Representative opinion?

"Yet again today Matt Wardman reminds us that the National Secular Society – despite its claims to advocate on behalf of a silent secular majority in Britain – fails to publish its membership figures, reasonably presumed to be rather small and insignificant.

The horizon against which he makes that point is influence regarding the general election due this year. The NSS are not the only relative minority. There are other membership figures worth looking at.

Of course, the Church of England technically doesn’t have membership figures, but it is generally thought that average Sunday attendance underestimates the actual numbers of active membership. For 2007-8 (the last years for which I can track down actual figures using Google) it is worth noting the memberships of our main political parties compared with the C of E.

Political Parties

Conservatives 250,000 (unconfirmed)

Labour 166,000

Lib Dem 60,000

Total membership of all three main parties 476,000.

The Church of England

978,000 average Sunday atttendance

Oh, that means the number of committed members in the Church of England alone (never mind other Christian denominations) is more than double the number of committed members of all the main parties put together.

So who’s representative now?"  copied from Clayboy's blog, and worth thinking about.  If only for the fact that this is as impossible a way of determining opinion in our country as any other, but if you want to be counted you need to stand up.