Twitter Conversation of the Day 17 August: Peter and George

The Greens have announced their child poverty/tax policy today. It involves a top tax rate of 40% for income over $140,000. This has prompted Peter Dunne to tweet the following:

Twitter___PeterDunneMP__Greens_using_my_taxes_to_count____

Unsurprisingly this prompted a bit of a reaction, but the one in particular I think is worthy of attention is George’s:

Twitter___mrdarroch__They_re_not__your__taxes_____

To which Peter responded:

Twitter___PeterDunneMP___mrdarroch_The_taxes_I_pay____

Now at this stage, I would have expected many other Twitter users to continue down the line of argument they had been going. But George doesn’t:

Twitter___mrdarroch___PeterDunneMP_I_thought_you____

Twitter___PeterDunneMP___mrdarroch_I_was_talking_about____

Twitter___mrdarroch___PeterDunneMP_Yes__and_like____

This exchange highlights, once again, the potential issue of a lack of tone changing how different people read the same tweet. But at the same time, it also shows that there are some decent Twitter users out there who are willing to engage in reasoned debate and admit when they are wrong. As well as there being MPs who are willing to do the same, and not get overly defensive when there is a misunderstanding.

matthew