Things you may have missed
Time for another round up of interesting polls I missed over the last week. YouGov this morning has the first post-papal-visit reaction, 15% of people say the visit made them view the Pope more positively, 9% more negatively, the rest no difference.
Slightly older, YouGov also asked about the idea of introducing first and second degree murder. Rather to my surprise given that the practical effect of such a change would be to give mandatory life sentences to only some murders, when the public tend to be very reactionary on law and order, it was overwhelmingly popular with 74% supporting the idea. In the same poll YouGov asked about the re-introduction of the death penalty for murder, which was supported by 51% of respondents.
Moving on, ComRes carried out a survey asking people what they thought members of some professions should be paid here. In short, people tended to think that professions earning more than around £29k should be paid less, and professions earning less than around £29k should be paid more. Bizarrely, premiership footballers came out as the profession people thought deserved the highest pay, with the average wage suggested by respondents was £364,000. This seems to be due to some people giving exceptionally high figures for them and skewing the mean though - the median wage people thought premiership footballers should earn was between £30,000 and £40,000.
Finally there is also a new Populus poll up on their site here, asking a rather wierd and wonderful selection of opinions. They all seem to be forced choice questions, with no option of saying don't know. (actually, it looks like they are just rebased to exclude don't knows)
60% Would bring back capital punishment 54% would leave the EU 47% support switching to AV 13% support British entry into the Euro
They also asked whether various things are true or false.
19% think God created the earth in
days 39% think some people have psychic powers (!) 31% think aliens have visited earth 32% think Dr David Kelly was murdered 18% think time travel is possible 67% think humans evolved from apes 37% think there is life after death 61% think climate change is happening and caused by humans
