To those of you who are reading this in the UK, it should come as very little surprise that our trust in the UK government is on the decline. Notwithstanding the stupidity of the expenses scandal from our parliament, the results of the recent Edelman Trust Barometer shows that the UK are bucking the trend ...for the wrong reasons.
Specific UK findings include:
- 71% don't trust Gordon Brown and 65% trust him less than six months ago
- 69% trust Government less than six months ago
- There is a strong link between trust/distrust in Government, Gordon Brown and MPs in general
- Three quarters don't trust financial institutions who have taken bail-out money to use tax-payers' money responsibly
- 49% think the country is heading in the wrong direction
- Only 11% believe that global business has a good reputation
- 44% don't expect economic recovery to happen before 2011 at the earliest; 50% think it will take until 2011 or later for business to be trusted again
- Britons believe that a CEO's business decisions should consider the interests of employees, customers and communities before those of shareholders or government
For more UK highlights - click here and here (for supplementary Omnibus findings)
However, what surprised me was that these findings are not universal across the world. Whereas you might expect some more positive outlooks regarding business in the eastern countries (and you'd be right), in the west the US, France and Germany are rebounding - which is in stark contrast to the that in the UK.
There is already some debate about this in twitterville.
Mike Freer (@leaderlistens), Leader of Barnet Council - and probably one of the best politicians who understand how micro-conversations help (unlike David Cameron) explains, the issue of trust is about being open:
@JonnyBentwood when the Govt won't come clean about having to balance the books on tax and spending why should people trust politicians.
Sharon Richardson (@joiningdots) agrees - her view is the problems go back to the beginning of the financial crisis:
@JonnyBentwood I think many believe if Gov had let Northern Rock fail other banks might have acted instead of assuming tax-funded bailouts
This debate will no doubt continue for some time yet - get involved in the conversation on twitter by following the hashtag #edeltrust
The full report - and the key data - can be found on our global site, on the FT site here and on Edelman's UK site here
Technobabble 2.0 - a blog that rants and raves about social media, analyst relations and technology. Highlighting where people have got it right and wrong. Written by Jonny Bentwood - Head of AR and Strategy at Edelman in the UK. Link to original post