Chris from the .Net user group mailing list often post on his blog political posts. Fair enough that’s the beauty of the web, and he even qualifies it nicely, his blog’s at “syringe.net.nz” with the tag line “Irregular injection of opinion”. So in his posts he takes what I think is a pretty hard line against the welfare system. The problem, which is mime, is I just feel so baited by his words. He’s posted some flame bait and some good points.
Anyway, he posted his power point slide from his TechEd talk, and low and behold its on smart clients, and the Composite UI Application Block. So I’m watching the slides with no voice over, wishing I could have attended the original talk. Then it occurred to me that if I had been at TechEd there would have been a high chance that I wouldn’t have attended a talk from Chris because I felt so out of touch with his apparent political stance. This is really the most silly of things.
So I started thinking how Chris could have such a strongly angled view of the welfare system (related to family/child support). I must agree there are problems, but I get the feeling he thinks it should all be scraped, so that he get more of his dollar back. But what occurred to me today when I realised that I had an issue with Chris, was maybe he’s just not experienced some things that I have, maybe he sees things as a cost to him, verse him helping other because he’s lucky. I’m not trying to saying he is where he is at due to luck and not due to a lot of hard work, but more of a maybe he hasn’t been delt some really bad hands.
More on this the angle of experiences and bad luck, a friend of mine came over from the UK to work ~3 years ago. In that time he has flown back three times due to his father getting sick and then dying and recently his mother been sick and staying until she passed away. All’n’all I think he’s been over in the UK for almost 5 months not working, and watching his family die. I’ve not experience of this. But it really makes me appreciate my parents. It’s one of the experiences you’ve had or you haven’t. Having talking over our lives with this friend I can’t help think this guy’s been hit with the bad luck stick.
So back to political things. I think a large part of the difference of opinion is also experiences. I’ve been in situations (child, and young adult) where the welfare system has been a heaven send. When my wife and I where younger and I wasn’t earning as well as I am now, we where entailed to support for our children’s preschool fees and the likes, my point is for most services we volunteered to stop receiving government support before we were required, due the hoops and constraints it put on you. But I’m thankful they where there. I thank those that helped me (via tax). So now I’m paying more taxes, I don’t see it as buying my neighbour an Xbox for there kids. Hell I’d like an Xbox first. But I’m saving my money so I’ll be better off later. And that’s maybe an area I dislike about the welfare system is that I’m paying for others to smoke, drink, gamble. Sure I buy ~2 lotto’s a year and drink some wine, but it’s not the weekly norm.
So in some sense people are just thinking of them selves. And that’s where I tie this altogether, the overwhelming feeling I original got from Chris was his sense of self. And that’s what the political parties are playing to. I’m still undecided as to which direction to chose. I’d be more interested in underlying polices than tax cuts, what are the sub points that are important to each party, what is not important. Stop with the pandering to the masses with tax.
So I apologise to Chris for been offended by his political stance, it is after all just opinion.