race relations British tabloid style

[baratron]

Today's piece of non-news: 98% of Daily Express readers would like the "full-face Muslim veil" banned.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's news article, where they mention that:

• 95% of Daily Express readers would like Britain to withdraw from the EU.
  
• 80% lament the loss of "Christian Britain".
  
• 70% of the lamenters of "Christian Britain" haven't actually stepped foot in a church in 20 years yet still resent all the "non-Christians".
  
• 50% would like Muslims banned.
  
• 33% would like all Muslims "sent back to where they came from".
  
• 25% would like all the "darkies", no matter what religion, to be "sent back to where they came from".
  

Comments

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

10% would like all the "darkies" to be "sent back to where they came from, despite themselves being less than 3 generations removed from immigrants.

And 5% are reading the Express in their English enclave in Spain, but speak no Spanish.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Am simultaneously laughing out loud while crying inside.

Also wondering what percentage of sane, reasonable Britons would like all of the Daily Express readers to be shipped off somewhere. It's difficult to "send them back where they came from" when mostly they came from here, but... There must be some way to make an island in the middle of nowhere for all the Little Englanders who don't like the "foreigners" in their country and don't want to be part of Europe!

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

That's what the Isle of Wight is for, isn't it?

I would guess that 15% or so of people would secretly like the death penalty brought back for Daily Mail/Express readers and regret their own liberal principles that mean they can't support it...

[m31andy.livejournal.com]

Those last three percentages seem a little low...

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

Indeed - they would actually be headline worthy, figures like that, on account of :. 75% of Express readers NOT agreeing that "all the 'darkies'..."

[aca.livejournal.com]

49 of the 50 people who bothered to phone in to such a preposterous poll, even by the Express's standards. The other one was probably a wrong number...

The media in this country beggers belief sometimes...

[mistdog.livejournal.com]

Lovely how they equate "Daily Express readers" with "Britons" in the article. Yet they don't even state how many of their readers they polled or how they contacted them.

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

The part you missed and prehaps the bit most rant worthy is that the headline dose not mention that it was not only a pole of daily exspress readers but of daily exspress readers who were bothered enough to pick up the phone. I am supprised to discover that there was actualy a daily exspress reader who cared enough to pick up the phone and vote in vavor of the choice to wear the veil.

It certialny got my vote for the mornings worst paper.

Okay...

[caitlynishrama.livejournal.com]

Now I know why I don't read the Daily Express.

(Christian English girl with a mixed European history, respects the right for anyone to practise their own religion, wear what they want and pretty much do what they want (so long as it harms no-one) and who actually goes to church.)

[clawfoot.livejournal.com]

Ninety-eight per cent of Daily Express readers agreed that a restriction would help to safeguard racial harmony and improve communication.

They want to safeguard racial harmony.... by banning traditional Muslim dress.

*headdesk*

....

*headdesk**headdesk**headdesk*

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I should perhaps point out for the benefit of my international readers that this is Part N in a several-weeks-running set. Type "Jack Straw" into Google News to find out how this started. Or read the BBC page here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5413470.stm) and start following the link trail.

I understand that the original issue is very complicated. I can see both sides of the argument, and I'm not really interested in hashing out the issues in my journal. I'm just ridiculously amused and dismayed that one of our illustrious newspapers can be so entirely, wilfully clueless and dismissive of part of the country's population - and have so little grasp of such concepts as "biased sample", "sample size" and "extrapolation". Like we can make any assertions about British people as a whole based on a phone poll of readers of one newspaper!

P.S. Tony Blair gets involved (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6058672.stm). Argh.

[rhialto.livejournal.com]

Apparently, if all "foreigners" were sent out of the Netherlands, and simultaneously all dutch people who once emigrated (or their offspring, I presume) were sent back here, there would be a net population increase. I expect the same to be true for Britain.