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

[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.