48% of Britain's would refuse to fight for their country

[cakeorwine]

So a new headline today

Daily Telegraph
Half of Britons would refuse to fight for their country

Half of Britons say there are no circumstances in which they would go to war for their country, a poll has found.

While the pollster Ipsos found strong backing for increased defence spending, some 48 per cent said there was no situation in which they would take up arms.

One in two Britons would never fight for their country | Politics | News | Express.co.uk

It was not that easy to find the data set but I've linked it below and shown the data from the question

Original data here

Despite rising support for increasing defence spending, half of Britons say there are no circumstances under which they would take up arms for Britain | Ipsos

War-trends-final-weighted

Would be interested to hear your opinion on the survey results

As would Sir Humphrey

too many to list. As I have already said, adding a don't know skews the results too.

Old men in stripey trousers, rule the world with plastic smiles.

@cakeorwine I'm not sure that trying to think tank on MN is going to be any better than Sir Harvey's methods

Maybe do it on a PC then

It's not about spoon feeding people.

If it helps, the question was:

There are no circumstances where I would be willing to take up arms and go to war for Britain

There are circumstances where I would be willing to take up arms and go to war for Britain

Don't know

Can you think why that question got 48% under No circumstances

Can people think of a question that might get more than 48% where people would fight?

Just one would do

Step 1: Imagine what Trump, Russia and Nigel would be raging about
Step 2: Ask any question you think of as above
Step 4: Wait for bots to give outrageous answers
Step 3: Make a headline grabbing story to shock everyone, before it doesn't happen and everyone complains how wrong "they" got it.

I was thinking more about defending / fighting for your country questions.

But I can think of plenty of questions that could provoke outrage

In your OP you asked for opinions on the results. Thats what you've got. People aren't always going to read all your updates or the whole thread.

TBH, we have enough NEETS to put in the field, so the rest of us needn't get too perturbed. In fact, if the Govt let it be known that NEETs would be first in line, that might chivvy some of them along to find something now.

If we have another Covid it won't work though. Most of stayed at home, wore masks, and followed the rules - then we found out that the person who was in charge of the country wasn't.
You'll never get that level of compliance again.

The government had plans drawn up and in place for conscription during the Falklands war, and I'm sure they would be ready to conscript people at short notice if the UK does get involved in a war.

Some people believe they can disobey the rules in an emergency.

OK I found it in the charts in the end but still can';t find it in the tables. The biggest difference in the response by age seems to be the middle aged with over half saying that they would not take up arms. And a clear M/F split.

The good news is that we potentially have an armed services of 4.4 million if the 37% of young people who took part and wanted to fight were representative.

We had 5.9 million in WW2. And modern 'fighting' would be a lot of drones, robots and other tech so we wouldn't need as many 'boots on the ground'.

Don't you think it's useful to look at the question being asked before people give their opinions on a survey?

Who was asked?
How many were asked?
What were they asked?
Who commissioned the survey?
etc

It's interesting how people just jump in and give their opinion without stopping to think about the survey.

No they didn't - they had plans to mobilise the Territorial Army and reserves which would have been sent to fulfil the UK's NATO commitments in Germany - at that point the UK had a massive number of troops in Germany in case of the Cold War getting hot - which would have released regular army units to be sent to the Falklands.

Has anyone seen the Victoria Wood sketch where the elderly couple win a prize in a magazine? Celia Imrie arrives at their front door to tell them and when the woman opens it she says "If it's about the war his mother sent a note".

That would be me if my two DS's were called up :)

Instead of 'take up arms and go to war' it might be more useful to ask if people are prepared to support a war effort in some way, combat or non combat.

I would definitely not fight (very much doubt I would pass the medical and fitness test for the army anyway) but I think I'd be willing to do something helpful.

Too so many people, this country is just real estate. Somewhere to work or claim benefits. Patriotism is dead. They need to give servicemen and women priority to social housing. Then emergency services and other health workers.

And all those NEETs who have been practicing killing on screen at home will be just the ticket there.

If you look at the hyper-masculinity craze, if they asked for people to sign up all the Andrew Tate wannabe's would be queuing up and that alone would mean more men would sign up. Psychologically men have actually been pretty well primed by the online "manosphere" to follow anything other men do like sheep. I'll wait for the trolls and bots to report and comment back to me now...

It's all about the question- and potentially the lead up questions

All survey's do this and most headlines cherry pick data.

We know most headlines and most stuff on-line is rage bait or simplied - nothing on here really matters it's a discussion forum - it's influences very little to nothing in the end.

I'm pretty sure these headlines are a pop at the younger neet generation as so many headlines are these days as that sell papers to mainly older generation who still buy them and softening up population for more defense spending.

The government had plans drawn up and in place for conscription during the Falklands war, and I'm sure they would be ready to conscript people at short notice if the UK does get involved in a war.

We've been involved in several wars since the Falklands - 2 gulf wars and Afghanistan we've managed fine with our standing army so far. Consription tends to be hugely unpopular with voting public so is a last resort - they'd try PR and then offer incentives first. Even Russia offering increasing incentives to join up and fight - and you'd think there's an oppresive state that can just tell people to fight.

Conscript prisoners and solve the prison overcrowding. We could do that now. Teach them 100 words of Ukraine, how to shoot a rifle and stick them in the front line.

They've got it broken down by
Sex
Age groups
UK location
Income
Brexit vote
Employment status
Education
IEthnicity
Social grade
Last vote

They interviewed 1090 people which gives a 95% confidence level of 3%

In other words, you can be 95% confident the result is +/- 3% . So it's between 45% and 51%
However, when you start breaking it down into smaller groups, your margin of error increases dramatically as you are asking much smaller numbers in that group

Something I had to explain to my boss when he got excited about 80% satisfaction with Sikhs. We only had 5 Sikhs in our survey out of 500 people

4 of them were satisfied. 1 was dissatisfied. But that's 5 people

What about defending our country against invasion?

Or defending your homeland against an aggressor?

I changed country to homeland. More emotional

No fucking chance would my husband or children be fighting for this country. Husband is too old now and my children are probably just a smidge too young.

I wouldn’t fight to defend this country either but I would happily put anyone down who tried to hurt my family.

Thats the case with any study though, a significant proportion the population doesn't have the fundamental literacy and numeracy skills to interpret data for themselves.