I am starting to get a slight smell of all this recent PR about government aid programs. It is all beginning to sound like, "Look lads, we know you haven't got any more idea about how to run a country than we have so here's a few million to help you cover up a few cock-ups - lack of health-care, education, transport, food and water, for instance. If there's anything left over, just increase your expenses like we do".

Dick Barton, Tinahely, Co.Wicklow

I was quite taken aback to hear a leading advocate of field sports warn recently about the supposed threat cats pose to Ireland's wildlife. They are sinister, sneaky little buggers, he cautioned, that kill for sport rather than for food, and he urged that the cat population needed to be controlled as matter of urgency. He ranted in earnest about the perfidious felines and the "breathtaking ignorance" of all those silly people who fawn on them.

Minister Martin Cullen has just announced investments of €86m for the six regional airports under Transport 21. He tells us that: “This unprecedented level of investment reflects the government's conviction that the regional airports have a key role to play in facilitating balanced regional development.”

The election is about marketing and strokes, not about how to use our massive wealth to resolve social inequities. By Vincent Browne

As internal dissent plagues the DUP, candidates have been asked to sign contracts of loyalty, with fines for breaching party policy ahead of the Northern Assembly elections on 7 March. Fionola Meredith reports.

I am writing to you to in relation to Dublin City Council's decision to erect 120 permanent advertising billboards around the city, operated by JC Decaux, one of the world's largest outdoor advertising companies. This decision to effectively hand over public space to a private company to profit from advertising for an indefinite time frame in return for 500 bicycles is not value for money. These huge display ads, 2.4m high, and almost two metres wide, will add to our already impossibly cluttered streets.

I am a 44-year-old woman. For over 20 years I have worked in the same building with different employers. I have worked hard and with loyalty to each employer, and like many of my friends, could be relied upon to go the extra mile when things were tight. There are no words to describe the anger and hurt that I, and my colleagues felt when we read the article in the Kerryman last week stating that according to local business people, the Irish don't work hard enough. It is difficult to cope with being the victim of such a racist generalisation in black and white in your local newspaper.

After the massive incompetence (excuse me - "simple human error") that got the pervert Judge Curtin off the hook and into a nice little pension, comes the latest blunder of McDoodle's department. A major alert comes in from a foreign country on child pornography and it gets overlooked. Come on now, McDoodle, how dare you treat us with such contempt. Nothing except either a hopelessly endemic corruption or the most massive imaginable incompetence could get something like that ignored. There is no alternative.

Maybe the IRFU should pass on the two national anthems [& the Ireland's Call dirge?] and invite Johnny Rotten to perform the Sex Pistols' 'God Save the Queen', whose last verse is:

God save the queen we mean it man
There is no future in England's dreaming
No future for you no future for me
No future no future for you

Bertie's conversion to environmentalism and green politics as shown in his address to the Ógra Fianna Fáil ard fhéis at the weekend is to be warmly welcomed. He's obviously been hearing a lot about the dangers posed by global warming from many concerned people. Bertie instructed Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus to immediately have a 5 per cent bio-diesel mix in all their vehicles, and that all new vehicles purchased by Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus must have a 30 per cent diesel mix. The same applies to all state vehicles.