I read your article on individualisation and I completly agree with you. Individualisation is a Socialist concept and it is introduced first in order to bring in equal rights. It is a way of getting rid of marriage in order to bring in equal rights for everybody i.e. single people, couples not married, gay couples not married, couples married and gay couples marrried. Just look at the new bill of cohabitation that just came out. The government thinks that it is doing right but in the long term they are destroying society as the children will grow up to be in-human, not think much of human life, confused and they will have a different value system to us now.

Also Napolean and Hitler were Socialist and nothing good has ever come from Socialism. I bought a DVD from the Imperial War museum which had an interview of Hitlers personal secretary. The interview was done in 1974 and in the interview she spoke of Hitler telling her that in less that 100 years (from 1945) there will be a new Socialist government that will become like a religion. (It scared the crap out of me). I reckon if you read Mein Kampf then you will see alot of similarity with Europe today that is why the book is banned in Europe!

What amazes me most is that in revelation in the bible, the bible speaks of a country of empire as a beast. The beast is in-human and the beast laws brings about evil laws. I believe that all our laws should be based on our Christian principles. This would stop the following Socialist laws from coming about: Abortion, Euthenasia of old people, Euthenasia of handicapped children (Hitler also done this), Getting rid of marriage, saying that homosexual activity is the same as hetrosexual activity.

Also Facisism got rid of the human concept and saw women as baby factorys in order to bring about a population boom. If you do a comparison on Facism in German in the 1930′s and compare it with Europe today you won’t see much of a difference.

Also the Catholic church and most Protestant churchs (Anglicans, baptist, etc) have acknowledged that Napolean and Hitler were anti-Christs. Which means there form of government was also evil which today we know to be true. Also Gobbles was Hitlers speaker in which he spoke Highly of Hitler, in which Hitler was basically GOD. Now if you look at revelation in the bible it speaks of an Empire (Socialist government), the anti-Christ (Like Hitler) and the false prophet (Like Gobbles). Now how scary is that.

The number of the beast 666, very simple. The bible tells us that if we reckonise the number of the beast then we won’t be fooled like the rest of the World. First of all 6 is mans number since GOD created man on the sixth day.

First 6 :- The beast comes out of the sea. This descripes the evil empire since the empire is rising out of a sea of people. Since the empire is coming from people then it is man made.

Second 6 – The beast rises out of the Earth. This is telling of the anti-Christ himself. Who will come in the form of a man.

Third 6 :- This is another man who is the false prophet and power is given onto him.

I don’t mean to get Biblical but as a scientist and a mathematician I can see alot of truth in what the bible says. I have never seen it before and it came as quite a big shock to me this year. Just look at the story of Sodam as an example of how bad laws desroyed there society (There society had full equal rights in that there was no distinction between homosexuals or hetrosexuals).

The point that I’m trying to get at here is that in a proper society there must be limits. In that people will have freedom up to a limit and the same with equal rights.

For example If I’m getting harassed by a neighbour all the time then it would be in my human rights to go to him and to kill him, since he is putting undue stress and strain on me. In a normal society this would be illegal but not in a society that has full equal rights this would be allowed.

Thank You

As for the “confidence” factor which is missing in Irish kids, that too is a product of sleeveenism. Nothing to do with the education system. In fact studies show that the brightest people underestimate their abilities ( aware of much brighter people they have read, or worked with) and the stupid and undereducated massively overestimate it. Or just watch the X-Factor, for an example of this in real life: people who have been brought up with the confidence to “believe in themselves” get to meet simon cowell, and illusions are dispersed.

Lastly american teachers are far less well paid than Irish teachers, are less well educated ( a bachelors degree not always required), and from a lower stratum of society, and probably have a much lower IQ.

In short everything Brian says is wrong.

Another side of this is that over the last number of years childcare has moved up the political agenda. People have started demanding much more government support for childcare provision, something like they have I’m led to understand in Scandanavian countries. If the government were to act on this demand (so far there have only been token gestures) and were to provide say higer subsidies for the industry to make care cheaper, then in effect, they’d be subsidising further the double income couple. They’d be taking (more) tax from single income families and distributing it to double income families. It would be yet another policy which would bolster your argument about constitutionality. Even constitutional matters aside – one wonders how far we can go in this direction and what, as David points out, are the costs to society in terms of raising balanced children. The theoretical limit is that ALL families who can be twin incomes will be, but probably there’s a curve whereby the marginal return tapers off, let’s say at 85%. But at the moment we’re at I think 60%. The other aspect to this is that it is in some respects self re-inforcing. If most families are twin income then the purchasing power chasing the supply of housing is going to push out the one-income family, thereby giving another imperative for the second spouse to work.
In any case, this is certainly an area that deserves our attention.

He is earning 46k
She is earning 20k

Their combined income means they fall into the lower tax bracket (now 68k since the Budget). However, they have just had their first child and she has decided she wants to stay at home and mind the child. In that way they lose one income (20k pa). Now, because they are only a one income family some of his income falls into the higher rate for the first time. He pays the lower rate until 43k and then the higher rate on the remainder. PLUS they are afforded one less employee tax credit (1760k pa). To partially compensate she will receive a home carers allowance, I think that figure was EUR 770, from Budget 2006.

The home carers allowance notwithstanding, their total income into the house has dropped to a point where she realises that she can’t afford to stay at home – she realises that she must work (and by all accounts was devastated on hearing this news)

This couple are the losers of this taxation policy, and it hardly seems fair. However, other couples have lost out too, couples who are simply paying the higher rate of tax much earlier than they would be if the tax bands were applied in the same way. I’ve been asking economists to give me a figure since I published that Irish Times piece (perhaps David will assist) as I want to know what the total differential has been between married one income and married two income families since Budget 2000. One analyst said it was greater than 15k but he didn’t give me a final figure.

Yes of course there is an argument the other way, that two income married couples must pay child care through the nose if they cannot afford to keep one spouse at home. In that way, looking back at the example above, the couple in the example will lose out regardless of which way they turn. On the one hand, she can stay at home and they have one less income and pay more taxation, or, on the other hand, they can both remain in employment in the greater economy and pay child care through the nose and run the risks outlined above in David’s piece.

Our immigrants put us to shame in this area – most of them speak two or three languages. We Irish need to pull our socks up and teach languages properly from an early age. Learning Irish at primary level is good because it primes a child’s brain for learning languages, but we need to introduce languages other than Irish at an early stage.

We need to cop on in Ireland – our communication abilities are poor, whether it is Irish people’s language skills or the availability of broadband and second generation internet connection. If we cannot communicate with the rest of the world, not matter how well we think we are doing now, we will get left behind in the medium to long term future.

Your comment about the need for a broader educational focus made me think of something I was talking about with an English colleague yesterday. He was telling me that his son was interested in Asian languages and we were talking
about the secondary schools in the Leiden area (where we both live and work).

I was amazed to find that the public secondary school in the area I live in offers not only a bilingual education program (half of the subjects through Dutch, half through English) and offers Mandarin Chinese and Spanish as subjects.

This is taken from the school website “Pushing the boundaries of communication – that is one of the characteristic educational features of Visser. Therefore students (and parents!) at our school learn Chinese. Speaking Chinese gives you a head start in the world of tomorrow. In the vision of the Visser ‘t Hooft Lyceum there are three world languages: English, Spanish and Chinese. Thus each of the three languages is taught at Visser. Specifically we mean Mandarin, as spoken by 850 million people.The Chinese lessons are given outside of the standard roster by trained teachers, who are either native speakers or near to that level.”

The idea that a school would have such a modern philosophy and actually enact it is incredible for me but I guess that I am a typical product of the Irish educational production line where you learned to pass exams to get to university to get a good job.

The growth of the Gaeilscoileanna in Ireland is a very positive move but you have to wonder why intermediate forms of education like the bilingual immersion programs in Holland or Canada are not being introduced. The vision of Irish politicians now seems to be to have a bilingual Ireland but how can that ever be achieved without active measures to achieve bilingualism.

Aidan