What does strike me is that although I broadly support some of their aims and broadly oppose others, with the exceptions of Amnesty, Liberty, and the Electoral Reform Society, all of the others are somewhat tinfoil-hat inspired.

The most popular are two NGOs traditionally considered to be of the liberal left: Greenpeace and Amnesty International.

I am not sure Amnesty was traditionally on the Left. It is now but in the past it was scrupulously even handed.

It might be argued that, until relatively recently, all NGOs were largely leftish, so it’s not surprising that the longer-established ones are best known and respected.

That is almost certainly true – once a brand is established in the public’s mind it is next to impossible to challenge it or to replace it with a new product. That is as true of, say, breakfast cereal as it seems to be with NGOs.

There may be some truth in this, but the fact they receive very little opposition is striking given that Greenpeace in particular has a record of being very outspoken and skirting close to the edge of the law.

Not to mention they lied through their teeth over the Brent Spar.

I’m taken aback by the Fathers 4 Justice’s scores. For an organisation associated with superheroes on palace balconies, which has generated a couple of own splinter organisations (The Real Fathers 4 Justice, New Fathers 4 Justice), its ratings are exceptional. They’re also very consistent across different groups: women score it nearly as highly as men; Guardian readers are only slightly lower than Mail and Telegraph readers.

I agree. That is utterly amazing. I would guess it shows how much Family Law has been hijacked by special interest groups that are out of touch with the feeling of the general community. Even of most women. Even of the Guardian readers. Custody laws are utterly one sided and it seems that most people feel bad about it. Even for a bunch of buffoons.

I suppose this should not be a surprise given that refusal to pay Child Support is the largest mass non-violent political resistance movement the West has seen since I don’t know when – the Irish land league?

Who’s missing is surprising — what about Oxfam, Barnardos and Save the Children, all of which are campaigning organisations too. I wonder how the list was picked.

With the exclusion of the don’t knows, the TPA (40/49=82%) has better support amongst those who have a view than Greenpeace (69/86=80%). Not that I have much time for either.

Bizarre selection missing out one of the most powerful, the RSPB which has over a million members (more than all UK political parties combined, I believe) and far more influence than the Countryside Alliance. Is Ashcroft actually trying to prove something with this highly selective poll or is he just at a loss for things on which to piss money away?

First and most obvious point, the real winner in some cases was ‘don’t know’.

51% of respondents didn’t know enough about the aims of the TPA to express an opinion, compared to only 15% for Greenpeace and 21% for Amnesty International, which says much about the effectiveness of both of the latter NGOs in getting their message across to the public.

Worryingly, 45% said they didn’t know enough the aims of Liberty to give an opinion as did 40% when asked a ‘Immigration Watch’, although it might have helped had Ashcroft used the correct name – Migration Watch.

So far as popularity goes – whatever that means – Greenpeace came in 4th on the analysis of mean scores, behind Amnesty International, ‘Immigration Watch’ and Liberty and were only slightly ahead of the TPA.

Polls like this are only, in a sense, as good as people’s understanding of what these organisations stand for and what their aims are and these perceptions can be easily shaped by everything from the NGOs own PR to the stance taken on them by the MSM, what you have here may be a reflection of public opinion but one cannot argue that its a reflection of informed opinion.

NGO’s aren’t necessarily going to be good proxies for public and political opinion on particular issues because, without additional questions and further vailadation, one cannot be sure of the extent to which the public’s perception of an organisation and aims/goals coincides with what the organisation is actually all about.

So, if you’re going to do this kind of polling, you’ll get better results if you asked each NGO for a statement of their general aims and objectives and put that to respondents before asking their opinion.

@schmidt

I think you’ll find that the NGO’s included were selected as proxies for partcular political opinions and viewpoint, hence the exclusion of organisations that are not generally peceived to have an explicit political agenda, like the RSPB, RSPCA or even the National Trust.

Unless you’ve got a specific beef with a species of bird, say you’re a gamekeeper or you have protected species holding up your building plans, then a question about the RSPB is really only a proxy for the question ‘Do you like birds?’ and in most cases, what’s not to like about birds?

@6

“you’ll get better results if you asked each NGO for a statement of their general aims and objectives and put that to respondents before asking their opinion.”

True, but any survey using self-definitions of the NGOs in question would be massively biased and unrepresentative. Even Migration Watch can spin their aims so they sound like reasonable people, rather than bizarro pseudo-fascists.

I for one find it highly depressing that more than four times as many people support the “general aims” of the TPA than oppose them. I don’t know whether that’s because they’ve taken said aims at face value (i.e. reduce unnecessary spending) rather than the reality (i.e. use disinformation to push for a libertarian utopia). Either way, it suggests a lot of people either don’t bother to check sources or are totally cool with being fed twisted facts.

@9: “Either way, it suggests a lot of people either don’t bother to check sources or are totally cool with being fed twisted facts.”

All I can say to that is: “well d’uh”. It’s depressing but I’d bet almost anything that the vast majority of people don’t check sources and accept a wide range of twisted facts without challenging them. I’m sure I do and I try not to.

“Either way, it suggests a lot of people either don’t bother to check sources or are totally cool with being fed twisted facts.”

And suggests Sunny’s approach to headline writing will be more succesful than yours

what about Boards of Canada, were they included?

@ 11

[LOLs in a depressed manner, if that's possible.]

fathers for jusitce fighting left wing laws but cannot be classed as a right wing group, it shows normal modern day issues hold no barriers and shows how big a farce the left right wing debate is

No big charities included?

They have lobbying activities too – eg just looked at Oxfam’s list:

* Active citizenship
* Agriculture
* Aid effectiveness
* Climate change
* Education
* Emergency response
* Gender justice
* HIV and AIDS
* Health
* Indigenous & minority rights
* Natural resources
* Peace & security
* Private sector
* Trade
* Youth outreach

@ 14

“fathers for jusitce fighting left wing laws but cannot be classed as a right wing group, it shows normal modern day issues hold no barriers and shows how big a farce the left right wing debate is”

Not to add to that farce, but how exactly is Fathers for Justice fighting leftwing laws?

Well its pretty obvious you dont know what your talking about, go away do your homework and come back a answer.

Will give you a pointer in the right direction, the destruction of the family according to Marx.

@ 16 hugh

“Well its pretty obvious you dont know what your talking about, go away do your homework and come back a answer.”

Oh, I see – it was a mindless comment that you can’t actually back up. On your way, then!

I can back it up easy enough but its obvious you don’t have a clue from the outset or you would not have questioned it and seeing the name sake you hide behind well that says it all.

Akin to the left wing ideologies of 1926 & 1977, they were memorable years for left wing destruction of the family, leading from them we have English translations in the children act 1989 and children’s order 1995 in NI,

Considering you cannot make the distinction of Marx’s planned destruction of the family only proves the looney left are as selective in reading are they are in speaking.

Ah! Alcan!

I googled “the destruction of the family according to Marx”. Aside from a link to all of Marx’s quotes the vast majority of the first page of suggestions required the wearing of a tinfoil hat.

In terms of the selection of NGOs, one thing worth thinking about was why the poll was commissioned, and this question’s place in it.

I doubt it was because they were particularly interested in what the population as a whole think about these organisations. Instead, I would imagine the poll was set up to produce a segmentation of the population, where they used a series of statistical tools (particularly cluster analysis) to identify a number of groups who share similar characteristics. Given the large size of the total sample, they would have been able to cut the total population into a decent number of groups, and still have useful base sizes.

So a question like this would have been used either as one of the drivers of the segmentation (identifying the different groups), or as one of the questions that would have been used to describe the segments that had been created. In either case, what’s interesting is whether certain groups have strong attitudes towards particular NGOs, eg does one group hate Greenpeace but love TPA, and vice versa?

With this in mind, they seem to have selected a number of NGOs that could be seen to be representative of particular worldviews – rather than going for an exhaustive list.

20. Cylux – “I googled “the destruction of the family according to Marx”. Aside from a link to all of Marx’s quotes the vast majority of the first page of suggestions required the wearing of a tinfoil hat.”

Or you could just read the Communist Manifesto. Notice that Marx and Engels do not deny they intend to abolish the family. They just claim capitalism did it first.

Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

As, of course, Marx did with his maid.

Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.

@ 19 hugh

“Considering you cannot make the distinction of Marx’s planned destruction of the family only proves the looney left are as selective in reading are they are in speaking.”

Oh, I see: you think Fathers for Justice is engaged in a fight with Marxist antagonists. Possibly backed up by forces of Narnia and a battalion of toy soliders.

Next time you mean “Marxist”, say “Marxist”. Or just take your paranoid ravings elsewhere, that’d be even better.