Chiswickite - formerly The Croydonian

Definitely survey day today. The latest one up for a filleting is the 2006-7 survey of Londoners, so apologies to all those with a limited interest in the Great Wen.

Given that the uninspiringly named ‘London Councils’ covers all the boroughs, it has to avoid the elephant in the living room when noting advances in satisfaction in sundry areas – Labour now controls seven councils to the 15 it ran prior to the 2006 council elections, and the blue team have advanced from seven to 14. Also, by its own admission, the survey failed dismally (ok, they didn’t put it quite like that) to be representative of age, gender and outer vs inner London. It did reasonably well with ethnicity, but there is a skew towards inner London, women and the middle aged. Maybe they just asked Tessa Jowell and Harriet Harman repeatedly…

Needless to say, there is much jubilation over the more positive things in the press release, which I have ignored and am going straight to the raw figures. Concern about crime is generally up, while that for anti-social behaviour is down. Given that one of the topics under the anti-social behaviour header is ‘abandoned / burnt-out cars’, some context involving the numbers of vehicles torched would be helpful, as otherwise one could argue that concern was only down because people have become inured to it. But we will never know…

Concern about teenagers idling on street corners is pretty well of equal concern to 18-34 year olds as it is to the middle aged, with oldsters markedly less bothered. Counter intuitive, I would hazard.

Worries about the council tax are down, although I would link this heavily to the almighty kicking Labour got last year. The rationale the report gives is that concern is down due to reduced press coverage. Uh-huh. People don’t look at their bank statements or gasp at the bills, do they? Note also the statistical fiddle sleight of hand that a base of all Londoners were quizzed, not those who have to fork out for it. Socio-economic groups at the top and the bottom of the food chain were the least concerned by the council tax, with the report not drawing the blindingly obvious conclusion about - respectively - ability to pay and subsidies .

Moving swiftly on, my nomination for the ‘cor blimey, strike a light guvnor’ statement in the report is the finding that the higher social groups were more likely to own a car than the Ds and Es. What does come as a surprise is that the percentage of respondents seeking less draconian parking etc laws was mirrored by a similar proportion wanting them to be harsher. So what’s next? Tithes? Public floggings?

Upwards of two-thirds of those polled are still falling for the Olympic hype, although the survey takers have opted to roll together ‘great deal’ and ‘some’ long term benefits. I’m sure we can all guess why that was done. Still, 28% can tell a hawk from a handsaw….

Part two later, should there be interest.

Labels: surveys

This entry was posted on Monday, January 08, 2007 at 6:50 pm. You can skip to the end and leave a response.