57% Means Manchester Road Tax Moves Closer
By Jim Symcox on Jul 20, 2007 in Manchester Bloggers, Manchester City, Manchester Congestion Charge, Manchester Road Tax
When the Manchester Evening News reports on a leak of a poll conducted by NOP I was interested to find that the leak shows that 57% agreed with the congestion charge when it was related to the ?3 billion cash for public transport.
There’s lies, damned lies and Statistics. And in particular statistics relating to polls.
When I was doing my MSc in Management Sciences at UMIST we were shown just how easy it is to manipulate statistics by emphasising the questions a particular way.
I’m going to wait to see how the question was phrased to see whether it made a difference to the answer.
However, I have a few thoughts before the report is revealed on Monday:
- Were the people interviewed living in the city centre and therefore completely unaffected by the charges?
- Were the people interviewed students and again completely unaffected by the charges?
- Were the people interviewed regular rush hour drivers who use Manchester during the rush hour?
- Did the people involved use public transport regularly?
- Were the people interviewed Manchester residents?
- Did the people interviewed have large incomes?
Does this poll now make the bid “acceptable” to the councils involved in setting the charge? And the answer is of course it does!
But if the poll asked loaded questions the result is not a fair reflection of what the public believes. But it’s now given the councils the ammunition they were looking for to move forward and slap on another road tax.
And quite honestly I object to the councils spending vast sums doing research, advertising the concepts and softening us up to accept the charge.
What happens next is the councils decide that instead of ?5 they’ll charge ?4 to make us relieved and so we think, “oh, that’s not as bad as ?5, we can go with that.”
When all the time none of us ever wanted congestion charging in the first place.
Update on Congestion Charging Poll:
Apparently NOP used random phone numbers across Manchester councils.
So if they’ve phoned 100 people in Bury, all of whom work in Bury and will never cross the congestion charge boundary those people will be happy for the congestion charge to be there because it will mean better public transport overall.
So I hope they asked everyone if they commute into Manchester during rush hour everyday first…what’s the betting?
Buryboy | Jul 31, 2007 | Reply
I am not so sure I get your point about the opinion poll. Are you saying that only people likely to be affected by the CC should have a say. And do you mean car drivers only ? – or non car drivers who might benefit from the better public transport ? Or cyclists or pedestrians ? Who do you want to limit the votes to ?
And would you apply the smae principle to (say) fox hunting – only hunters could vote – or animal lovers – or maybe only foxes ! And what about smoking in pubs – only smokers vote – or non smokers as well ?
jymsym | Jul 31, 2007 | Reply
Hi Buryboy,
What I’m trying to say is that the 57% figure doesn’t mean that 57% of all Greater Manchester residents are eagerly awaiting the Congestion Charge. I’m pointing out that the results could be slanted that way because of the people they’ve interviewed some of whom may have no opinion on the Congestion Charge one way or the other because they’re not affected by it.
Just like if you rang all the fox hunters in the area and asked if fox hunting was a good thing. The answer would of course be yes, and the results would be loaed that way.
Jim