Treat yourself to a poll on Europe done by (mostly) me

Here's my festive, Christmas post and it's all about the EU!

The big project I've been working on for the last few months has been this (I wrote the report, not the article) which is all about the European Union and Britain's place within it.

Although there's far more data in the tables than we were able to include in the report, the basic conclusions were that British antipathy to the EU has three main sources:

• There's a hostility to the perceived impact it has on immigration which is why I think you can't rely on the "EU" figure being so low in things like the Ipsos MORI issues tracker. Immigration is seen as much more important than "Europe / EU" but the two issues are intertwined as our study shows. Immigration overwhelms the positive effects people think the EU has on areas like travel and the advantages for businesses
• There's a cultural barrier between the UK and the rest of Europe. We're far more likely to feel closer to other English speaking countries than those physically close to us and therefore things the EU does are viewed from a default position of hostility and suspicion regardless of the actual effects it has. It's not so much what the EU does but the fact that it's doing anything at all
• People don't think leaving the EU would be a particularly bad thing for Britain. In most areas (e.g. trade, relations with other countries) they think it will have a neutral or positive effect and therefore the answer to the "in or out" referendum question becomes more of an "eh, why not leave" rather than a "you can never take our freedom!". This second group does exist and is very large and vocal but not a majority and there is a large portion of the population who don't really think about Europe very much and are reacting to referendum polling questions with "well I suppose on balance it'd be better to leave"

The whole thing is worth a read (although I would say that) and there's plenty more data that we weren't able to fit into the report so we'll be coming out with some more tidbits and interesting nuggets as time goes on.

If you're wondering what connection a poll on the EU has with Christmas then that's fair. We published it in early December so for the last few months my to-do list has had the following items next to each other: "Write Europe report. Publish Europe report. Buy Christmas presents. Wrap Christmas presents..." and the two concepts have largely merged in my mind.

If you're looking for something to get you into a proper festive spirit, I suggest this followed by the 6th greatest Christmas film of all time.

Why don't we just put adverts on Boris bikes?

With the news a little while ago that Barclays are pulling out from  sponsorship of the cycle hire scheme (I assume because everyone called them 'Boris bikes' rather than 'Barclays bikes') I was thinking about who, if anyone, should replace them?

I always thought it was a bit odd that Barclays should want to spend £50m (£25m as it turns out) on advertising that does little more than mention their brand name. I'm aware that universally recognised brands sponsor big events so I'll defer to their marketing teams' expertise on that. It's about associating yourself with something cool rather than brand awareness specifically but one of the goals surely has to be having people say the word 'Barclays' more often.

But as far as replacing Barclays is concerned, the paradox is that any company with enough money to sponsor the entire scheme surely already has enough brand awareness to render sponsorship a little redundant, particularly if they're only ever going to be known as 'Boris bikes'.

So were talking in the office and wondered why it has to be only one company sponsoring the bikes?

There are around 8,000 Boris bikes in London and about 750 docking stations. Why not allow companies to buy advertising space on a limited number of them the way they do with buses? There are about 7,500 London buses (all figures Wikipedia) so while the logistics of changing the advert at the back of each bike might demand some sort of minimum order (say 500 bikes for 1 month) it should surely be workable. TfL would also have the location data for each bike (or at least the start and end point of every journey) making ad tracking research easy as well.

I was really sceptical of the Boris bikes originally but now quite like them as a useful transport option of last resort. When tubes and trains aren't running £3 for a cycle is a lot cheaper than a taxi. It's obviously a blow that the scheme will lose the money from Barclays but hopefully it'll continue in some form or another.