Friday, July 04, 2008

Moody (Angry?) Britain

A recently posted an item about research conducted by McCann Erickson’s Pulse division that gave a fascinating insight into how us Brits feel about life. I also did my usual rant about wishing companies would put their research on the Web.

A couple of days back I get an e-mail from one of the report’s authors giving me a link to a site that has just been launched to support the research. It's a good site and has some interesting and disturbing content - do go and have a look.

I was fascinated to understand what the research told us about the 50-plus. Back like flash I get this response.

The quantitative survey revealed some interesting results amongst the older age groups. Those aged 55+ were most likely to describe the current mood of Britain as ‘apathetic’ and ‘angry’ (seemingly contradictory?).

Their mood wasn’t particularly more pessimistic than the rest of the nation but we did find the nation as pretty discontent as a whole (in both the quantitative research and focus groups). Key issues making the over 55s angry were immigration/race relations and the war in Iraq.

Anger regarding the cost of living was in line with the UK average (actually lower than average amongst over 65s), whilst house prices were, unsurprisingly, less of an issue than amongst younger generations.

The area where the older generation stands out, however, is the level of ire directed at Gordon Brown : 47% of over 65s said that Gordon Brown is making them angry about Britain, compared to just 31% of the total population.

Since older people have a much higher propensity to vote this is bad, bad news for Gordo.

This will only mean something to Brits, but the section of the site that looks at the regional differences about what would make Britain a better place are fascinating. I could write a commentary about each of these.

Many thanks to Dean at McCann Erickson for publishing the research and his subsequent insights about the 50-plus. Dick Stroud

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