Andy in the news as ‘Top 10’ conspiracies are reported

Andy was recently asked for a quote in response to a new poll on the top 10 conspiracies that British people believe in, and his remarks have now appeared in the online Express and beyond…

The poll, mysteriously conducted by, of all bodies, the insurance company Insurance2go, claims that 46 percent of people in the UK people “believe in conspiracies”, while another 36 percent “sits on the fence” – which makes for a lot of people who clearly don’t entirely trust the authorities. The poll states that the Number One theory is that search engine Google “spies on its user-base”.

How reliable these figures are is another matter (actually, general belief in conspiracies may actually be higher in Andy’s experience), but the story has now been picked up on by several websites, most prominently the online version of the popular British newspaper The Express, which you can read here.

Here’s the quote from Andy, which, refreshingly, has so far been reported accurately:

“History shows repeating patterns of deception, control and state corruption going back centuries. This does not mean that everything is a conspiracy, but neither can it be said that nothing is. With a huge proportion of the world’s population tending towards conspiracy views, as evidenced by the number of websites and forums and poll results on what people believe, we need to have more open conversations about why people challenge the official view on so many things. To deny questioners a voice, or portray them as delusional, as academics and the media are prone to do, isn’t fair. The evidence to support certain theories is strong and needs to be heard, not censored. Conspiracy thinking is unlikely to go away.”