Trust the government

There was a fair bit of publicity on Saturday for the latest YouGov opinion poll that appeared in the Daily Telegraph. The headline was the lead that Gordon Brown's Labour party still held despite the Northern Rock debacle. Two things struck me about this poll, first that Labour's figures dropped from 41% to 39% but more intriguing were the answers to the question "thinking about some of the issues that have erupted in recent weeks (such as terrorist threats, floods, foot-and-mouth and Northern Rock) how much do you trust government ministers to tell the truth on such occasions? The replies are interesting to say the least; 5% trust a great deal, 35% trust to some extent, 28% do not trust much, 25% do not trust at all and 6% don't know. Apart from saying that the 6% who don't know shouldn't be allowed out in public (let alone vote), that is 53% who on balance don't trust the government to tell the truth - a ringing endorsement of Gordon Brown!