Newspaper Surveys

Much of today’s society seems to be obsessed with surveys and polls. This is something that the media has clearly taken on board and we see it in all aspects of news, from opinion and health polls to entertainment and political surveys. Channel 4 even has a long running and successful comedy panel show ‘8 out of 10 cats’ based solely upon strange and unique polls.
Flicking through The Sun on Friday November 5^th I found a total of 15 polls and surveys including;

•  3 out of 4 offenders leaving prison embark on a life in crime
• Car sales fell 22% in October
• More UK men resemble Peter Kay than any other celebrity (according to a phone application – genius!)
•   Norway is the world’s best country to live in
• Daily sex with ‘the wife’ is the best way for men to live longer

It seems to me that we shouldn’t take tabloid surveys like this too seriously as many of them didn’t say where the data or sources were acquired. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were simply the product of a Horny Norwegian Criminal Car Salesman who looks like Peter Kay.

Many of these surveys also gave no precise figures or statistics to back up their claims and one ‘fact’ in particular appeared to originate from just one man (no not the Norwegian comedian). Builder Steve Morgan ‘claimed the number of mortgages available to buyers with deposits of ten per cent or less has fallen from 1,244 to just 33 since 2007. This made me wonder just who Steve Morgan was (the boss of Redgrow Housebuilders apparently) and how he had time to interview all those people.

So there we go, I’m not sure I’ll ever take a poll or survey seriously again.