Talking a bout effective communication though, I recently met a girl who was being trained up for O2 management, she had completed a weekend studying a technique called ‘Platonic questioning’ She had no idea who Plato actually was but Platonic questioning taught her how to make a potential customer answer a question the way 02 wanted them to answer it. I thought that a 2500 year old philosophical tecnhnique being employed by a modern corporatation interesting, if not somewhat disturbing.

I admit, you may well make a fine politician, the way you said ‘working class, high or low earners’ instead of saying middle class, which is surely what you really wanted to say but felt it might not go down so well with some of the radical anarchist types perusing these pages was a fine example of slick word play employed by all good politicians.

I aint aligned with no-one neither. Just happy to defend someone who I believe makes sense.

Ed,
In writing this post I was merely kicking around a crazy idea and it was never my intention to defend the indefensible. The main point I was trying to make was that it is the working class, be they high or low earners, are paying for the running of the country and that it would be only fair that they be given a greater say in the running of the country that those who don’t contribute. I felt in order to engage those posting replies to the article it would be beneficial to distance myself slightly from the idea… I wouldn’t call it backing down; it’s more about picking your battles! (Is that politician enough for you?)
This isn’t the place but if you read my replies on the immigration debate you should see that I am not for an open door policy and it is your motivation and the groups you aligned with I called into question. And I don’t need anyone on this sites help to know whether or not I am a bigot.

Dave, you’ll never make a politician with all this apologising and backing down. No need to crumble so fast under the liberal whip (that Bif keeps stored under his bed) People like john will always say “This is dangerous talk”as if you were planning a fascist coup. He’s also the type to say ‘Classing people by how much money they earn is stupid’ which is an entirely facile statement. (No offence John) Should we class people by how kind they are to animals instead?

Also, just because you argued with a few people who dont particularly think immigration is entirely a good thing doesn’t mean your not a bigot.

I don’t mean those on disability or long term sick or those who couldn’t possibly work even if they really wanted to. I mean those caught in the rut of social welfare dependence generation after generation. I suspect that it does not but again the answer is not a simple one.

My point is not to punish anyone. Punishment almost never works for any problem which you actually want to solve although it does seem to make people feel better.
My idea (crap and all as it is) was to reward people for contributing to the state coffers by giving them more say in deciding who decides how that money, their money, is spent. While you guys might assume that I am on about the less well off, I would acutally prefer to see the property tycoons, builders and other such tax dodging types pay thier fiar share.
This would do much more for the countries piggy bank and society in general that screwing those who don’t have it to give.

I’ll give you one such example. I work with a guy who has a farm in North Co. Cork… He is able to fiddle the figures in such a way that it looks like he is making a loss and then write off the loss against his PAYE… He pays no PAYE. All of his salary goes straight into his hand along with money made from the farm. To look at it another way, all of my tax goes into his back account.