On a good turnout of 117 votes, the results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:
I'd like local people to able to decide:
None of the [below] 66 votes
Whether there should be new roads or houses in their area - 50 votes
What type of businesses can be carried on in their area - 33 votes
Who is allowed to buy a car in their area - 16 votes
How many children families in their area are allowed to have - 17 votes
What jobs children in their area should do when they leave school - 14 votes
I was delighted that over half of respondents chose 'None of the above' (which produced the message 'Congratulations! You are a libertarian'), but given the self-selecting nature of any blog's readers, I suppose that might not be too much to ask.
I can't say I'm surprised that over third thought it was a good idea to allow 'local people' to block the construction of new roads or houses in their area, as this is the rich seam of small mindedness which the Lib-Cons are trying to tap into with their whole 'localism' agenda.
But what's terrifying/depressing is that over ten per cent of people thought it was a good idea for 'local people' to be able to decide what type of businesses are carried on; who is allowed to buy a car, how many children people are allowed to have; and what jobs other people's children should do when they leave school.
If we scale the results to reflect the real world, in which only about twenty per cent of people are relaxed about new developments in their area, the findings are pretty scary indeed. Is it really possible that well over ten per cent of the people in this country are authoritarian to the point of being an actual fascist, or who think that the Soviet Union or PR China was/is a good way to run a country?
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Anyway, I shall resist the temptation to do a Fun Online Poll "Are you stuck at the airport?" and reinstate the previous poll to the sidebar, let's see how much more hilarity we can wring out of that (some good comments so far).
Monday, 20 December 2010
Fun Online Polls: Localism and Xmas pantomimes
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6 comments:
You only have to spend some time on the social networks - twitter probably - to discover that many people are enthusiastically authoritarian. Many of them call themselves 'tories'.
It's one thing to have the odd lefty mate in the pub who calls Thatcher a bitch; to see them with their full-blown control freak craziness on display is quite another.
what's terrifying/depressing is that over ten per cent of people thought it was a good idea for 'local people' to be able to decide what type of businesses are carried on; who is allowed to buy a ca;, how many children people are allowed to have; and what jobs other people's children should do when they leave school
I will admit to having assumed that the 10% who purportedly believe those things were in fact exercising a sense of humour or irony or maybe absurdity.... the alternative is too dreadful to contemplate.
SN, I get the same impression.
FT, I fear they were being dead serious. We know that about eighty per cent of people are rabid NIMBYs and I have heard loads of people say "We don't want every street to be an Identikit Tesco High Street. We want small, local businesses." So the first two results (42% and 28% in favour) we can take at face value.
The "cars" thing I made up, but don't most motorists complain about all the bloody traffic?
The number of children thing is not so far fetched, I have seen readers' letters and heard people say that welfare mothers should be sterilised or give their children up for adoption. I've even heard NIMBYs say that they are doing the country a favour, because by making life more expensive for young people, they deter them from having children, thus reducing 'over population'.
As to telling other people's children what jobs they should do, is that so different from the 'National Service' idea, or making the unemployed sweep the streets, both ideas with a lot of political support?
Go on - do "are you stuck at the airport".
"We know that about eighty per cent of people are rabid NIMBYs..."
Who are "we"? Not me, anyway.
B, I mean UK voters generally. In real life I have never met anybody who in principle refuses to sign these petitions saying "No new roads/housing/railways etc".
It's not like this in Germany - something gets planned and then it gets built and people just shrug it off.
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