This week’s Economist has a leading article about different attitudes between Brits and Americans (doubtless prompted by the current visit of Sarko to London, which we responded to by sending Posh and Becks to Paris, thereby proving that Britain and France are still at war). The results of their poll are quite interesting. I’m not at all surprised to find that Brits are way less religious than Americans. I mean massively so, to the extent that Tories are way less religious than Democrats. I am, however, disappointed to see that Brits of both major political persuasions are more hawkish about military matters than Democrats. You would have thought we could have learned something over the past few years.
Of interest to Americans will be the fact that the two countries are pretty much in step on climate change, despite the fact that their governments are poles apart. The only area of disagreement is to do with airline fares, which is entirely understandable because most Brits only need to fly when going on vacation whereas air travel is the only simple means of getting around the USA, even for such short trips as San Francisco to L.A. or Seattle.
But perhaps the oddest result came from asking Brits about the forthcoming US elections. Apparently the Tories favor Barack Obama while Labor supporters prefer Hilary Clinton. This seems very strange.
(Zemanta has just got very excited because I mentioned the US presidential race.)
Out of curiosity, what would you have expected?
Nadine: I presume you are asking about the Obama/Clinton thing. Everything I have seen suggests that Obama is further to the left than Clinton, so he ought to appear more to Labor voters than to Tories.
Well, I hope it was excited in a good way! 🙂
Anyway, please if you have any suggestions/ideas about how Zemanta should work leave them at getsatisfaction.com/zemanta so we can discuss them together and maybe implement them!
We are eager to get feedback ! 🙂
Cheryl:Sorry-I should have been clearer-that was indeed what I meant. I am frankly, often confused by UK parties stances-as I think I understand their theoretical positions, but it seems that actual stances taken by the parties don’t gibe with my understanding, necessarily.
Andraz:
What I mean was that as soon as I typed “Barack Obama” Zemanta suddenly went off and picked up a whole pile of stories about the Democrat race. Clearly the Internet is full of such stories, so that’s understandable. I suspect that’s a statistical effect that you can’t do much about. But I will keep an eye on how it is working and let you know if I see anything worth reporting back.
Nadine:
People in the UK are starting to wonder which party is which too. Tony Blair built his career on being more Thatcherist than Thatcher. But the survey was talking to Labour supporters, not to Labour cabinet members. I’m surprised at them preferring someone who is likely to remind them of The Leaderene.