This is what so pisses me off about these stupid effing polls. So much turns on the way the questions are phrased, yet the actual questions are hardly ever publicised, and the press releases that announce the results always, always spin the results in misleading ways.

Let's face it: none of these people commission polls out of a disinterested attempt to get at the truth. They commission polls to push an agenda. They construct the questions to get the results they want, then publicise the results to suit their agenda. Like the BBC's finding that some people would like to pay a higher license fee. Fine, let them pay mine as well. I bet that's not what the question was.

If I recall correctly, the BBC asked people whether, if the license fee were higher, they'd pay it. In other words, "Do you want to go to jail?"

Ms Solent talks a lot of sense there.
I recently picked up the phone and it was ICM doing a survey, y'know, "who would you vote for tomorrow", "Davis or Cameron for Con. leader", "should Blair step down now or in 3 years" etc. (I used to work in a NOP call centre when I was a student, and they merit you on how many "completes" (ie, completed interviews) - (incompletes don't count towards the data) you manage to achieve during your shift, so I always think of that poor penniless student at the other end of the phone, and give them a "complete". But like Natalie says, the questions are qorded in such a way that (in my case, at least) there's no chance of them picking up my real opinions.
"Errr...Cameron", I said. Just to give the chap an answer he could key into his computer terminal, not because I care either way about which one of them will lose them their next election.