Do you like good weather? Big hugs?

Do you like air?

Do you like air?

This is a poll conducted by the National Youth Federation (Here). I can understand the logic of conducting a poll to determine the needs of young people, makes perfect sense. Then I started reading the questions, and they pretty much sum up why so many Irish people are disenchanted with politics, in short, because they are spoken to like they are morons. Some of the questions are about the availability of specific facilities, which is fair enough. But some of the  questions are so generic as to make one wonder what it can actually tell us about what young people think?

For example, one question asks: “Do you think that their should be more,less or the same amount of cuts for young people?” (Their spelling, by the way.) Where is the follow up question? Who do they believe the cuts some be focussed on? There’s an answer I’d like to hear.

Another question asks: ” Do you want Ireland to have leaders who are? Smart? Tough? Fair? Kind? Hardworking? Honest?” WTF? What can that answer possibly tell us? If they’d at least put in “able to deal with the Jewish Question.” we’d know what percentage of those polled were Nazis. That would be something.

What about this one: ” On a scale of 1 to 10 How important are the following?(10 being the highest & 1 the lowest)”

“A country where most people are highly educated.”

“A country that is fair and equitable where wealth is evenly distributed.”

“A country that has lots of money, but the money isn’t necessarily shared with all its citizens.”

“A country with a good environment.”

“A country rich in culture and arts.”

“A country where people are healthy.”

It’s not like they are even asked to rate these issues exclusively. You can rate them all as very important, as opposed to deciding which ones matter more. 

But then I suspect a poll announcing that most young people questioned don’t give a toss about arts and culture would not suit the worldview of those conducting the survey. After all, they asked this question: 

“A country that is fair and equitable where wealth is evenly distributed.”

In other words, it assumes that sharing the wealth evenly between those who get up and go to work in the morning, and those who don’t, is “fair”. Is it?