ID Cards
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Asked if the Prime Minister agreed with other members of the Government that one of the authors of the LSE report on ID cards was so partial that it renders the report worthless, the Prime Minister’s Spokesman (PMS) said that the Home Office had already set out their view of the report last week. The Government had carried out its own research which showed there was 70% support for ID cards. That research had been carried out last week when people were well aware of the costs and had been in the context of a 45 minute discussion of the issue, rather than simply answering one question.
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Where are the results of this "research", and where, how and when exactly was it carried out? A recent poll on the BBC news website showed roughly 85% of people against the whole idea of ID cards; around 5,000 people voted in that poll. I can pretty much guarantee that the government "research" didn’t involve that many people – a much more representative number, surely, than the usual 1,000 who take part in surveys on which levels of public opinion are calculated. I’m sure also that the people who took part in the governments "research" were as handpicked as the stooges who turned up at Labour party election shindigs. Do they really expect us to believe this blatant shite, when we all know from talking to people in the real world that there is actually very little support for ID cards at all? Except, of course, for the lobotomised sheep who trot out the asinine mantra "if you’ve nothing to hide you shouldn’t have a prob"… Still, once again we shouldn’t expect too much in the way of honesty from this government in the way statistics are presented (well, in anything at all really). This is, after all, the same government who dismissed the million or so who protested against the illegal invasion of Iraq as "an irrelevant and unrepresentative minority".
Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 5 Jul 2005 on 9:33 pm | LinkWe think the poll showed 80% (at least when we recorded it):
http://www.jk5.net/spages/IDcards.asp
Numerous other polls show similar results, so WHERE do the government find access to "research" that is not available to anyone else.
Something of a coincidence perhaps that the "research was in "the context of a 45 minute discussion".
45 minutes seems to be a preferred timeframe for lies of all sorts.
Comment by jk5 — 6 Jul 2005 on 4:20 am | LinkClearly a focus group of some sort. Has anybody sighted any other recent information on it? If it’s one we don’t know about already it might be worth looking into. Suppose I could call the Home Office press people and get stonewalled again. (-:
Comment by John Lettice — 6 Jul 2005 on 3:12 pm | Link