Letters 11-01-2007
Letters to Village
Election issues
No quality of life for working parents
I am a tax-paying citizen living in Maynooth, in the constituency of Kildare North. I am also a working mum and that, coupled with the huge commute every day, is soul-destroying. Being banished to the counties in order to afford a house is sucking the soul out of family life. Thousands of families are just like me. To be honest, I don't have a family life, or a quality of life. My son sees me for 30 mins in the morning and not in the evening, because he's already in bed by the time i make my gigantic trek from the city to home. My choices are stark – I can choose to drive and spend three hours of a round trip sitting on the N4 or I can get a train and spend three hours walking to the station and on the train, not to mention the inevitable delays and breakdowns, and standing in a stuffed carriage for almost an hour. ‘Cattle' and ‘truck' are two words that come to mind. In fact, health and safety would have something to say if animals were treated like us.
Why can't the government do something about the issue of helping parents with the cost of childcare? Tax relief on what we pay is all I ask. Yes, we get €1,000 per year but my childcare costs almost this much a month! And that is every month, every year until my son goes to school. I consider it a second mortgage, without the tax relief.
The government is going to get hammered on the doorsteps on this issue. I already see other like-minded women and men banding together. Cross, angry, frustrated, they can't wait for that FF knock on the door.
I pay, on average, €800 a month on tax. I get very little for my contribution to the economy. I have private healthcare and don't use the public system – not because I don't want to, but because those waiting lists are so long.
Sometimes I wonder if I would be better off resigning my job and becoming a welfare mother. The thoughts of no commuting stress... bliss. The thoughts of being able to spend time raising my beautiful baby... bliss. But I didn't train for years and work for years to climb to the top of my career ladder to give it away.
So I battle on, like thousands of other working parents, angry and frustrated.
Karen McManus
Maynooth, Co Kildare
Response to AIB story
Enquiry results not mentioned
The “Faldor Scandal” paragraphs in your AIB feature (‘AIB stalls on compensation commitment', Village, 4-11 January) don't mention the outcome of related inquiries.
For example: when the matter became public, Gerry Scanlan [former chief executive, AIB] explained that the relatively small amount of money involved had been received by his wife via her family, entrusted to AIB Investment Managers to invest, and unknown to her, invested the Faldor way. When the irregularities became known, the related tax issues were settled. As far as I know, subsequent inquiries confirmed that story.
Where is the scandal in that as far as Gerry Scanlan is concerned? Is it not time to drop, in fairness, the use of that word in that respect?
Joe Foyle
Ranelagh, Dublin 6
War in the Middle East
Blair rewrites history of Iraq invasion
In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Tony Blair asserts that he and US president George Bush chose values over security in their response to 9/11. In so doing, he is re-writing history to fit the fallout from Iraq: security has not been improved, but further threatened. According to Blair's latest version, Iraq wasn't about security, it was about Western values.
Mr Blair is now massaging history as vigorously as he did intelligence before the war. The argument for war in late-2002 and early-2003 was clear: the invasion of Iraq was a necessary measure to remove a military threat and an ugly regime. The bells that Blair and Bush rang were those of WMD and 45-minute strikes on Britain. Little was said about values at the time.
The prime minister's hands are full of straw after demolishing supposed detractors who claim we have “terrorism today because of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq”. He continues, “They seem to forget entirely that 9/11 pre-dated both.” In reality, few say otherwise.
I cannot help feeling that in his heart Blair now recognises that Iraq was a badly misguided adventure that has turned into a catastrophe. There is a shade of self-doubt about his argument. In it, he is struggling with his own conscience as much as with the great issues of our time. It's a pity that Mr Blair's inner conflict contaminates his analysis of Islamist terror, because his thesis on the difficulty of the Muslim world in dealing with modernity is well argued. Perhaps we now have the right message, but the wrong messenger.
Ciarán Mac Aonghusa
Churchtown, Dublin 14
Saddam Hussein hanging
Is execution the easiest way out?
The execution of Saddam Hussein has provoked fresh controversy as to the pros and cons of the death sentence; what is logical and what is not.
Is execution, in any form, not an easy way out for the culprit and a cheap solution for the state? It is an accepted fact in psychology that serious guilt, borne over a prolonged period, can be more torturous on the human mind than the endurance of physical hurt. In which case, execution could be accepted as a welcome and less painful release. On the other side of the coin, we hear figures like €100,000 quoted as the cost of keeping a prisoner in Mountjoy for one year. What kind of figures, then, would cover the cost of security if Saddam Hussein were interred indefinitely?
Maybe the time is now ripe to end all forms of execution and instead, build a giant global Alcatraz-type prison complex in the middle of some wasteland, eg the Sahara desert. A place where all hardened criminals and murderers worldwide on long-term prison sentences could be incarcerated and compulsorily obliged to partake in productive activities under the strictest security and supervision. The whole operation would be internationally-funded and administered, and would hopefully reward the member countries through having less crime and security problems at home.
In the case of Saddam Hussein, we have the ‘top people' who were instrumental in the whole sad mess in Iraq, as well as others who directly or indirectly condoned this unjust war, offering hypocritical opinions and shedding ‘crocodile tears' regarding the cruelty in implementing the death sentence. Only by appreciating the wonderful gift of life, respecting its true dignity and allowing for repentance, will a satisfactory solution to the death sentence ever be found.
JAMES A GLEESON
Thurles, Co Tipperary
RTÉ
Get Charlie Bird on the real stories
With three Russian actors now in Fair City, a very false subliminal impression is created that all Russian life is fun, fun, fun. However, with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and other mysterious events associated with it, we are seeing another side of Russia – a very evil side – being under-ruled by a slimy world that words fail to explain, and mostly associated with the murder of journalists eg Anna Politkovskaya.
Let's hope that 2007 will be the year of the turning of RTÉ. The turning of Charlie Bird, chief news correspondent, away from adventure trekking in Brazil to reporting on trolley-filled corridors in Irish hospitals. Turning him away from promoting his book while Bryan Dobson usurps his senior post and interviews Bertie Ahern in his lair in Drumcondra. Turning him towards Russia and Chechnya to ask the real Sergei, Olga and Lana about the Russian Tim (Putin).
We expect more from Charlie Bird as chief news correspondent in a semi-state organisation. He may wish to be known as some small hack reporter, but every student journalist wishes to have his, the highest journalistic post in the country.
Peter Kennedy
Sutton, Dublin 13
Election 2007
Media make sure there's no alternative
Since it is part of the human condition that power corrupts, it makes for a healthy democracy to have an alternative government to the one in power available at each election.
The ongoing and relentless campaign of the majority of political correspondents to undermine the possibility of any alternative government to the present one being offered in the next election is, therefore, pathetic. This is a fairly widespread campaign. It includes the Independent group of papers, the so-called public service broadcaster RTÉ, much of commercial radio and TV and some of our former imperial masters' organs of propaganda in this country, such as the Daily Mail and the Sun.
This orchestrated campaign has been conducted over many years to limit the choice of the electorate. Its net result has been near continuous government by one party. Its modus operandi is having the coverage of political affairs confined to obsequious interviews with the politicians in power. There is a total lack of critical analysis towards the sayings and doings of the powers that be and the fact that they use the taxpayer's money to project their image and make celebrities of themselves. The cultivation of the image of the Taoiseach is all-pervading: flattering photographs, soft interviews on his doings and his family's connection with the celebrity circuit and nearly limitless access to public service radio and TV. Most importantly, this campaign is totally dedicated to the destruction of the credibility of the leadership of the main opposition parties.
It is a prostitution of the role of the media in a democracy. They are supposed to act as watchdogs by holding those in power to account on behalf of ordinary people. Instead they are deliberately attempting to undermine the democratic right of the electorate to have an alternative government available at election time.
Anthony Leavy
Sutton, Dublin 13
ASBOs
A glimpse into the future of ASBOs
ASBOs, like asbestos before them, are being hailed as a cheap, wonderful, fireproof and insulating substitute by their promoters. But, like their namesake, it will take another generation for society to realise the toxicity and long-lasting after-effects.
Keith Nolan
Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim
Dangerous dogs
Let go of the criminal's best friend
The savaging to death of a five-year-old girl in Britain must serve as another reminder of how dangerous pitbulls are and how grossly unsuitable they are as pets. These, and other similar vicious breeds, should be banned completely by law and the breeding of them made a criminal offence.
The blood-crazed thugs who organise dogfights and badger-baiting sessions primarily use pitbulls or dogs that are the result of crossbreeding with them. They are pitted against each other as dozens, or in some case hundreds, of sadistic louts stand around egging them on, placing large bets on the outcome of fights.
Pitbulls are also the favoured “pets” of drug dealers and other undesirable elements. That leaves only a tiny minority of misguided pet owners who would have to be deprived of their fetish for macho monsters in the event of a ban.
There is no valid excuse for being in possession of such creatures. They belong in a museum alongside the remnants of dinosaurs and extinct woolly mammoths.
Pitbulls, though innocent in the sense that animals cannot be held ethically responsible for their actions, are a high risk to children and adults alike.
Must we wait for a tragedy like the one that has left an English family grieving? I say the time has come to remove these lethal killers from our streets and homes.
John Fitzgerald
Callan, Co Kilkenny
State papers
No more 30-year rules for state secrets
I can well understand how the release of 30-year-old state papers may be a god-send for those who must continue to provide us with our beloved media while their workers are being tenderly resuscitated from the trauma of the winter solstice. Nevertheless, such understanding does not excuse us from enquiring why we, the citizens of a self-governing republic, allow this pernicious practice of long-term concealment of public information to persist.
We elect to Dáil Éireann our deputies whose first duty is to prevent corruption and to ensure that the public good is promoted, preserved and defended with all due diligence. They dish out important jobs among themselves and there is enormous power vested in the chosen ones. The remaining deputies become backbenchers. They subject themselves to political orchidectomy which renders them impotent until the approach of the next general election. The net result of this is that our so-called self-governing republic is, in reality, governed by a secretive and, therefore, despotic oligarchy.
This oligarchy rules by that well-known principle of mushroom husbandry – keep ‘em in the dark and throw horse dung at them. They employ spin doctors to manipulate into acceptability such info-scraps as they deem fit for a public already incurably infected by a pestilential curiosity. All the rest is squirreled away in secret vaults for 30+ years. If, by any perverse chance, any of this stuff is required by, say, an inquiry, the file can be conveniently found to be lost.
Politicians are the servants of the people and we may let them forget it at our peril. Servants may not conceal anything from their masters, not for 30 years, not for 30 days, not for 30 seconds. It is the bounden duty of elected deputies to see to it that there are mechanisms and procedures in place to prevent concealment and its concomitant corruption.
It will be very easy to verify that the requisite procedures are in place. Every communication, be it letter, email, phone call, head to head chat or pillow-talk received by an elected or appointed public servant will be in the public domain within 24 hours of receipt. Howl away as much as you like about this, but bear in mind that there is no obligation whatsoever on anyone to become an elected or appointed public servant, nor is there any obligation on anyone to enter into communication with these servants. The adage about enduring the heat in the kitchen applies to all.
Bear in mind, also, that corruption flourishes in the darkness of secrecy.
Tomás Dalton
Ardee, Co Louth
Statement
Call for immediate investigation into Tara
The Campaign to Save Tara is calling for an immediate halt to all construction works, an official investigation by the Environment and Transport committees, and the appointment of an independent mediator in order to prevent an escalation of confrontations.
Heated confrontations have been occurring since pro-Tara demonstrations against current works began last week in the Tara/Skryne Valley, which have included threats of violence and threatening use of machinery by contractors.
Confrontations continue near Rath Lugh between demonstrators and tree-felling/earthmoving contractors.
We are objecting to the works because only archaeological works have been approved by Minister Dick Roche, and these are construction works, involving clearings of trees and earth along the proposed pathway of the M3 motorway between Navan and Dunshaughlin.
Premature construction is occurring and that construction machinery belonging to [named company] is being stored in a new depot, south of Dunshaughlin, and is being used to do construction work, despite the fact that the Public-Private Partnership contract has not been signed. SIAC is part of Eurolink Consortium, the ‘preferred bidder' for the M3 contract, along with Spanish company Ferrovial Agroman Ireland.
The National Roads Authority is required under the Roads Act to hold a hearing if objections to the tolling scheme, published in 2002, were received. If the public does not approve of two tolls on the M3, then it cannot be a PPP scheme and no contract can be signed.
The M3 route cannot be considered to be legally approved until after the oral hearing for the tolling scheme, to be held in the Ardboyne Hotel, Navan, on Wednesday 17 January at 10am. Otherwise the hearing is meaningless.
Campaign to Save Tara
More www.tarawatch.org