In Britain, polls show large majorities in favour of mansion taxes and higher taxes on the finance sector.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We have too many politicians who are poll-driven to excess. Polls are important. You've got to know what the public is thinking, but you can't let them drive you completely.
I fail to understand how you can justify a poll tax on the entire population, yet exclude a significant proportion of that population from programmes that this tax is paying for.
A Harris poll I've seen says only 12 percent of the electorate names taxes as one of the most important issues facing the nation. Voters put tax cuts dead last, behind education, Social Security, health care, Medicare and poverty.
It seems like the richer you are, the more chance you have of paying less tax.
To me, the real opinion polls are the tangible facts: the growing creation of jobs, the number of planning permissions, the number of commercial vans being sold - the signs that the Irish people are regaining confidence.
There are people who enjoy the life in England but don't pay a penny in tax, whereas my footballers pay more than half their income in tax.
I do think there is room at the very top for marginal tax changes.
No, I'm not rich. I had a tax problem in this country, curiously enough, and my accountant said the British government was patently wrong in taxing me, and they were, but we couldn't persuade them and it cost me everything I had.
Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It's not a popular position.
We should be forced to give so many exemptions and concessions (inevitably to the benefit of high spending authorities in Inner London) that the flat-rate poll tax would rapidly become a surrogate income tax.