What's your opinion?

I fill in opinion polls online (for money) for a couple of fairly reputable companies. Well, I'm opinionated and I have the time, so why not? The companies don't commission the polls, they just design them and carry them out using their databases of registered opinion-givers. We're not told who has commissioned the polls. There's a filtering system to ensure the polls are not dominated by any one sex or age-group or income-group, so I imagine we represent a cross-section of the population.

Usually, the polls are about comparing fruit juices or finding out where we shop or trying to suss if there's a market for a new online bank (what, another one?) but from time to time we are asked about politics. Always UK politics. In fact, always politics from the Westminster Parliament point of view. And usually fairly general: about the economy or how you plan to vote in the next election.

Yesterday, I was sent a poll which covered something slightly different. Every poll has a wee counter in the top righthand corner that tells me how far through the poll I am on each screen. By the time I was 30% of the way through, it was clear to me I was dealing with the following subjects: what my views are on gay marriage, immigration and an EU referendum; what my voting intentions are in the next general election in 2015; and what I think of Ukip v the Tories.

As the poll went on, it was clear to me that most of it was irrelevant to me: it referred to Scotland as a 'region', made no mention of the independence referendum and mentioned Scottish politics - the SNP -  only once and in the same bracket as Ukip and the BNP, as a minority party rather than the mainstream party it is north of the border.

The questions about immigration started thus: did I think immigration was a big problem, not much of a problem or did I not know? In fact, in Scotland immigration isn't a problem. Quite the opposite: our ageing population needs to encourage as many young people to come and live here as possible in order to support the economy. But there wasn't an option for that. Similarly with the EU: who do I think would negotiate a new deal best: Labour, Lib Dems, Tories or Ukip? The same day, a Guardian article quoted Ipsos Mori polls which found 53% of Scots would stay in the EU while only 34% of English people polled were in favour of staying in. In Scotland, we don't seem to think the EU needs to negotiate. No option for that either. On gay marriage, I can't give you any stats but I have a gut feeling that UK society has moved on further and faster than your average Tory or Ukip politician and is pretty tolerant of the idea of gay people having the same civil rights as everyone else.

The same set of questions and reply options were used for every issue. I could have chucked the poll but I carried on, mostly clicking on the 'don't know' boxes. I wanted to get to the last page, where I knew there is a wee box where I would be allowed to express my opinion. And I did.

It suits polling companies very well to lump all of the UK together, without making any difference between the different countries - saves paper, I suppose. But in political polls, it's almost perverse to ignore what's happening in Scotland. What's up down south? Is everyone in denial about the independence campaign? Or so dominated by right-wing newspapers they can only see the right-wing Ukip agenda that's being pushed on them?