This morning YouGov also had a couple of questions on Julian Assange, spying and on Ian Brady. People have a negative opinion of Assange by 40% to 29%, asked what should happen to him, 43% think he should be left in the Ecuadorian embassy compared to 18% who think he should be allowed to travel to Ecuador. 6% would grant him asylum here, 15% would ignore international laws and diplomatic convention and forcibly enter the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest him.

On spying, following the Guardian’s story at the weekend, 79% think it is probably normal for governments to spy on each other at conventions. FInally asked about Ian Brady, 51% of people think he should be allowed to starve himself to death if he wishes, 40% think he should not.

It shouldn’t be a big surprise, immediately after the local elections they were receiving massive media coverage, that has now receded a bit. The point to remember is that while the short term publicity boost from the locals appears to be dissipating, they are still substantially up on before the locals.

The rest of the YouGov poll today (full tabs here) had the regular question on which party was best on various issues. The Conservatives have a 2 point lead over Labour on which party people prefer on the economy, 27% to 25%. Labour have substantial leads over the Conservatives on the NHS (35% to 21%), education and schools (32% to 23%) and unemployment (30% to 24%). The Conservatives lead on immigration (28% to 18%) and law and order (31% to 23%). On Europe the Conservatives and Labour are equal on 21%… this is worth noting. I often see the assumption that Europe is a strong issue for the Conservatives, one where they are most trusted than Labour. It really isn’t the case.

Also worth reading today are an interesting piece by Hopi Sen on where Labour’s lost support has gone in the last couple of months. Hopi has sadly committed one of my pet hates and looked at what has happened to 2010 past voters for each party without considering the chunk that are saying don’t know or won’t vote – but it shouldn’t change the interesting conclusion that some of Labour’s lost support in recent months is former Lib Dem voters moving from Lab to UKIP, presuming people looking for the most convenient “anti-government vote”.

Finally there is a piece by Peter Kellner up on the YouGov website looking at the gap between voting intention and best Prime Minister, something I’ve written about at length before and won’t rehearse again, but highlighting both how Miliband trails Labour, but also how Cameron continues to out pace the Conservatives.

The rest of the YouGov poll asked a couple of questions about the G8 conference and some questions on generational advantages. On balance people have a positive opinion of the G8 summit – 41% of people see meetings between the wealthiest countries to work together as a good thing, 24% take a more negative view as see it more as a club for rich countries that ignores the wider global problems. The public are divided down the middle on the policing of any protests, with 38% thinking the police should do all they can to stop violent protests, even if it limits people’s rights to peaceful protest and 38% thinking the police to do call they can to allow the freedom to protest, even if there is some risk of violence.

On the issue of tax havens 56% think countries regarded as tax havens are acting in an immoral way and should change their rules regardless of what other countries do. 22% think they should wait until agreement can be reached between all countries so the problem isn’t just moved elsewhere.

The majority of people (60%) think that today’s children will end up worse off than their parents were. The baby boomers born in the 1940s and 50s are seen as by far the generation that received the most advantages and opportunities and the 1960s are seen the generation when it was most opportune to be a young adult starting out in life. Perhaps surprisingly there is not a huge difference in opinion between different age groups, whenever respondents were born the baby boomers tend to be seen as the best off.

In terms of government spending on different generations, overall respondents think every generation gets less than its fair share (though families with young children are the group that is most commonly seen as getting more than its fair share). Here there is a big difference between the generations, with each generation most likely to see itself as being the most hard done by.

Opinium in the Observer have topline figures of CON 27%(+1), LAB 36%(-1), LDEM 7%(+1), UKIP 20%(-1). Changes are from their poll a fortnight ago, and clearly don’t show any massive change.

ComRes for the Sunday Indy and Sunday Mirror meanwhile have topline figures of CON 26%(-3), LAB 35%(nc), LDEM 10%(+2), UKIP 19%(nc). Changes there are from the last online ComRes poll a month ago.

Here we have two online polls that still show UKIP up around 20% in contrast to the ICM and MORI telephone polls earlier this week that both showed UKIP at 12%. As I said when the ICM and MORI polls were published, the lower score for UKIP wasn’t a sign that their support has collapsed again, but the result of methodological differences between telephone and internet polls. For some reason most online polling companies (particularly newer online polls – YouGov tend to show levels of UKIP somewhere in the middle) tend to show higher levels of UKIP support. This could be due to the lack of interviewer effect, or could be a result of sampling problems for one or the other. Either way, its a reminder to take into account the house effects between different pollsters, and not to mistake differences in methodology for changes in support.

Looking at the other findings in the polls, ComRes also asked about whether people had favourable or unfavourable opinions of politicians and parties. They found Cameron was no longer more popular than his party, but neither was he a drag on them – 23% had a favourable view of Cameron, 23% had a favourable view of the Tories. Ed Miliband continues to trail behind Labour – 28% have a favourable view of Labour, compared to 20% for Miliband.

YouGov’s Sunday Times poll will likely surface tomorrow morning.

YouGov also asked about the proposed cap on benefit spending, and found 57% thought a cap on benefits should NOT include pensions. As one might expect, the group most opposed was over 60s, though technically they are a group that probably be unaffected, given Labour have said they would honour the triple lock on pensions, and any savings there might instead come from changing the retirement age – however, as is so often the case, its not so much the facts of policies that determine people’s opinions as broad impressions, not least because most will be unaware of the facts.

Earlier today Populus also released the results of their weekly open-ended question on what news stories people have spotted. Questions like this are most interesting not when they show people picking up a story, but for the way they underline how few people pay attention to other stories. It’s been a relatively quiet news week, so even what I suppose count as the biggest political stories were hardly noticed at all. The most spotted story was actually the riots in Turkey, which 10% of people mentioned. The story about the NSA accessing data on emails and phone calls was recalled by just 6% of people.

Labour’s cap on the cost of benefits was not in the top ten stories people had noticed, implying less than 2% of people mentioned it. The fieldwork was done at the end of the week, so the weekend announcement was already a few days ago, but it still underlines just why what parties say and do often matters so little in terms of voting intention. Things don’t make much of a difference, because no one is listening. That exaggerates its unimportance a little of course, as the policy foundations that parties sent down now will determine the battlegrounds closer to the election when people are paying at least a little more attention, but never forget that most of what goes on in politics completely bypasses the general public. So yes, people don’t want a benefit cap to include pensions, but do most people know that the parties are proposing a total cap on benefits? Probably not. Did most people realise that Labour were proposing to include pensions in a cap? Probably not.