An interesting thought Kat. I suspect Bert is correct, not that that would necessarily be a bad thing. I do think Steve has the emphasis slightly askew though, I agree that .."We are who we are because we don't rule,..", but I think as Kat has pointed out it's those that do "rule", not us who are the know-it-alls who think they have all the right answers to everything. We generally speaking are willing to not only listen to another point of view but to be swayed by it, and I can't think of anything that I have read here that makes me think 'Caters are self-righteousness.

If Mudcatter's ruled, things would certainly be different, and those who are used to the current style would consider it a "helluva mess" but that is because they would be applying their criteria for success not ours.

I've so often seen and heard of situations in business where an unconventional approach has been adopted, and the results condemned as a failure by the "Establishment" because their criteria for success are the very things that the experiment sought to remove. That the experiment met and frequently exceeded its own, pre determined success criteria is completely overlooked. Even where an unconventional approach meets the Establishments own criteria; such as so called "ethical investment", it is largely ignored.

As to whether women would do better, I don't know, they could hardly do worse, but from my own experience in the UK and NZ, the women who aspire to power have all the undesirable characteristics of thier male counterparts.

Personally I don't want to rule so I'll move the soapbox back to the corner, and get back to chipping away at the foundations.

As an aside and just out of interest, we have had a case in the last two weeks of an MP caught with his trousers down (figuatively I hasten to add) and from the interviews he gave I would say that he is a prefect example of the theory that politicians are afraid to stop talking in case their brains start working!

Pete M