I read the two main unionist parties election manifestos today and I could hardly believe my eyes. The DUP and the UUP both want devolution. According to the DUP, they are "a devolutionist party. We believe in democratic, fair and accountable government."
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Where the Progressive Democrats would have you believe that a better return on your income tax duties is the obvious path for the electorate to make a decision on future governments; it seems ferociously inconsiderate to the floating voters represented in two separate RTE editions of the Frank Opinion - where health as been expressly proven to be the most important point on the agenda.
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.
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
Over the past week it was quite astonishing to read the excuses from the level of the Garda press office right up to Justice Minister McDowell himself on why the two individuals allegedly involved in the despicable and disgusting activity of accessing child pornography may escape justice.
With loaded pen and heavy heart I write to you, asking that you and your readers consider the moral, legal and sentimental conundrum in which 50,000 Irish-Americans find themselves.