Via Ace, an interesting test to plot your political position against British opinion.

Like most of these tests, it has two axes, one involving economics, the other in this case involving "crime and punishment, Europe, and other transnational issues".

For the latter, they say:

A person on the extreme right of this axis is likely to agree with all of the following statements:

• Prisons are too soft on criminals


• The UK should withdraw from the European Union


• Most immigrants are not beneficial to the UK


• Some crimes are so serious that the only proper punishment is the death penalty


• It's more important to punish criminals than to rehabilitate them


• The government should not give any more aid to poor countries

Fine. Most of those statements draw a "yes, but..." or "no, but..." response from me, which makes me not just a centrist but a moderate. Ewww.

On the economic scale, though, they cough up this hairball:

A person on the extreme right of this axis is likely to agree with all of the following statements:

• Britain's railways should remain in private ownership


• Rich people already pay enough tax


• I am comfortable with the way that genetic engineering is being used in the food industry


• The UK was right to go to war in Iraq


• Most people should take responsibility for saving enough for their retirement, rather than relying on the Government to pay a big enough pension to live on


• This country should try to become more like the United States of America than like France or Germany

There are three basic policies under discussion here:

1. Socialism (points 1, 2, 5 & 6)
2. Government oversight of industry (3)
3. Intervention (4)

Now, we know for a fact that socialism destroys countries. How destructive it is depends on how much socialism you add to the political mix. A country with a healthy economy (the U.S., for example) can cope with a certain amount of socialism (Medicare, Social Security). Ratchet it up to 100% and no matter what human and material resources you start with, your country will collapse (Soviet Union).

So points 1, 2, 5 & 6 aren't questions of opinion, but questions of fact. And yet they are represented as extreme right-wing views.

Point 4, The UK was right to go to war in Iraq, is a little different. I have always supported the war in Iraq for humanitarian and geopolitical reasons, but I think the humanitarian reasons alone should suffice. But again, this is represented as an extreme right-wing view.

Point 3, on genetic engineering, is different again. Most of the European protests over GM food are ill-informed and foolish, but there are real concerns, both over GM food and over the conduct of large companies.

Anyway, my position - I agree strongly with the liberation of Iraq and that the U.K. should become more like the U.S. and less like France and Germany; and I agree moderately with the other four points - my position is significantly to the right of 96.8% of people who have taken this test. And only 0.4% are to my right.

Either that sample is way skewed, or Britain is doomed.

(Note also that they cite Oliver Kamm - Oliver Kamm! - as an extreme right-winger. Doomed, I tell you.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:52 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)