ISSUE 1676 Monday 27 December 1999

Yawns greet Millennium's dawn By Anthony King

THE Millennium Eve celebrations on Friday night are being hyped as the occasion for the biggest and best party for a 1,000 years, but a special Gallup survey for The Telegraph suggests that most people are disposed to view the whole event with typically British phlegm.

The British, as is well known, do not panic easily. Neither are they easy to enthuse. The Gallup survey makes it clear that they are determined to remain true to their stoical national stereotype.

The Gallup survey suggests that at the stroke of midnight on Dec 31 most people in this country reckon they will be precisely one day older. Their life will not have been transformed and their hangover the next morning will be neither better nor worse than a year ago in 1999 or a year hence in 2001.

Mention the Millennium to most people and the response, according to Gallup, is apt to be a stifled yawn rather than an outburst of unconstrained enthusiasm. The chart says it all. Well over two thirds of people quoted by Gallup, putting their Champagne glasses aside, said that Friday night "is going to be much like any other New Year's Eve". Fewer than half that number believe that it is going to be "a really special event".

This take-it-or-leave-it attitude is not the exclusive province of either the "cool" young or the seen-it-all-before middle-aged and old. On the contrary, it spreads across every age group, every region and ever social class.

For instance, the proportion of those under 35 who think that the Millennium is nothing very special is 69 per cent. Among the over-65s the proportion is almost exactly the same: 64 per cent. Gallup got much the same response when it asked people whether or not they sympathised with the idea that the Millennium celebrations are going to be "a fuss about nothing".

Almost two thirds, 64 per cent, said that, yes, they did sympathise with that down-beat idea. Only one third, 34 per cent, claimed to be more excited. Moreover, almost a third, 30 per cent, questioned just before Christmas, still had no idea how it was going to spend Millennium Eve.

Of those who did know, a quarter, 24 per cent, insisted that they were going to than stay quietly at home. A few were going to flee the country or go to church. Far more, 42 per cent, plan to attend a party, with either family or friends. True to their reputation as the generation that turned "to party" into a verb the under-35s are much more likely to be going out on Friday night than their stolid seniors.

Gallup also asked: would you say you were looking forward to celebrating the new Millennium on New Year's Eve a lot, a little, or not at all. The response, by now, was predictable - that of gas escaping slowly from an over-inflated balloon.

To be sure, a quarter of Gallup's respondents, claimed that they were looking forward to celebrating the Millennium "a lot", but the vast majority, 75 per cent, admitted they were looking forward to it either "a little" (46 per cent) or "not at all" (29 per cent).

The Gallup Organisation conducted telephone interviews with 1,042 Britons aged 16 or more between Dec 1 and 7.

^ Anthony King is Professor of Government at Essex University

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), December 27, 1999

Answers

What do you expect ???Jan 1st 2000 much the same as any other New Year's day...isn't it. The Millennium Bug ??? Oh,the Government's got that sorted & anyway I don't have much to do with computers.Bit worried about my VCR though.

-- Chris (griffen@globalnet.co.uk), December 27, 1999.