No one likes a smarty pants….

I still think I was right though….

Ok Gareth, you win smart arse of the day 😉

How is that not congruent 😉

Is that not what all politicians do?

Hello Marty, I hear you… And agree with all that you say.

I am not suggesting that people lack behavioural flexibility… Not by any means. But I am suggesting that we should all have the courage of our convictions… If we firmly believe something, the we can elegantly and congruently discuss it without just performing an ill-thought out U-turn to attempt to appease the masses.

I am not quoting NLP theories at all by the way, just notions of what appeals to me as a voter… I am no fan of those digging their heels in unnecessarily and I am not advocating that at all. The way you illustrate that is correct – flexibility is necessary to gain more agreement.

But this was not a conflict in the middle East between warring factions and this was not a heavily advocated invasion of a foriegn country based upon a false premise… This was a man refusing to acknowledge what he really thought… He says that he is not a man of ‘style’ as his way of excusing himself in the leaders live debates, yet he went purely for style in rejecting what he said privately.

We all make mistakes, I think he dealt with it bravely and I understand his u-turn… I’d just have liked it if he said, “you know what lady, you got on my tits today… I called you a bigot because that is how I perceive someone with some of those extreme views you have” – he could still make good of the situation, he could still acknowledge that what he said was a mistake…

I would not suggest he does not listen to Mrs Duffy, he can still do that, he could even lessen his stance as a result of listening to her further, but to U-turn just because it was bad PR to have said it at all… I found that lame.

Yes, people are entitled to their opinions and if you have an opinion about something then standing by that opinion is a good thing. But it can also be a weakness. It can leave you blind to other viewpoints, unable to compromise and unable to move situations forward. I mean, if you just said to a bunch of representatives from Israel and the Arab world: “okay, you don’t like each other. Great. Stand by your opinions and go and aim your weapons at each other again” then the entire Middle East peace protest is dead in the water.

NLP talks of congruence but it also talks about being more flexible in your thinking and Gordon did show a flexibility in his thinking by doing what he did. Also, it was nice to see a politician stop and act along the lines of “you know what, I might have got this one wrong” in terms of handling the situation. Tony Blair is congruent about the nonsense war in Iraq and he had been all the way through the build up to the war and after it. If he was daft enough, as is claimed, to have believed that their actually were weapons of mass destruction there and daft enough to maintain that belief, then we may have been led by a congruent but incredibly daft Prime Minister. And I really don’t see too much respect shown now for Tony outside of the neo con heartlands in the US.

To put it bluntly: “there’s a fine line between being congruent and being respected for that and being an arsehole”. The BNP are pretty congruent in their views and attitudes. Are they respected?

I believe in America they talk about not just the freedom of speech but the responsibility of having freedom of speech.

Spot on Nath.

Great hearing from you by the way… It’s been too long buddy 🙂