The Euro, the economy and creationism
The headline for this should at least attract some intrigued readers! Anyway, while we are waiting for the first intention polls of the year (by normal timetables the first we should expect is Populus, which would normally be due tomorrow) there are chance to look back at some of the less time sensisitve findings that were released over the Christmas period.
Firstly ICM carried out a poll for the BBC's World At One on the single currency, presumably to test out the idea that support for British entry might rise in response to the falling value of the pound and the present economic woes. The response was pretty clear - 71% said they would vote against joining, 23% would support it. 15% said that the fall in the pound's value made them more supportive towards joining the Euro, but 14% said it made them less so.
Moving on, MORI have released their monthly questions asking about the public consider to the most important issues facing the country here. The economy is ever more dominant, 66% of people now mentioned it as as major issue, 49% mentioned it as the one single most important issue. On top of that, alongside crime and immigration the top five issues also included the associated issues of inflation (17% mentioned, 6% as the most important) and unemployment (15% and 4% respectively)."Soft" public service issues have dropped right down the agenda, the NHS was mentioned by only 12% and education by 10%. To put that in context, it is the lowest score MORI have recorded for the NHS, which up until around 2004/5 was normally seen as the most important issue.
Finally, MORI are also reporting a poll of teachers on the issue of teaching creationism in science classes. MORI headline it as "Teachers Dismiss Calls For Creationism To Be Taught In School Science Lessons" - and indeed a majority do - but I was rather more surprised by the size of the minority who didn't.
37% of teachers thought that creationism should be "taught" alongside evolution "in science classes", including 29% of teachers in the sample who identified themselves as science teachers. A majority agreed that it should be discussed - the difference between the two wasn't made explicit in the questions. Asked whether they agreed with the statement "Creationism is completely unsupportable as a theory, and the only reason to mention creationism in schools is to enable teachers to demonstrate why the idea is scientific nonsense and has no basis in evidence or rational thought" 26% agreed and 54% disagreed.
