Slightly depressingly, these are the political priorities of people right now, according to Ipsos Mori, released today:
Why depressingly? Because climate change and poverty are so low and immigration so high.
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In your post about power (today) my comment mentioned the role of media in forming/massaging people’s views/ideas/thoughts.
The ranking reflects a combo of lived experience (NHS No 1, money No 2 & 3) immigrants @ No 4 reflecting the media/politicos messages on this subject.
This shows the limits of media scaremongering – it being trumped by more direct and personal concerns.
The NHS is a warning to LINO. Immigration may well be weaponised by the tories & its cheerleaders – “LINO soft on immigrants” etc.
Academics: it might be interesting to do a comparative study between Liverpool (The Sun circulation = 0) with Manchester (circulation = normalish) on how they view immigrants.
What is depressing is that the politicos have made immigration an issue – as a way of diverting attention away from more pressing problems.
You are right – that would be interesting
Is there a logical inconsisyency in Inflation/Prices being number 2, while Poverty/Inequality are number 9 (of 10)?
Of course….
Sunak has done massive damage to the UK’s duties to move towards net zero, but also managed to defuse public opinon regarding environmental priorities..
The report seeking to proscribe Just Stop Oil earlier this week is part of the short termism his brand of financial capitalism requires.
There’s recent news that the Thwaite Glacier is undercutting and melting much more rapidly than predicted.
It carries a 600mm+ global sea level rise as an immediate impact when it calves into the Antarctic, with another 2.4m from acclerated Western Ice Sheet movement.
It’s probably still decades away, but it will only take one catastrophic tipping point to convince people that there really is an existential crisis, for their children, if not themselves.
Considering climate change will likely negatively impact all the other items on the list then it should be by far and away the biggest concern in this election.
I tell my family I am not going to fly unless absolutely necessary. Their response ‘Aren’t you going to go on holiday?’. Says it all.
I have flown once on my own account this century
I admit to a lot more for work but I avoid that now too
And of course I go on holiday
I hate flying for a holiday. It is the antithesis of a good time
Which proves that unlike millions you don’t enjoy ritualised humiilation in the airport, shoes off, belts off etc.
Even the airline staff go through it – as a pilot remarked – I’ve got a bloody axe on the flight deck – why are they searching me. Its an industry, like prisons.
On a unrelated note: Terminal 2 Heathrow Friday, winter late 1990s.
MP gets through security (I was carrying half a butchered deer at the time – roadkil – not me – I just skinned and butchered the animal – split it with my business partner – in fiarness he was driving the car that passed the deer – twice) & wandered into Smiths.
Browsed the mags, picked one & wandered up to pay – & watched some bloke buy matches. In blocks. About 10 blocks of I guess Swan Vestas (so 20 boxes per block – 200 match boxes……….. as carry on. I can still see it now. Me goes back to security (& once I told them + implications) it was hilarious.
Hate flying.
I too hate flying
Flight Free UK offer a no fly pledge (a bit like Temperance way back ) and periodic webinars with stories of no fly travellers, eg making the journey part of the holiday.
The unthinking discretionary spending on unnecessary fights (lads weekends in Prague, family holidays in the Canaries, winter breaks – or two!) is appalling; and massively subsidised and not taxed for all the externalities of climate and environmental damage. Starting directly after Christmas, media are full of promotions for it.
In the past I was a lot less aware of the impact of my air miles. I was a frequent flyer, delivering sailing yachts down to the Caribbean and flying home to Florida in the US. But now, when you account for the need to arrive at airports early, go through enhanced security and wait for baggage after your flight reaches its destination, it is not that convenient anymore. I would have to unload the backpack from my wheelchair at check-in and then worry about the safety of that vital piece of equipment, that I am so dependent on, not being damaged in the hold. Instead, I can just drive onto trains and coaches without unloading my luggage and unlike the UK, there are fast, reliable trains on the continent.
I cannot undo the past, but whenever there are viable alternatives I really should avoid flying now. However, I anticipate that this decision will enhance my future travel plans. In September I am planning to take the Eurostar to Paris where I will spend four days breaking my journey and visiting galeries. I will then take the fast train from Paris to the Spanish border: just four and a half hours to Irun. It is then just a three hour coach ride along the coast to where my friends live in Santander. My return journey will be on the Ferry to Portsmouth, a night in Southampton and the coach home to Oxford. I am really looking forward to not enduring the stress of flying!
Have fun
I’d love to know how they conducted that survey. Questions or a list?
I think it is survey based from a list that is repeated over time to develop time series trend data
Not entirely clear. This from their slender report.
“ Q1 What would you say is the most important issue facing Britain today?
Q2 What do you see as other important issues facing Britain today?
Base: 1,015 British adults 18+”
It’s a representative sample but how do they ensure it include people living in poverty, for example and do those people consider themselves to be “living in poverty” and if they do is it top of their list?
I do these sorts of surveys online, and typically you’re presented with a long list of issues and asked to pick the three (usually) you think are most important, though not (usually) in any order of priority.
We used to say lies, damned lies and statistics. Surveys and polls should only be interpreted if you have the poll “metadata”, that is, the questions asked, the sample etc.
This is because they are often framed to push a point of view.
However, times have changed as Einstein once said of his time:
when the rich control the means of communication, it makes it impossible for ordinary people to make informed decisions
I think this now skews poll results too. You not only need to know the polling metadata but take into consideration the messaging from all parts of the media and how that skews people’s perception. A point already made by others here. How to take that into consideration is an interesting question.
Since culture wars have been used on a more industrial scale by the present government I have noticed an underlying current in some of the pubs when I cycle around the rural villages in the county where I live.
When I met a refugee from Somalia I was just humbled by his experiences, his suffering and his stoic positive attitude. He is studying at a college to become a nurse. His dream is to get a job in the NHS. He struggles with written English and keeps resitting his English tests in order to go on in college. You won’t see his story in the press. You’ll see stories from the other end of the spectrum.
There is the fog of war and now there is a fog of reality. In this there are polls and polling pundits.
Take everything with a pinch of salt and keep Einstein’s quote in the back of your mind.
If as many ignorant voters believe the Tories have spent all the money and left a massive debt that has to be paid back what by their logic do they think voting for the Labour Party will achieve when they’ve announced they won’t increase taxes on the wealthy! Having a democracy is completely wasted on many voters their ability to reason is so inadequate.
I was surprised to see that there were no fears about the ‘terrible’ security dangers that Rishi Sunak warned us all of only last week. According to this poll we needn’t bother about defence spending……
There are three types of threat:
1) Threat
2) Perceived possible threat
3) False or made up threat
Sunak deals in 2 and often 3.
The ironic thing is that as the climate continues to heat up, not only will there be resource scarcity ( in particular food), there will also be more migration as parts of the world become less hospitable – typhoons, floods, droughts and simple overheating are all going to be more likely.
Global climate change induced migration has been studied since the 90s, by Myers, a Geography Prof.
It is actually an underlying thread in the current Gazan war, and West Bank disputes, as Levantine water resources are a major regional issue.
The figures cited are basically all guesswork, but the numbers can look scary.
A repeated figure I’ve seen for global migration of ‘climate refugees’ up to 2100 is 300 million.
There are other guesstimates such as 150m by 2050, and we now have the Ecological Threat Register predicting the displacement of 1.2 billion people by 2050, primarily due to environmental disasters. (Cornell have estimated 2bn by 2100)
They claim that since 2008, there have already been 288 million displacements caused by natural disasters. (not all of which are down to climate change).
A rider here is that there is no accepted definition of ‘climate refugee’, and environmental displacement has not been comprehensively mapped. Additionally, the estimates have not been contextualised with reference to the actual average rise in global temperatures.
With 1.5ºC now already in our rear view mirror, we really don’t know what the demography of climate change will look like, but there’s a fair bet it will be a dramatic feature of human existence, and is being blind eyed by sectional short term interests who want business as usual for as long as possible.
The extreme right wing view that all these people will be heading half way round the planet to take over western industrial nations actually does have some political traction here, but is a total myth, and a malicious trope used to promote right wing populism, and authoritarianism, by bad actors and nutjobs.
People tend to move the shortest distance possible from their place of origin, and stay within their local culture and social connections if they can. (Ravenstein)
However, there will be a massive unplanned dynamic of a shifting, and not a settled, human population across large areas of the globe, especially across those low lying river basins and coastal cities, but also all Mediterranean climates, and even temperate forests.
That there will be climate wars is inevitable.
For as long as I can remember it has always been the same. The right wing media have always downplayed what really matters, while constantly promoting self interest, as long as it is about greed, and culture wars, immigration, foreigners, scroungers, the workshy, etc.
Pollution at 10%? It is as if no one knows about what the water companies are doing.
Housing 15%? No wonder the Tories have got away with ignoring every housing crisis for the last 50 years.
Poverty? We are more likely to see headlines of the workshy, and getting people off benefits, rather than anything approaching levelling up. As long as the neo liberal agenda exists, poverty follows. I think it is built into the system.
Starmer today is talking of all the things Labour can’t do, because we supposedly cannot afford it. We know that is not true, but at the very least he could say, we will do them when we can afford it. He is trying to sell an economic growth policy which will supposedly turn Britain into an economic powerhouse. If it works, the money is there. I doubt it will work, but if he really believes in it, we should be investing for the future. There is a payoff down the line for doing that. The Tories are investing nothing in the future. It’s dumb for Labour to follow their agenda.
A story. My students had their ESOL exams today, English for Speakers of Other Languages. The lovely lady invigilating was surprised at how ‘normal’ they were, and said how she ‘expected them to be like on the tv’. I told her to not watch the TV and to take a look around.