviewer and respondent are matched, the responses yielded are different from those where they are not. These studies also suggest, however, that the interviewer effect only tends to be important when the subject of the survey is sensitive to the respondents' ethnicity or cultural background — which is what we found.
The introduction of free entry to museums and galleries in England and Wales appears to be achieving the government's objective of widening access, according to MORI research conducted in January 2002. The overall proportion of adults visiting museums and galleries has gone up since similar research was undertaken two years ago from 31 per cent to 38 per cent.
When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September, economic optimism in Britain fell sharply: the MORI Economic Optimism Index (EOI) in our late-September poll for The Times hit -56, its lowest level for more than twenty years. It is perhaps surprising that barely half a year later all discussion of this year's budget should be concerned with the popularity of its taxation measures and not with its macroeconomic effects.
