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You describe how UBS, a prominent Swiss bank, has issued guidelines for its staff to smarten themselves up (“Which button says 'Promote me'”, Focus, last week [19th December], because the way you look is the first impression you convey to others. You create the second impression the moment you open your mouth, fairly or not. Therefore one would hope speech guidelines on pronunciation and grammar will follow. These would include careful enunciation of vowels and consonants, no more glottal stops, singular subject followed by singular verb and pronoun, correct past participle. Even the BBC and RTE would benefit from such guidelines.

An excellent exposé of nefarious goings-on at AIB. If this happened, you can be sure that other dubious shifts of money also occurred that we don't (yet) know about, and at all of the bailed-out Irish banks, not just AIB. Keep digging, Fintan!

Madam, / “Specifics now, Mr Netanyahu”, you conclude in your editorial of 14th December (Another new beginning?) calling for Israel to present proposals for Middle East peace.

Yet Israel has repeatedly “set out its stall” over the past decades. Comprehensive compromises and proposals were put to Yasser Arafat in 2000 under the aegis of President Bill Clinton; other ideas have been offered since. By now its position on a two-state settlement is common knowledge. Yet not once has the Palestinian side presented a blueprint of what it sees as a final solution. Whether under Mr Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, it has only ever rejected Israel's propositions.

As your editorial states, Hilary Clinton has urged BOTH sides to return to the core issues and to detail their positions on these “without delay and with real specificity”.

“Specifics now, Mr Abbas.” / Yours etc,

Louise Ray bemoans cruelty to animals, citing animal testing, fur farming, shooting and greyhound racing.  But she is hypocritical to say not a word about by far the biggest cruelty to animals of all:  killing millions of them every day all over the world by the slow, painful and terrifying methods of halal and kosher. / Yours etc

You mention the figures of 5,000 and 60,000 barrels per day as being estimates of the flow of the spill, by various people.

What few seem to realise however is that every figure anyone has ever put out has been no more than a guesstimate. It was impossible to measure the flow. No meter could be attached while it was wild; no-one could collect oil in a drum over a set period in order to make a calculation.

Every estimate is based on someone guessing the rate of oil flow from the subsea wellhead just by looking at it it under a mile of water as depicted on TV s, and mentally comparing that with what a given flow of oil looks like on surface in atmospheric conditions. 

Even the latter is dubious because so few people ever nowadays see 5,000 bbl/day of oil flowing freely at pressure out of a pipe, let alone 60,000 bbl/day. Who would ever permit such a foolish and dangerous thing to happen? 

So no-one has a clue about volumes. And actually at the end of the day, they're pretty irrelevant anyway, because the only amount that matters is what is left behind on the beaches: that's measurable and it ain't much. All the rest is dispersed and by now harmless.

Madam / So long as the Bank of Ireland is in hock to the Irish taxpayers to the tune of €3 billion plus the State guarantee, and the State itself is on the brink of insolvency, the bank has absolutely no right to donate its paintings and sculptures to the Irish Museum of Modern Art, nor sales proceeds to "community-based arts organisations" or anyone else, until it has restored its own financial health; moreover Minister Mary Hanafin is fiscally irresponsible to demand such donations ("Bank gives works to museum of modern art", News, November 6th).

This misplaced philanthropy is grossly amoral; the madness must stop. The bank's debts to beleaguered taxpayers must have first call on every cent of spare cash the bank can raise. / Yours etc.

Yes but only if the replacement is a proper replacement. That means, in this order:

1. Shutting down the agency entirely and making every member of staff, top to bottom, redundant.

2. Setting out in public new terms of reference for the new agency.

3. Creating the new agency with a new board of management with no affiliation in any way to the old FÁS. These people should be selected by international competition, with preference for a foreigner getting the top job (á la Christoph Mueller or Matthew Elderfield).

4. The new management to have a free hand in selecting staff, obviously giving former FÁS employees a chance to compete for their old jobs.

There's NO F**KING MONEY! What part of that does Mr Cuffe not understand? Revenue is taking in €37 billion per year; the State is spending €58 billion. This has to halt. Now.

Mr Cuffe, please tell your fellow cronies in the Greens and Fianna Fail to immediately stop spending the money of today's children and their children whom you are wilfully beggaring for life. If this is not child abuse I don't know what is.

No, definitely, because FF will lose all three which will (thankfully) lead to its downfall and hence a general election.

Only a new government - ANY new government - can take the very harsh budgetary measures needed, which amount to putting a drastic stop to spending as the funds simply aren't there.

FF cannot do this properly because it is hamstrung by its long and shameful history of incompetent collaboration with the economic collapse. The new government can do what it likes, at least during its honeymoon period, while blaming everything on FF.

Just like Cameron is doing in the UK.

Do I think the rise of the far-right threatens the stability of the European Union?

I certainly hope so!

The term is anyway a misnomer.

Most so-called "far right" parties are in fact deeply left-wing, calling for all kinds of state subsidies and control of free market capitalism. They earn the moniker solely because they hold the outrageous belief that a country should belong to its natives rather than to foreign incomers.

The EU is well past its sell-by date and has become a statist, all-controlling, ever-growing ogre, with member countries steadily being reduced to the status of counties - Co France, Co Italy, Co Ireland etc.

It's time to return to free-market principles and leave it at that.

Second Comment

A telling observation. Up to page 4, I have counted 35 commenters, of which all but four choose to be pseudonymous. A couple are from Iran and Afghanistan so their desire for anonymity is understandable. But why are the vast majority so cowardly they won't use their own names?

Come on, if you think you have something worthwhile to say, put your name to it!

Madam, / Slowly the mask slips.  Those of us who viewed the Lisbon treaty with horror foresaw that, notwithstanding vehement denials, the EU would inevitably target Ireland's low corporation tax.  This was/is for the simple reason that our 12.5 per cent puts unwelcome competitive pressure on other EU members to bring down their own rates, something that confirmed statists abhor.  And now, with Ireland on its knees, the EU's Economics Commissioner Ollie Rehn sees his chance to demand tax increases (Low Irish corporation tax targeted by EU to cut deficit,October 2).  He is of the bizarre view that the way for Ireland to solve its appalling annual overspend of €22 billion per year [**] is not to spend less, but to remove more from the pockets of Irish citizens and to reduce the one remaining incentive for foreign employers to continue providing good jobs for 100,000 of them.  Such an attitude will not lead to a happy ending for this country. / Yours etc. 

** Reference: The Government's White Paper, "Receipts and Expenditure for the Year Ending 31 December 2010", Page 5, Table 1:
2010 receipts = €36 bn, expenditure = €58 bn, deficit = €22 bn

I love all the "No"s from Catholic-born Irish and their reasons. They remind me of teenage tantrums when Mam and Dad draw a line in the sand. And then they go off and brag to their friends how brave they are in defying their gombeen father and mother, safe in the knowledge that though they may reject their parents their parents will never reject them.

PS - I am a "Yes", evidently part of a diminishing minority oppressed by a bigoted majority! ;-]

The first seven comments are far more insightful, rational, coherent and plain sensible than Dan O'Brien's rambling wishful-thinking article.

One observation. This Govt has made not a single single civil/public servant redundant. Not one. Yet industry has been crushed with redundancies and nearly half a million are now on the dole. Dishing out dole is the only Govt business that is growing. Until there are savage redundancies (think 30-50%) in the public and civil service sector, this Govt is not serious about bringing down costs and tackling the financial catastrophe. 

Jim O'Sullivan: Whenever an article like this appears, Tony Allwright is sure to show up spouting the usual jaded nonsense that all we need to do is put half of all those that work in govenrment jobs onto the dole, a recipe for utter disaster.The collapse was caused by the same "money first" thinking which saw government policy encourage people to crawl over their neighbours to get rich quick. Our society was fractured with unfairness and injustice everywhere, money now even determines the standard of care that a sick person can access.. Taxation policy shifted with emphasis on indirect levies that further widened the gap on the socio-economic ladder.

So the first thing that any ogvenrment must do if they are serious about tackling our demise is to introduce proper progressive taxation on income and wealth. As pointed out elsewhere the collapse had its origin in reagonomics. During Reagans first term he changed the income tax system from 15 brackets with a range fron 13% to 70% down to 12% to 38%. indirect taxes rose to meet the shortfall and that has created great division which Obama is now trying to tackle.

Unregulated capitalism has failed and it is a source of astonishment that otherwise sane, rational people are having difficulty grasping that fact. Another "dip" incoming.

Madam, / I refer to your Editorial of 9th September (“An incitement to hatred”) about the threat by evangelical pastor Terry Jones to burn the Koran on the ninth anniversary of nine-eleven. 

Hillary Clinton also roundly castigates the proposed “Burn a Koran” day protest.  On the other hand, Barack Obama has, like yourself on August 17th, defended the construction of the so-called “Ground Zero” mosque. Both are legal activities, which happen to offend Muslims and non-Muslims respectively. One lasts one day, the other lasts for a hundred years or more.

Why is one to be condemned and the other deemed acceptable? Just asking. / Yours etc,

Madam, / Your editorial of 3rd September seems to adopt the same kind of assumptions that brought about the international collapse in confidence in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Confidence and climate change). 

While dismissing the very serious errors that we have come to know about that emanated from the IPCC, you have nevertheless assumed that its underlying message - that global warming is happening and humans are causing it - is nevertheless correct.   But the IPCC's errors are like a capful of urine emptied into a bottle of wine.  It pollutes the entire contents, such that you can never know which bits are to be believed and which are untrustworthy. 

The discredited IPCC needs to be disbanded and then perhaps re-constituted to approach the climate change issue anew, peopled with both advocates and sceptics.  It also needs a different chairman, one who has appropriate scientific credentials and credibility, rather than degrees in railway engineering¹, and someone who has no commercial or other links to the business end of climate issues².  / Yours etc,

References:
1  Wikepedia, US Climate Change Science Program and 350.org
2  New York Times

Should an Islamic cultural centre be constructed close to the site of Ground Zero?
Comment on 1st September on an Irish Times poll question (50% Yes, 50% No as at 12th September)

Firstly, while the vast majority of the world's billion Muslims are not terrorists, calls for subjugation and terrorism in various guises against infidels occupy some 60% of the Koran, so it is incorrect to infer that 9/11 was somehow anti-Islamic. Moreover, even non-terrorist Muslims are virtually silent when it comes to public condemnation of Islamic terrorism.

Secondly, Islamists have a history of building mosques on the ruins of their conquests to emphasise their superiority (just think of Istanbul's Blue Mosque or Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque, built after – and to emphasise - conquest, on top of a Christian church and Jewish synagogue respectively). The public symbolism of building a huge mosque so near to the ruins of radical Islam's greatest triumph against America, Ground Zero, will not be lost on Muslims.

Thirdly, the proposed name, Cordoba House, is also ripe with anti-infidel symbolism.

As any Muslim can tell you, the original Cordoba was a Spanish city of Christians which Muslims conquered in the eighth century. Then, true to the Koran (eg 9:5, 9:29) they slaughtered or enslaved its citizens, and as was the custom built a mosque on top of a Christian church.

Even the word House (“Dar” in Arabic) is for Muslims evocative of the need to fight infidels. The word recalls that the world is divided into a House of Islam, where peace reigns because it is run by Muslims, and a House of War, where - such as in America - infidels rule, so must be conquered.

By any measure, the Ground Zero Mosque would be an appalling, triumphalist and gratuitous provocation to infidels. 

Page 7: To further Tony Allwright's point...The second thing the Turks did on capturing Constantinople was to convert the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. (The first was to slaughter all the inhabitants).
margaretr  Ireland

Madam, – Aris Venetikidis’s new maps of public transport in Dublin are absolutely brilliant! (“Capital idea imagines new way forward”, Home News, August 30th). But isn’t it extraordinary that it takes a foreigner to come up with such an idea, rather than Dublin Bus and Iarnród Éireann, given that such maps have long existed for cities all over the world. After all, senior officials love making junkets, sorry, fact-finding missions, to other countries.

Hopefully, the next step for downtrodden public bus commuters will be a timetable at every bus stop for that particular bus stop, so you know how long you will have to wait, when to expect the first/last bus and so forth. This is standard fare all over mainland Europe (and in fairness for the Dart) and pretty simple to implement. – Yours, etc,

Note: The maps are available for download

DLCC bins its bin service
Letter to the Irish Times on 28th August 2010

Madam - You report that Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, because “it could not afford to run the bin service” and was “losing about €3.5 million a year”, has sold off its bin collections to Panda (‘Loyal’ households get break of six months on bin charges, August 28th). 

Yet I thought my eyes were deceiving me when I read that “an agreement with Siptu this month had guaranteed no compulsory redundancies for environmental staff”.  This is an outrageous affront on beleaguered taxpayers.  Why should they be forced to pay for personnel whose business has been removed?  What commercial enterprise would attempt such a stunt.  What is DLRCC playing at? - Yours etc,

Sir, / Lexington ties himself in knots as he tries camouflage the realities of the proposed “Ground Zero” mosque within politically acceptable convolutions (“Build that mosque”, August 7th).

Firstly, immigration. It is the responsibility of the immigrant, not as Lexington infers the host, to integrate him/herself into his/her chosen new home.

Secondly, while the vast majority of the world's billion Muslims are not terrorists, calls for subjugation and terrorism in various guises against infidels occupy some 60% of the Koran, so it is incorrect to infer that 9/11 was somehow anti-Islamic. Moreover, even non-terrorist Muslims are virtually silent when it comes to public condemnation of Islamic terrorism.

Thirdly, Islamists have a history of building mosques on the ruins of their conquests to emphasise their superiority. The public symbolism of building a huge mosque so near to the ruins of radical Islam's greatest triumph against America, Ground Zero, will not be lost on Muslims.

The proposed name, Cordoba House, is also ripe with anti-infidel symbolism.

As any Muslim can tell you, the original Cordoba was a Spanish city of Christians which Muslims conquered in the eighth century. Then, true to the Koran (9:5, 9:29) they slaughtered or enslaved its citizens, and as was the custom built a mosque on top of a Christian church.

Even the word House is for Muslims evocative of the need to fight infidels. The word recalls that the world is divided into a House of Islam, where peace reigns because it is run by Muslims, and a House of War, where - such as in America - infidels rule, so must be conquered.

A treatise about the Ground Zero Mosque which does not expose these truths, is not being honest. / Yours etc,

Well done, Cliona, helping the only true democracy in the Middle East to defend itself against the surrounding hordes bent only on its destruction. Don't mind all that anti-Semitic drivel that you're getting in these comments. And if Raymond Deane doesn't like what you're doing, well then, you must be doing something right.

“It hasn’t gone near the corporate tax rate of 12.5 per cent, for fear of giving offence to international investors who just might make off with their money if it went up.”

True, but not just international investors.  

Question: What group actually creates jobs? Answer: Private industry; private investors.  
Question: What group spends money without creating anything? Answer: Government.  

So why does Mr Beesley advocate the discouragement of private industry and investors through tax hikes, while remaining virtually silent about Govt expenditure? Unless and until such expenditure is seriously slashed - in the order of 40% as Cameron is doing - the economic crisis will never be solved. Brian Lenihin's €3bn cuts out of a deficit of €20bn is paltry.  

On the other hand, jacking up the 12½% corporate tax can only have one outcome: the discouragement of job creation, as he himself implicitly admits. The very reverse of a stimulus.

It's all very well for the National Women's Council chief executive to howl in outrage because most female TDs reject the idea of quotas. But where is the NCLRPCC (National Council for Left-handed Red-haired Purple-eyed Club-footed Castrati), when you need it? I don't think that group has a single TD, unlike women who have 23. It's just not fair. What has ability got to do with anything anyway? We want quotas for all!

Fintan says,“a republic is constructed around a single, central and immutable value – equality.”

This statement is pure ideological claptrap!  

A republic, as the word's Latin origin - res publica - makes perfectly clear, is a “thing of the people”, which distinguishes it from, for example,  

In other words, under a republic, it is the people who own the country and thus it is the people who make the rules. The word conveys nothing more, nothing less.  
 
The people may choose to make “equality” the overriding philosophy, but they rarely do. This is because, if its meaning is “equality of outcome” it is essentially unjust and fascistic, as this requires confiscation of assets from those who have honestly earned them in order to give them to those who haven't, until equality of outcome is achieved. Mao? Stalin? Pol Pot? Sound familiar?  
 
On the other hand if it is to mean “equality of opportunity”, few well-meaning people would object, and indeed that is what most free societies embrace.  

In either case, “equality” has nothing to do with “republicanism”.

To Top of index

“By 2060, there will be only two people of working age for every person above 65. And, oldies, it’s all your fault.”

Despite her obvious derision of this statement, Kathy Sheridan is in fact spot on. It is irrefutably the pensioners' own fault. They are the ones who pro-created too few babies, which is the reason there are going to be too few working people to fund their pensions.

In Africa it is common knowledge that people have big families largely so that they can have some assurance that their children will look after them in their old age. In the West, because the State has taken over so many social functions, we have forgotton that connection. But it is still there.

Old people will always depend on young people to help them one way or another through their last years, and the only way to be sure there will be sufficient young people is to pro-create them.

"eddie" like others cites whites/slavery, Catholics/child-molestors, whites/supremacists to make a moral equivalence for Muslims/Islamic-terrorists.

This is a false comparison. In the first three cases, the vast majority of whites, Catholics, whites heartily condemn slavery, child-molestors, supremacists.

But the vast majority of Muslims do NOT condemn Islamic terrorists, or any part of the Islamic Jihad agenda and Koranic invocations which demand that infidels be subjugated, converted or killed. In fact you will scarcely find any practicing Muslim, let alone a majority, who will stand up and condemn this behaviour. Either they condone it or they fear standing up.

Both alternatives illustrate what a vile fascist ideology Islam is and why it is a travesty and supreme insult to the victims of 9/11 to build a mosque so near to Ground Zero. Especially one called "Cordoba" and "House", words which evoke only Islamic conquest in Europe and Islamic solidarity against infidels. Have a look at http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/ibrahim072710.html

If you or I owe money we have to repay it. If that means selling our house, its contents, our silverware, our car, so be it. Same with the state. It absolutely has to do whatever is necessary to get rid of its enormous debt, however foolishly (or indeed legitimately) acquired.

‘The prevailing belief during the boom was that the boom would give way to the much-vaunted “soft landing”.’

When, in the history of the world, has a boom EVER been followed by a “soft landing”? This phrase was the most ridiculous piece of mendacity every put about - and swallowed - by banks, by Fianna Fail, by the media. And yes, by otiose non-executive bank directors.

You have argued strongly for more stimulus. But answer me this. A stimulus involves the State spending money to promote growth, which in turn means the State decides where and how to spend the stimulus money. What gives you the slightest confidence that the State (indeed, any state including the USA) knows the best way to spend such money? 

The State, because its priorities are so different from those of business, is structurally and systemically incapable of making such choices; moreover why should it? The best people to make investment decisions are the businesses and would-be businesses themselves, ie those that will actually create new businesses that create new jobs. 

So if you believe in the somewhat dubious principle of stimulus (ie spending extra money that you essentially don't have so you must borrow it), it would be far wiser to simply give businesses across-the-board tax cuts, in other words reduce the 12.5% corporation tax rate even further. Businesses will more than likely re-invest the money they thereby save in ways that will profitably grow their businesses, and so create jobs.

There is no doubt that aid to feed the starving is ultimately destructive, and indeed feeds not so much those originally targeted but the scale of the original poverty and in many cases terrorism.  

If ever evidence was needed about the long-term negative consequences of indiscriminate aid, just look at Ethiopia. In Bob Geldof's Live Aid era (1983) Ethiopia's population was 17m of whom 7m had to be fed by outsiders. By 2003 both these numbers had doubled, average annual income had dropped from $190 to $108, food production from 450 kg to 140 kg per head and population growth risen from 2.5% to 2.7% per annum. And the country was still under a Marxist thumb: first Mengistu Haile Mariam then Meles Zenawi. (See http://www.tinyurl.ie/0i5). 

In other words, in twenty years, Ethiopian misery had pretty much doubled. The answer is not so much to cease aid per se (though maybe it is) but to direct it in a radically different direction, as Sarah suggests. And to achieve this regime-change (hopefully not by military means) may often have to be part of the equation.

Sir, / Minette Marrin asserts that parents feed their children fattening food because it's cheap, quoting biscuits, cakes, crisps, fatty snacks, deep-fried nuggets, chips and takeaways.  ("Today, class, we will throw away the poison in our lunchboxes", Comment, last week [ie June 27th; not available free online]). 

These foods are in fact much more expensive than healthy foods, and the "poor" can afford them only because their poverty is relative not absolute.  A trip to any supermarket will soon reveal that, for example, potatoes, meat and tapwater are not only much healthier but cost far less than chips, burgers and colas, and they are dead easy to cook. 

People eat and live unhealthily and get fat not through poverty but through ignorance.  Education is the sole answer to obesity.  Rich children are thinner not because, as Ms Marrin infers, they're rich but because their parents are better educated (which also explains why they're richer).  /Yours etc,

Certain words were edited out by the Sunday Times as indicated.

For back-up to this letter, see post from June 2003,
“Fatness - A Matter of Education Not Poverty”

Do you think full civil marriage rights should be extended to same-sex couples?
Comment dated 2nd July on an Irish Times poll question (64% Yes, 36% No as at 1 June) - [P11 plus]

No.

The state has no reason to extend any marriage-type concessions to any groups whatsoever other than (A) male-female pairings and in particular (B) marriage (meaning life-time commitment) ... 

These alone procreate new citizens (without which any society will die out), and marriage is time and again proven to be the best environment for raising children (see http://www.tinyurl.ie/oq), which maximises the chances of youngsters growing into productive, peaceful adults, the other big gain for society ...

Society receives no payout for extending benefits to any other style of adult groupings, gay or hetero, sexual or asexual ...

Remember any benefit I receive is paid for you by you, so you need to get some kind of return on your forced investment. 

The Egyptians have a lot to answer for operating a brutal blockade against Gaza and its luxury hotels and restaurants. 

... Why does the Egyptian dictatorship hate its fellow-Arabs and fellow-Muslims so much that they are augmenting their ugly surface barriers with a thick steel underground wall designed to prevent further tunnels being dug? ...

Have Hamas declared that Egypt must be annihilated? Is it because of all the Hamas rockets fired into Egyptian cities terrorising Egyptian civilians? Or perhaps the torrent of racist anti-Egyptian propaganda relentlessly poured into the ears of small schoolchildren? ...

What then?

Sir, / Earlier this year the US Congress received a formal report on Child Abuse and Neglect (tinyurl.ie/neglect). It found that, in terms of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect, and of education, children fared up to ELEVEN times better when raised by their married biological parents than by any other parenting arrangement.

This dramatically underscores the right of all children to their own married mother and father and that it is deeply wrong to deliberately deprive them of either. The purpose of one-man-one-woman marriage as a social institution is precisely (a) to procreate babies to ensure the continuance of society and (b) to give as many children as possible a mother and father as distinct from two “mothers” or two “fathers”. 

Kevin James O'Mahoney seems singularly cavalier when it comes to the welfare of children (Letters, May 28th), implying that their inalienable rights should be subordinated to the desires of gay couples to marry and raise children. / Yours etc,

For background, see here.

Madam, / In arguing for a ban on conventional prostitution, Tristan Mulhall confidently informs us that women "willingly choose a life of prostitution" only out of "dire necessity" (Letters, May 22nd). 

If that is the case, why does he want to deny women in dire necessity the means to earn their living in a manner they are willing to pursue?  What alternative is he offering for them to feed themselves and their families?   He seems to be interested only in privileged women. / Yours etc,

Sir, - Your opposition to the growing movement to ban the burqa in Western societies begs an obvious question ("Banning the burqa - A bad idea", May 15th 2010). 

If it is acceptable for women to hide their faces, it must therefore also be OK for men to parade the streets, hotels, government offices and other public places wearing balaclavas or motorcycle helmets with dark visors.  What, exactly, is the difference? - Yours etc

This is a good article about the need to understand the Irish Constitution before criticising or trying to replace it.

However, you could have added one incredible feature. Through this 1937 constitution, Ireland is Europe's oldest constitutional democracy, which in itself tells you that it is a pretty robust document, challenged in longevity only by America (1787).

Just think about some other much more powerful constitutional democracies which in fact are relative blow-ins: Germany (1949, post WW2), Italy (1947, post WW2), France (1958, de Gaulle's gambol), Greece (1975, post the Generals), Spain (1978, post Franco), Portugal (1976, post Salazar), to name but a few. Britain of course has no constitution at all.

Ireland's is in fact one of the oldest constitutional democracies not only in Europe but the world.

Think of constitutional democracies such as Japan (1947, post WW2) and the rest of Asia (including post-partition India, 1950, Pakistan, 1973 and Bangladesh, 1972) and the swathe of new-born South American ones.

There would have to be very sound reasons indeed to tamper with a document as solid as the Irish Constitution.  Personally, I haven't heard of any. 

This was not a “freak accident” and certainly far too difficult for it to have been driven by “political opportunism”.  There is already enough evidence in the public domain to demonstrate that it was clearly caused my serious mistakes.

How could gas have ever built up in the wellbore in an apparently sealed casing? Faulty casing? Poor cement? Lack of plug? Defective equipment? Inadequate procedures? Insufficient expertise? Organizational dysfunction? Human error? These are big questions.

Read what really happened in my next Tallrite Blog, to be issued in the next couple of days. Also my article planned for the Irish Times (irishtimes.com) on May 10th.

Madam, / Scoffing at the belief of America's so-called “birthers” that Barack Obama has no right to be president because he “wasn’t born in the US”, Frank McDonald asserts that Mr Obama has both a birth certificate from Hawaii and a classified ad in a local paper (A dialogue of the death with US climate sceptics, May 6th). 

The ad is true, but Mr Obama has only ever produced a computer-generated “Certification of Live Birth” which even Hawaii, though it issues such certificates, does not accept as proof of birth in Hawaii.

For reasons known only to himself, he has resolutely blocked every attempt to gain access to his “Certificate of Live Birth”, which is the only definitive proof of birth in Hawaii.  In 1961 his year of birth, it was a green printed form filled out using a manual typewriter with actual signatures at its foot. 

Only by releasing his Certificate of Live Birth can Mr Obama prove that he is indeed a natural born citizen as the US constitution demands of its presidents.  Why won't he? What's he hiding? / Yours etc,

No; of course striking and go-slow staff should not be removed or fired. That would be an abomination. In fact they should get a bonus and tax-break for bravely asserting their God-given human right to slack. 

It is part of Ireland's rich cultural heritage to get paid for not working, which is a key clause in the unwritten portion of the Irish Constitution. 

We will never get out of this recession if we start adopting ancient out-dated discredited American neo-conservative capitalistic practices such as no-work-no-pay.

Sir, - Lexington, in describing the pro-choice credentials of potential Supreme Court nominee Judge Diane Wood, takes the trouble to put within quotes the term “partial birth” abortion, which she supports (“The next Supreme Court justice”, April 17th).

It would seem logical, therefore, to briefly enlighten your readers that these words refer to the killing of a live and perhaps viable foetus just before it is drawn from the birth canal, since otherwise the medical staff might risk a murder charge. Just a few centimetres make the difference between lawful and unlawful infanticide.  - Yours etc

The express objective of conventional huntin'-shootin'-fishin' is to kill the prey. Minister Gormley-the-Green thinks this is absolutely fine and has said he has no intention of disallowing it.

Therefore, it is ridiculous to ban the hunting of deer with packs of dogs, as practiced in Ireland by the Ward Union hunt, when the express objective of such hunts is to NOT kill the prey, but in fact to collect him, put him back in his horsebox and return him to the field where he lives between hunts.

I know which kind of “prey” I would prefer to be!

Just so we're straightened out
Letter published by “columnist-to-the-world” Mark Steyn on his site on 16 April

Mark, if you think those counterfeit hair straighteners are of little consequence, tremble at the dire warning about them as spelled out in Wales by the intrepid Department of Trading Standards within the Vale of Glamorgan Council:

“Fakes ... are not only poorly made and short-lasting but are also very dangerous. Users run the risk of damaging their hair or even being injured from electric shocks or burns.”

With hair straighteners getting you killed in Australia as you helpfully pointed out, the Irish Navy certainly knows its priorities: stick with the sailors' naturally curly hair.

So the Association of Assistant Secretaries and Higher Grades told Finance Minister Brian Lenihan that members' pay of up to €146,000 was “way behind” what was on offer in the private sector (‘Elite civil servants: We deserve a pay rise’, Irish Independent, April 6).

Mr Lenihan's response should have been curt and pointed: “Make my day. Go join the private sector. See if they'll have you.”

The civil service is vastly overstaffed anyway.

The massive building industry collapsed long ago, yet curiously the thousands of state jobs that planned and regulated it did not.

Mr Lenihan is not the tough guy he pretends to be.

The car scrappage scheme is a disgraceful bit of pandering by a corrupt government to one particular favoured industry (which you can be sure is reciprocating the favour to the government in its own way). If taxes are too high, they should be lowered for everyone. ...

What earthly reason justifies giving people tax breaks to buy something as frivolous and ethereal as a brand new car? ...

Remember who is paying for that tax break. It is 100% paid for by taxpayers who DON'T buy a new car. ...

Why should people who can't afford a new car or who choose for example to buy a used car or no car at all, in other words most likely the poorer people in society, be forced to subsidise those rich enough to buy themselves a new car? ...

It's an obscenity.

It is extremely dangerous to walk up to someone's house in America because

(a) it is quite possible - even probable - the owner has a gun and
(b) it is perfectly OK for him to shoot a trespasser (which usually elicits not condemnation from the local police chief but congratulations).

That's why American journalists very rarely door-step their quarry as Charlie Bird just did.

Mr Bird needs to ambush David Drumm on the open street. This will be much more fun anyway as Mr Drumm will find it harder to dodge the questions. Moreover, it will be gratifying to seem him scurry away, as he doubtless will, looking for cover like a frightened rabbit, just as Seanie Fitzpatrick did when similarly ambushed by RTE recently in Dublin.

Halal slaughter, and indeed the Kosher method it copies, are an unnecessarily cruel method of killing animals.  It has no redeeming characteristics whatsoever.  See my recent Sunday Times article, “Hypocrisy of animal rights campaigners”.  Go to http://tinyurl.ie/ki.  

Please do not  inflict Halal on us and our livestock over here in Ireland.

A United Ireland by 2016?
Comment on 24th March to Gerard O'Neill's Turbulence Ahead blog

Good, thoughtful post.

Advocates of a united Ireland should propose an all-UK referendum. No-one could doubt the outcome - an overwhelming vote to get rid of the pesky, money-draining place.

As for the South, I don't think there is any serious reunification consituency of any size.

If anyone believes there is a river of love flowing Northwards, just think of the fury over Aer Lingus's move from Shannon to Belfast or over those shopping trips to Newry.

I will write something along these lines in my Tallrite Blog. --> [Here]

[Ireland's Justice Minister Dermot] Ahern is a clown, as both his infantile blasphemy law, and his puerile reasoning for holding a blasphemy referendum, amply illustrate. He should have remained in his canoe.

Ridiculous.

Other than the unions themselves, for which it is their raison d'être, no-one supports the industrial inaction of the public service, not even the vast majority of those employees themselves, and no-one has thought it remotely likely that the pay cuts would in fact be reversed. 

This was a battle that the government was well on course for winning and setting a new template. 

But now this bumbling executive has thrown the unions a lifeline that can only prolong the dispute, and for no discernible benefit for the beleagured taxpayers. 

You have to wonder whether Brian Cowen and co are even Irish, such is their evident disdain for the welfare of this country and its people.

Of COURSE the dioceses have to ask their parishioners for donations. They have no other source of income than that provided by their parishioners. Never have. Even their existing assets (chalices, churches, church halls, land, money in the bank etc) was paid for by the donations of previous parishioners. If they're sold off it is past parishioners who are paying ...

That it comes as a shock that compensation claims will have to be paid for by parishioners in some shape or form just shows the naïveté of those so quick to demand compo. The alternative is that a diocese such as Ferns goes bankrupt ...

And if parishioners want that to happen, they can make it happen by not donating. It's entirely up to them. Why would anyone want to deny them that power?

As far as non-parishioners are concerned, and especially non-members of the Catholic church, it's none of their damned business how the compo gets paid ...

But those who demanded compensation for the abused (and I would include my self) should be aware in future of the law of unintended consequences. Or, as some sage once said,“be careful what you wish for”.  

[David] Cameron's story [in a set-piece speech] about the man who impregnated his welfare-dependant girlfriend reminded me of a chart I spotted in an new report to the US Congress entitled " Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect".

About 150 pages in, you can find this stunning chart.

The report comments that “The rate of Harm Standard abuse for children living with two married biological parents [shown in gold in the chart] ... is significantly lower than the rate for children living in all other conditions of family structure and living arrangement ... The rates in the highest and lowest risk groups differ by more than a factor of 11”. Eleven!

This illustrates a simple choice, really. You are either pro diversity in parental lifestyle choice for adults, or else pro-children. One or the other. You can't be both. Naturally, since by comparison with freedom for adults, the welfare of children is irrelevant unless white Catholic priests are doing the abusing, nearly everyone opts for the former.

Cameron is clearly opting for the former in his public approval of unmarried parenthood. It is a deeply malevolent position for such a prominent politician, a likely future prime minister no less, to take.

And hypocritical, considering he has given his own children the best chance in life by marrying and living with their mother. Why is is so eager to deny this opportunity to other defenceless children?

It's pathetic that the issue has become one of whether and who leaked the infamous letter ...

The offence was not the leaking but the letter itself, from a serving minister demanding - on ministerial notepaper - that the Gardai drop a criminal case. This is utterly disgraceful. Sargent evidently believed his dastardly act would remain hidden forever ...

So whoever leaked it deserves a medal. Good riddance Sargent ...

It's fascinating how FF, like a female praying mantis, accepts the attentions of its suitors (PDs, Greens, whatever), slightly alters its behaviour their direction (a faint tinge of blue or green), then corrupts and devours them ...

The PDs fail to call out Bertie when he's lying, Mary Harney and the Greens vote confidence in Willie, Trevor writes sly, unlawful letters to try to save criminals ...

These are all classic FF behaviours ...

Watch and learn!

I doubt if you [Madam Editor] will print this, but I couldn't resist writing it!

================

Regarding your editorial about Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin's “invitation” to Iveagh House of Israel's ambassador Zion Evrony, on the basis that Israel was a suspect in the assassination in Dubai of Hamas's Mahmoud al-Mahbouh (Forged passports and terrorism, February 20, 2010), I think a sub-editor must have accidentally deleted the last paragraph.

You know, the bit where you demanded that Minister Micheál Martin also call in, one by one, the ambassadors of Egypt (Amr Helmy), Iran (Ebrahim Rahimpour), Jordan (Alia Bouran), Palestine (Hikmat Ajjuri), Syria (Sami Khiyami) and other states who have an interest, just as Israel does, in seeing the demise of an international terrorist, killer and arms procurer on an active mission, such as Mr al-Mahbouh.

Oh and in addition the American ambassador Dan Rooney, to explain the Obama regime's serial assassinations, by drone-fired missiles in Pakistan, of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda militants and bystanders (122 such deaths so far this year, 506 in 2009).

These assassinations of bad people have to be stopped and no better man than Minister Martin to do it.

A chart of killings was attached which came from “Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004-10” by Bill Roggio and Alexander Mayer, which appears in “The Long War Journal”,
http://www.longwarjournal.org/pakistan-strikes.php

Through the spurious and premature abandonment of the mandate graciously bestowed upon Mr Lee by 27,000 well-meaning voters, Mr Lee by his abrupt resignation has grossly insulted his electorate. He reminds me of a certain feckless president who did the same thing. She likewise gave two fingers to the Irish people who had elected her. Rather than complete her term, she preferred to grab a "better" job with her pal Kofi Annan in the UN. These tales tell you a lot about the narcissistic motivation of certain individuals. Service to the public be damned; it's all about poor me.

For non-Irish surfers, George Lee was a highly respected and popular TV reporter on economics, who nine months ago joined Fine Gael, Ireland's main opposition party, and got overwhelmingly elected to the Dáil (Parliament).  His stated intention was to help in Ireland's economic recovery.  But he then suddenly and petulantly quit, moaning that he wasn't given an important enough job.  Clearly he never gave a damn about those who voted for him. 

Sir, / I hope you will publish this letter because I would like female journalists such as India Knight to understand the true meanings of a couple of male locker-room expressions they glibly throw around as if they are some cool way of talking.  (“We’ve pulled ourselves together and decided it’s good to cry”, Jan 24; “This spare tyre has blown fashion apart”, Sep 6, 2009)

"Getting your finger out" doesn't simply mean getting down to work, it means removing your finger from your anus in order to do so, a rather unsavoury image.  And "knackered" doesn't simply mean tired, it means your knackers have been removed.  Therefore a woman, such as Ms Knight, can never be "knackered", or alternatively is born that way. 

Such expressions belong neither in the mouths of women nor in family newspapers (other than this Letters page, obviously!) nor in TV and radio programmes, where they increasingly seem to appear. /
Yours etc,

India Knight was at it again on 7th February:
“Women who are knackered ...”

Actually, she seems to love being “knackered”. 
She has used the expression in no fewer than fourteen times since 2004

A very fine article. I had no idea from the extensive media coverage elsewhere that this "non-bomb" had such potential to become an actual active bomb with the devastating consequences Mr Clonan describes.

This article, along with all the other outrage from various media (especially RTE), frankly smacks of pure jealousy that an amateur, bumbling much derided and despised station like TV3 should have stolen the march on all of them. The vitriol being spat at TV3 is quite astonishing.  
 
In the current economic circumstances where practically no-one is exempt from pay cuts or firing or negative equity or the decimation of savings, the only half-way competent minister in the whole administration, who happens to be charged with repairing the country's manifest ailments, has suddenly been struck down by serious illness.  
 
Frankly, this is of huge public concern and relevance.  
 
In the absence of anyone within the ruling Coalition with even remote capability to take over the finance portfolio, Brian Lenihan's dreadful misfortune is likely to make every citizen's economic woes even worse.  
 
Well done, TV3. You recognized that the interests of four million people exceed that of one minister, who - let it not be forgotten - chose to put himself into the public eye.  
 
Moreover, no-one has expressed other than deep sympathy for Mr Lenihan and his family.

Will C
Tony Allwright has it bang on the money. If you want to sympathise with someone, sympathise with the victims of this disgusting, evil government.

Michael Hennigan - Finfacts
@ Tony Allwright  
 
"Well done, TV3. You recognised that the interests of four million people exceed that of one minister, who - let it not be forgotten - chose to put himself into the public eye."  
 
To believe that the primary interest of TV3 was the public interest, is ridiculous.  
 
The claim that waiting until this week, when the minister would have had an opportunity to let family and close friends know of the situation while getting advice from his medical support on the feasibility of continuing full-time in the job, during treatment, would not have been in the public interest, is not credible.

Emmet Doyle
@ Tony Allwright  
@ John McMahon  
 
Shame on you both your comments, there is an unwritten rule within journalism that no blackout on personal and private matters such as this will be broken until the person involved has issued a statement. This information was known by all other broadcasters and media journalists but without exception they had held back.  

TV3 are a second rate agency in this country and somehow in desperation decided this would assist their cause. Lets see how their advertising revenues are affected.  

In short the minister is entitled to handle this as he wants. That you guys wanted him to add to his and his family's worries and stresses at this time of the year when absolutely nothing could be done shows a lack of basic humanity. The Dail was in recess and all other agencies state and private are on holidays nothing could be done. If you cant see that this decision was in fact a brave move to prevent the citizens in this country having to deal with additional doom and gloom over xmas while allowing him a little privacy to come to terms.... shame on you!  
Like TV3 you are guilty of a cheap shot.  

Ironically I would like to wager these are the same whinging bunch who have criticised Mr Lenihan's every step recently and called for his head at every turn.... Grow up and go and spend time with your own kids/wives etc ..........should you have them.

 

Gift Idea
Cuddly Teddy Bears
looking for a home

Good to report that as at
14th September 2009
he is at least alive.

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 What I've recently
been reading

“The Lemon Tree”, by Sandy Tol (2006),
is a delightful novel-style history of modern Israel and Palestine told through the eyes of a thoughtful protagonist from either side, with a household lemon tree as their unifying theme.

But it's not entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as

See detailed review

+++++

This examines events which led to BP's 2010 Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. 

BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability.  

Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia.  

The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. 

However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. 

It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. 

As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history.

Note: I wrote my own reports on Macondo
in May, June, and July 2010

+++++

A horrific account of:

More details on my blog here.

+++++

This is nonagenarian Alistair Urquhart’s incredible story of survival in the Far East during World War II.

After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939.

From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. 

After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison.

Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,

Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life.  Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book.

There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document.

+++++

“Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies”

This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP.

With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. 

Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. 

ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is.

+++++

This much trumpeted sequel to Freakonomics is a bit of disappointment. 

It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations.  For example:

The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions.

And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks.  Weird.

++++++

A remarkable, coherent attempt by Financial Times economist Alan Beattie to understand and explain world history through the prism of economics. 

It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as

It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains.  For instance:

The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. 

However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader. 

+++++

This is a thrilling book of derring-do behind enemy lines in the jungles of north-east Burma in 1942-44 during the Japanese occupation.

The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India.   

Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. 

He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. 

The book amounts to a  very human and exhilarating tale.

Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan.

+++++

 
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After 48 crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are, deservedly,
SOUTH AFRICA

England get the Silver,
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No-one can argue with
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