Let's frighten the bejaysus out of them!

As part of my work I run management programmes and this always involves a module on motivation, which runs through Maslow and Herzberg and shows how in the past the major motivator was fear as in Roman Galleys and Soldiers in WW1 and how we've moved on.

But we haven't moved far have we?

The big bad bogey man is the major player in the election so far, with FF flagging the portents of doom if anyone else is in charge, FG and Lab trying to terrify us with law and order stories, and promising leglislation which will soon lead to mandatory sentences for looking sideways or slightly shifty at anyone in "charge" and the greens promising us that our childrens children will be bushmen of the Kalahari if we vote for anyone but them.

The Eircom Phonewatch guy is trawling the depths looking for reasons why burglars will visit our houses regularly at any time of year, and Rupert is running 24/7 coverage of the Madeline McCann kidnapp case.

Am i being cynical here, or would it suit the Eircoms and Ruperts of this world if we all stayed in our houses behind out high walls and our phonewatch system and watched Sky all day while ordering from Tesco online and growing fat on Ben and Gerry's which of course would cause us to buy weightwatchers special range and eventually lots of prozac and zytloft which would make us feel better about the fact that we've been caught in a trap from which it's almost impossible to escape and worst of all is the realisation that we walked into it voluntarily.....

I'm going to resist for another while, and try to live in the real world. without a phonewatch system, without a skybox, but with a bloody life.