Government Questionnaires

Cambridge 2000 memos

October 2004

Cambridge City Council and Cambridge County Council regularly send out questionnaires asking our opinion. The UK government also regularly asks for our opinion. These kinds of questionnaire, or opinion survey, are unfortunately becoming more and more common. They allow the (local or national) government to pretend that they are listening to the people. But there are three major problems with such questionnaires:

• The response rate is almost certainly higher amongst the chattering classes than amongst the public at general. The chattering classes have plenty of free time compared with the workers and the rich are used to putting pen to paper and trying to influence the political debate. Thus the response is not representative, although the government pretends that it is. The government is of course run by the chattering classes, so they are happy that people with similar mind sets are more likely to respond and reinforce their own prejudices.

• Even if the response was representative, the government does not pay much attention to any response that does not agree with their preconceived ideas. For example, Cambridge local government hates cars and the only opinions they pay attention to on this front are ones that want to make life even more difficult for car drivers than they have themselves proposed.

• The questionnaires are simplistic, in particular they paint the world as black and white and they also never provide nearly enough information for the respondent to make an informed choice, so the results are based on prejudice more than anything else. For example, they will often ask whether something should be done without quantifying the estimated cost or benefit. Without knowing that how can you make a sensible decision.

It is sham democracy and sham consultation.

Cambridge 2000 memos