Language and Opinions: Do You Really Want to Hear What I Think?

I am a sad person that fantasises that one day I will be called for one of those 'who will you vote for at the next election' and 'who is your preferred prime minister polls' because, goddamit, my opinion is important (a tendancy that I'm afraid has been exacerbated by teaching and postgraduate education). So when I recieved a call last night asking for my opinion on my local government I was, of course, delighted to share. The survey began by asking what concerned me about my local government (let's call them City of MLG) and the things it was in charge of. Well, I started listing things like the fortnightly recycling service, public spaces, libraries etc when the surveyor interrupted me to ask me what exactly concerned me about these things. My query of 'Do you mean 'concerned' as in worried about, or generally interested in?' seemed to only confuse things further. I wonder if this unrealised ambiguity says more about the responses that City of MLG usually gets from its constituents, or if it was my surveyors lack of familiarity with the OED. But I confined myself to numbers and strongly agree-strongly disagree responses for the rest of the survey, and avoided a long rant on how private security patrols only cater for law-and-order moral panics and what we really need is better designed suburbs. However, my name is now down as willing to be in focus groups - and if that happens, you can bet I have plenty of opinions to share.

And on a totally random note, it appears I missed the zombie apocalypse yesterday. I've already assessed my house for zombie attacked preparedness at home (location good, escape routes bad, number of windows bad, potential weaponry good - I have a decent chance of survival), but maybe we need a plan for the university?