weNormally, when we discuss public services and their political impact, the Fire Brigade is not one of the services that immediately springs to mind - the NHS, education, the police, these are persistently debated and most of the public have frequent contact with them. When members of the People's Panel were asked earlier this year "Which four or five services on this card are the most important to you and members of your household?", only 28% picked the Fire Service, putting it in fifth place, well behind GPs (75%) and NHS hospitals (53%), though a little ahead of ambulance services (22%).
Customer relationship management (CRM), makes sense, and most companies are now implementing it. Everyone in the company who faces outwards, from the CEO to the sales force, must be glad of that because it works, doesn't it?. But we've just discovered that most companies just don't know.
This has not been a good week for the Conservative Party at Westminster. And the results from our polling across the country will also be cause for concern for the party. For the first time, more Conservatives are dissatisfied than satisfied with the way Iain Duncan Smith is doing his job as party leader, according to the MORI Political Monitor survey for October.
For many years I've been an interested observer of people power. Who are the 'movers and shakers' of British Society? What is their profile, how do they influence others, and what do they read. My first exposition of this interest was in 1972, when the long lamented magazine New Society printed an early article of mine, "The Hidden Activist", which examined what I termed the socio-political activists (S-PAs) in Britain who I defined as that c. 10% of the public who tended by their actions to stand out from the crowd, to be elected officers of clubs or groups, make speeches and write letters to editors, stand for public office and otherwise take part in an active way in order to influence the course of British political events.
The Irish referendum vote ratifying the Nice treaty opens the way for enlargement of the EU to proceed, possibly leading to radical changes in its nature; yet, according to a Eurobarometer survey conducted in September and just released, half the British public have never even heard about EU enlargement.
A MORI poll, conducted for ITV News on 24-25 September, found one of the most remarkable switches of public opinion that MORI has ever measured. When asked whether Britain should stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with America without UN sanctions, seven people in ten said 'no', but with UN behind the war in Iraq, seven in ten said 'yes', nearly a 50% 'swing' of the British adult population. (With that kind of swing, the Tories would have the biggest majority in the past century at the next election!) Even with the potential for 'many British casualties', a plurality of the British public support Britain joining any American-led military action against Iraq by a margin of 49% to 40%.
More of the public are worrying about the possibility of nuclear war than at any time since the fall of the Berlin Wall, according to the latest MORI Political Monitor. Almost one in ten, 9%, of the public interviewed - in the survey conducted the weekend before last, just at the start of the Conference season - names nuclear war, nuclear weapons or disarmament as one of the most important issues facing the country; the last time the figure reached even 5% was in April 1990. Taken with the rise in concern about "defence/foreign affairs", named by 23% of the public as "single most important issue" (top of the list) and by 34% as one of the most important issues (second place, behind the NHS), it is plain that the continuing Iraq crisis is high on the public agenda.
This weekend's march - organised by the Countryside Alliance - is expected to bring hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets of London - many campaigning (one way or another) for more money for the UK's rural areas.
