Care 26th January 2012
Off out around the park, two other joggers one man one women. We all are getting gloriously wet in the rain. Though its milder. The snowdrops and some of the roses are starting to make an appearance.
Off out I go to the bank, and shopping in Tesco’s what an exciting life I lead. Home, lunch and out again to pay June, Joan’s cleaner. I decide to walk the half mile or so. Its freezing, and I get dizzy spells. What must I look like holding on to a tree for support?
I buy an invoice book, for June’s wages and trudge up the cobbles to Joan’s house, almost slipping and breaking my neck on the steep cobbles.
June is quivering with indignation. The last carer was here only 10 minutes, they are supposed to be here for 30 minutes, and put down 20 in the book, all she did was check that Joan needed changing and make her some dinner. The toilet left uncleaned, the washing unwashed. This lot are a lot worse. I can just see Sandy going ballistic, over this.
Pheasant we watch Ask a Policeman, dear old Will Hay, Turnbottom Round has the lowest crime rate in England, with no arrests in 10 years 4 months and 12 days, since the new sergeant Will Hay arrived. Faced with the possibility of redundancy, they arrest the Chief Constable for speeding, unbeknownst to them smugglers are afoot under the police station, priceless 1940′s comedy. I am sure the police are not a bit like that today.
Scrabble today I lose and Mary’s gets over 400, well done Mary, but I am sure I will get a suitable revenge.
Fave Letters:
I told a friend who is a graduate child psychologist that I have never known my wife tell a lie in 47 married years. She seemed to think it was a clinical condition, presumably treatable. This was such a surprising reaction that I contacted three other people whom I would trust to always be honest.
One, a Methodist minister, said that she had once lied in Year 6 and felt so dreadful afterwards that she never wanted to do that again. Another, a lady of over 80, said that she also had lied once when a child also aged about 10, and recounted the circumstances with amazing detail. She also never did it again. The third decided to disqualify herself if I included “white lies”.
David Butland
Bridlington, East Riding
Devalued
The Republicans of South Carolina, where I used to live, have put their “family values” party in an ironic dilemma: they will now have to choose between a Mormon and a polygamist.
Guy Ottewell
Lyme Regis, Dorset
SIR – I used to collect ties and I had over 700. Relatives and friends would bring them back for me from all over the world. I worked as a buyer and stock controller in the wines, spirits and bottled beers departments of three breweries and was given ties by generous representatives.
My other passion is cricket and I have visited cricket grounds all over the country, picking up ties on the way.
Keith Kneebone
Camborne, Cornwall
SIR – Many of my husband’s ties offer subliminal messages to the observant, such as baubles at Christmas and camels at Epiphany. During the week, he selects ties according to the meetings he will attend: hot air balloons for wafflers, a clock motif for a lengthy conference, or clowns, which he reserves for council meetings.
Delia Hearmon
Grantham, Lincolnshire
SIR – I wear one tie for morning court and another for afternoon court, yet my wife has more than 100 pairs of shoes.
Richard Spoors JP
Eardisland, Herefordshire
Welcome break
SIR – A friend worked on a busy hospital outpatients ward and often there was no time for a break (Letters, January 24).
When told they had a DNA (did not attend) patient, the consultant always suggested sending them a bunch of flowers as a thank you.
Angela Elliott
Hundleby, Lincolnshire
Obituary:
Nicol Williamson was the notorious bad boy of the theatre, his unpredictable behaviour, unreliability and blunt rudeness to those he did not respect – which may well have been the majority of those he met in and out of the theatre world – having to be weighed by the theatres that employed him for his undoubted brilliance as an actor, and a star appeal that never fully flowered because of the reluctance of film producers and theatrical impresarios to engage him. Twin devils seemed to co-exist in his lanky body, one that drove his private life to frequent excess and public exhibitionism, and the other in which a creative genius seemed to be about to explode. He was quintessentially a model for the 19th century decadent romantic, a Byron, a des Esseintes or a Rimbaud. As an actor he could be electric: John Osborne declared him to be “the greatest actor since Marlon Brando”.
He was born and brought up in Hamilton outside Glasgow; it is difficult to imagine him as a boy in that quiet little town where the main cultural event of the year is the Salvation Army’s Christmas carol concert. He started his career at the Dundee Rep in 1960, stayed there two years, then went to the Arts Theatre in Cambridge and transferred to the Royal Court from there with That’s Us, staying on with the English Stage Company in a number of demanding roles. They included Jacobean and period drama and modern plays, the most successful of which was Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence, a palpable hit that transferred to the West End and had several later revivals, about a complex London barrister, but he was also well cast as Sebastian Dangerfield in The Ginger Man.
One of his greatest performances was as Vladimir in the 1964 revival of Waiting for Godot. Anthony Page, Nicol’s preferred director, was in charge, but Beckett turned up at rehearsals and was unhappy about the way the production was progressing, the actor retaining his London barrister’s accent for the author’s reflective tramp. “Where do you come from? Is that your natural voice?” asked Beckett, and when told that Nicol was Scottish, asked if he could not use his natural non-London intonation. That evening Beckett looked pleased, more so as the days passed, and he commented, “There’s a touch of genius there!” The opening night was a triumph, the audience electrified by his trumpeted scream of “I can’t go on!” at the climax of the great final monologue.
From then Beckett was Williamson’s God. When I invited him in 1965 to take part in a Beckett reading at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford on a Sunday night, he insisted on Beckett’s personal direction, and we visited him at Ussy on the Sunday before. We had launched the previous day and Nicol’s single-minded enthusiasm was such that he cancelled both his Saturday performances of Inadmissible Evidence, then playing at Wyndham’s, next door to our restaurant, and sent on his understudy – who also had to play the whole week following, because Williamson, having returned from the rehearsal in France on the Monday, then disappeared for the whole week.
But the day before the Sundayperformance at Stratford, when I had made emergency changes in the programme, he appeared at my flat to rehearse, and took the audience by storm the next day, throwing the other readers into confusion by his innovations. Patrick Magee said that he would never again appear on the same stage as an actor so selfish.
With the RSC he performed Arden of Faversham at the New Arts Theatre and played Sweeney in the TS Eliot memorial production of Sweeney Agonistes. He became a charismatic actor in films as well, but his appearances, especially in commercial productions, became rarer because his temperament and arrogance did not appeal to directors.
His marriage to the actress Jill Townsend was of short duration, and problems rising from his divorce, his messy private life and his mounting debt to the Inland Revenue forced him to move to New York, where he quickly blotted his copybook by knocking down David Merrick, the most powerful man on Broadway at the time. There he repeated some of his British successes and performed in roles that included Hamlet and Macbeth, but always for short runs.
He was cast as the ghost of John Barrymore, appearing to help a young actor play Hamlet, commented voluably to the press on the weakness of the play and others in the cast, and at an early performance actually stabbed the other actor during a fencing episode. He strode to the footlights and announced, “Something’s gone wrong. You’d better bring down the curtain.” Most thought it was part of the play. The second act started after more than an hour’s interval with an understudy, and Williamson playing normally, but the actors had summoned Equity and the play closed a few nights later.
Williamson’s career was peppered with such incidents. He had a good natural tenor voice and could mimic any crooner perfectly, and if he heard an accent he could imitate it; years later he could still do Beckett’s voice perfectly. He devised a number of one-man shows, songs, patter and extracts from plays and other literature, but, in spite of brilliant moments, they were not successful, and while he could excite an audience, he had little critical judgement in choosing and interpreting a text without outside help.
His films included: Inadmissible Evidence (1967), The Bofors Gun (1968), The Seven Per Cent Solution (1975), The Human Factor (1979), Excalibur (1980) – the film for which he is probably best known, as Merlin – Black Widow (1986) and several others of varying quality, including The Exorcist III. Other plays in which he appeared include The Entertainer (1983), The Lark (1983) and The Real Thing (1985).
In person he was entertaining but often embarrassing company, carrying role-playing to extremes and needing to dominate every assembly at which he was present, especially in his manic moods. When depressive he was pitiable and usually stayed on his own. But whoever saw his Vladimir and heard that despairing scream, embodying the whole anguish of the human condition, which is then followed by a resumption of the human need to regain a vestige of dignity, will never forget it. Metaphorically it also encompassed his life.
Although Williamson’s death was only announced yesterday, his son Luke said that he had died on 16 December of oesophageal cancer.
John Calder
Nicol Williamson, actor: born Hamilton, Scotland 14 September 1938; married 1971 Jill Townsend (divorced 1977; one son); died Amsterdam 16 December 2011.
Just this week India and China decided to purchase Iranian oil with gold. That is a very loud statement about the idiocy of what the EU and the US have proposed to do by placing an embargo on Iranian oil and the Iranian central bank.
How many times does history have to repeat itself? There are no nuclear weapons in Iran, just like there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and just like the Vietnam War was started as a result of a now admitted staged event, etc etc.
There is profit in war. Go figure, who knew!
However, the sanity in our world is now coming from the alliance of the BRICS. Their statement is a double whammy.
They will trade with Iran as it does not have a nuclear weapons programme. Not only that, but they will trade with Iran in real assets. You Westerners can jump off your economic cliff by raising your fuel prices at the pumps and continuing to trade in worthless paper.
Thankfully for us they also want peace for the world. There is hope.
Barry Fitzgerald
Lissarda, Cork
Full Text:
Guardian:
It is pleasing when the national media periodically rediscovers William Barnes (Barnes night anyone?, 25 January). Paul Kingsnorth is right to remind us that this poet connects us with an older England, before mass industrialisation and commercialism ruined the landscape. Barnes maintained that the trees were so thick in his boyhood days that a squirrel could swing right across Dorset without once coming to earth. He was probably the only serious poet in modern times able to fill a hall with his own neighbours, mostly working people, come to hear him read his work in their own dialect. As one reviewer said of my recent book, The People’s Poet, Barnes “became a poet of national, and not just of Dorset, significance’. I am pleased to say that, for over 25 years, the William Barnes Society had held many Barnes nights in Dorset, and still does. All are welcome to join.
Dr Alan Chedzoy
Chair, William Barnes Society
• Thanks to Vaughan Williams’s perfect musical setting, the best known poem of the Dorset poet William Barnes is familiar to singers the world over. If Paul Kingsnorth had mentioned this, musicians would have happily signed up to his campaign for a Barnes night – with a performance of Linden Lea as the highlight of the celebrations.
Malcolm Abbs
London
• The national bard of Scotland is celebrated today not with reference to his international stature as a poet and figure of the enlightenment but solely with an article on a (very worthy) English poet. Have you prejudged the referendum?
Charles Coull
Troon, Ayrshire
I was delighted to read the visionary words of Michael Wilshaw, the new, charismatic head of Ofsted (Education, 24 January). “If anyone says to you that ‘staff morale is at an all-time low’, you know you are doing something right.” Has Wilshaw cracked the problem of how to motivate public-sector workers? Can his ideas be applied to the private sector? Has he presented his theory to the heads of Eton and Harrow? Will teachers have to pay for their own anti-depressants or will heads distribute them after morning assembly?
Lawrence Glover
Bootle, Merseyside
• If Michael Wilshaw believes that staff morale being at an all-time low is an index of doing something right, then he presumably thinks the same of student morale. This is similar to school bullies claiming their victims are the ones at fault. This approach to education makes me relieved to have retired.
Ian Roberts
Baildon, West Yorkshire
According to a 2010 ComRes poll, those questioned said that the annual income of a FTSE chief executive should be £118,000. It then averaged £2.1m and has now increased to £3.8m. The major political parties seem to agree that growing inequality is a bad thing and that top pay needs close scrutiny. Why is it then that Vince Cable appears to want to keep shareholders, employees and the rest of us in the dark by rejecting the enforced full disclosure of what companies pay their employees (Unions attack Cable on executive pay, 24 January)? If the US Congress can adopt the Dodd-Frank Act, which gives shareholders a “say on pay” and requires disclosure of executive pay versus a company’s financial performance plus the publication of pay ratios within companies, then we should be able to overcome the obstacles that Cable seems to think rule out the idea in the UK.
Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson
Authors, The Spirit Level
• Mr Cable says there is no magic bullet for tackling bosses’ pay rising five times faster than the average wage. There is – it’s called supertax. When this was nineteen and six in the pound it was hardly worth paying exorbitant salaries, but it did not stop my father from succeeding as a businessman. A graduated, increasing income tax starting at 50% on £100,000 and going up by 10% for each £100,000 would net the Treasury considerable sums and make it not worthwhile to pay people more than half a million. Barack Obama in his state of the union speech called for a fairer tax system and we need to address our tax system, which benefits the rich at the expense of those with lesser incomes.
Wendy Savage
Co-chair, Keep Our NHS Public
• If Vince Cable really wants shareholders to control top pay, he should ask us, the real shareholders, and not leave it to fund managers. It would not be difficult to devise a mechanism for pension and other funds to consult their members.
Jonathan Hunt
London
Do UK Labour leaders realise the implications of their failure to present a simple, clear, positive and socially caring policy for the UK? Alex Salmond’s speech (Scotland will become a beacon of fairness, 24 January) ought to provide a jolt. Post-1945 policies of welfare and nationalisation were welcome here and provided a policy direction which, when ditched, was the ruin of the Conservative party in Scotland. The SNP’s rise is, in part, due to its leftward shift and now it’s more Labour than Labour. Where will able Scottish Labour MPs go if either independence or a devo-max scenario (leaving them with just foreign policy to discuss) wreck the ambitions that hitherto have made them scorn fully joining in Scottish affairs?
Sydney Wood
Cults, Aberdeen
• Finally the penny drops at the Guardian (Editorial, 25 January). The spike in support for the SNP over the past two years is not about crude ethnic divisions. Far from it, given the number of English people living in Scotland prepared to openly vote nationalist at Holyrood elections. Rather, it’s about a deep distrust towards the increasingly socially divisive agenda of the Tory-led coalition – an agenda presented, disingenuously, as a patriotic economic rescue plan. In reality, that plan will further entrench wealth in the hands of a privileged financial and corporate elite (many of them foreign raiders, to add insult to injury). Until now, the progressive vision advocated by the SNP has been at best routinely derided as economic fantasy and at worst portrayed as insular naivety, even in the Guardian. Surely aiming to build and shape an alternative is better than the neoliberal capitulation offered by Labour at Westminster?
Colin Montgomery
Edinburgh
• While the “mechanics” of a referendum will focus many minds on the future for Scotland, it would be far more helpful to have the mechanics of independence spelled out. So far it just seems a “big idea”, with an assumption of everything falling into place once it has been achieved. Scotland has led in some important social change, notably a robust new Mental Health Act (2003), the Adults with Incapacity Act (2000), and smoking legislation (2005), but surely Mr Salmond is disingenuous in apparently claiming credit for all the positive social change, as much was initiated by Labour, when he did not even lead the SNP. It is the multi-party nature of the change that has been important, rather than one party trying to assert its adolescent will against the, undoubtedly stultifying, parental control of Westminster. Let’s have some real detail on what independence would look like, so proper debate can inform our decision on whatever referendum questions are posed.
Dr Sally Cheseldine
Edinburgh
• What happy nonsense is this idea in your editorial that the UK could endure an uneven public sector delivery with increasing support for health and education for only one part of the kingdom. Don’t advocate such postcode unfairness in the guise of Gladstone’s “efficiency”; devolution is won through a battle for hearts and minds and the SNP’s vision is one that has to prevail as part of the dream of a better Britain.
Professor Craig Richardson
Northumbria University
• Anyone who imagines Alex Salmond is progressive needs to see Anthony Baxter’s excellent documentary You’ve Been Trumped. Donald Trump has sought to crush the rights of ordinary people who oppose his most recent vanity project – a gigantic golf resort on the Aberdeenshire coast, where a beautiful landscape of unique scientific significance is being destroyed. As the film shows, those who have stood in Trump’s way have faced indifference, denigration and, at times, intimidation. Among those complicit in their treatment have been the local media, the police and Scottish politicians. It would be no exaggeration to say that Trump has no greater supporter in Scotland than the first minister.
Jeremy Hardy
London
• If this is Alex Salmond’s idea of being a good neighbour, I am glad I don’t live next door to him. Don’t be fooled. Cutting corporation tax is aimed precisely at undercutting England in a bid to attract investment to Scotland. England could, of course, undercut Scotland in turn, leading us all into a downward spiral in which business pays far less than its fair share of tax, with the predictable result the rest of us will all suffer yet more cuts in the welfare state, and/or have to pay more tax than is our fair share.
And as for “fairness”: you don’t need a crystal ball when you can read the book. Already the nationalist government has sucked several millions out of Glasgow to benefit his voters elsewhere. His local income tax policy was finally abandoned largely because people were not going to vote for a system of funding local government that would let wealthy people not on PAYE get away with paying nothing to their local authority. It would have suited Messrs Trump and Soutar, though.
Why don’t you invite other Scottish politicians to write – especially anyone who actually speaks for the majority view in Scotland, that sees breaking off from the rest of Britain as an enormous amount of upheaval at great cost, for benefits about which there is much assertion but little or no evidence so far. I now await the usual outpouring of nationalist letters accusing me of talking down Scotland.
Maria Fyfe
Former Labour MP for Glasgow Maryhill
I commend Ms Mensch for stepping from the 1950s into the 21st century in one giant leap (How Tory women are bringing feminism out of the ghetto, 25 January). For whom? Not for me and all the other women who have held careers most of their lives, raised and educated children and, upon retirement, provide unpaid care for disabled or aged relatives whose rights and minimal allowances are being whittled away by her Tory-led government as I write.
Frances Butler
London
• In these straitened times we need recipe cards for cheap cuts of meat like ox cheek, brawn and breast of lamb, recipes that our parents might have used, not those that need a trip to a big city to gather their ingredients. Wednesday’s had a recipe for salad scheherazade that had five ingredients, none of which, I suggest, would be found in an average reader’s cupboard. What is blossom water and pistachio halva?
Mike Howes
Reading, Berkshire
• If the recipe cards are meant to be a sweetener for what you’ve done to the rest of the paper, then maybe you need to increase the ratio of desserts to main courses?
Penny Wolfson
Rudford, Gloucestershire
• Hurrah for Hadley! At last some wise counsel about jeans (Ask Hadley, G2, 24 January). Everyone should know the 11th commandment: over the age of 40, no one should be seen in jeans unless he is a lumberjack. And what is it with men who wear jackets or blazers with jeans? Do they intend to do a spot of gardening before nipping off to a cocktail party or (worse still) the theatre?
Roger Newman Turner
Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire
• I doubt if Tottenham Hotspur’s unenviable away record from 1964-65 (Letters, 25 January) will ever be surpassed by a top football team since modern footballers seem to have no trouble at all scoring freely away from home.
Toby Wood
Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
• Will Ken Livingstone support Newt (Cash pours in for Gingrich, 24 January)?
Duncan Grant
Twickenham, Middlesex
Independent:
Let me start by saying I found the European Court of Human Rights’ decision on Abu Qatada baffling; I firmly believe a country’s borders are the responsibility of that country and that country alone. However, David Cameron is right to demand reform and must reject knee-jerk calls to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
The convention was founded following the atrocities suffered by millions during two world wars. Britain and Churchill were the driving forces behind the convention and it was drafted by British lawyers and based on British law. There is nothing controversial in the convention. The right to life, liberty, security, fair trial, privacy, expression, property and free elections are ones we all subscribe to.
We read about the court only when we feel the hand of judicial activism or controversial, baffling decisions; but the same can be said of our domestic courts. Yet we would not dream of abolishing them.
The convention is separate from and predates Britain’s membership of the EU. I am convinced this issue is being blurred because many people wrongly think the court is part of the EU.
The convention is written to allow member governments plenty of scope for national interpretation; it is a loose framework, not a prescription. Such basic rights, upheld by the judiciary, are commonplace in most western democracies. They address a weakness of majoritarian government, whereby its executive can easily wear down civil liberties.
Yes there have been mistakes, yes the judges, may on occasion in the eyes of many, exceed their brief and this risks undermining the founding principles of the court. But the convention has done much that is good and has done much to safeguard our freedoms. Without it our freedoms would have been eroded long ago.
Sajjad Karim MEP
Conservative Legal Affairs Spokesman, European Parliament, Brussels
Why honesty went out of fashion
As Darwin showed, all living species are essentially selfish. So perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that in Britain people are becoming less honest (“Britain facing boom in dishonesty”, 25 January).
However, evolution has – at least in the case of humans – given us a capacity for compassion and sharing. The reason these characteristics are out of kilter is that back in the 1980s greed was legitimised in the markets-know-best philosophy of Reagan and Thatcher.
What we are now seeing, of course, is that extreme wealth at the very top of the capitalist chain creates abject poverty at the other end. Is it any wonder, then, that people are increasingly out for themselves? If the business and financial elite can screw the system, why shouldn’t those less lucky?
Morality is not a God-given characteristic; it has evolved through the simple need to get on with one other. Only by curbing the excesses of the few ( through social pressure rather than legislation) will greater fairness and honesty be readopted by the majority.
Quentin Macfarlane
Arbroath
***
Is “Britain facing a boom in dishonesty”? Maybe, but there would be no way of knowing from the University of Essex study, at least as you’ve reported it.
People weren’t asked if there were circumstances in which they themselves would feel justified in acting dishonestly. They were asked if, in general, they felt acting in such a way could be justified.
So it would be perfectly possible for example for someone who would never make up something in a job application, or avoid paying a fare on public transport to be able to envisage a situation where such acts might be justified. This suggests a society that exercises not less honesty but greater tolerance than that implied by the rigid moral code the University of Essex would appear to want us to live by.
Kate Francis
Bristol
***
I told a friend who is a graduate child psychologist that I have never known my wife tell a lie in 47 married years. She seemed to think it was a clinical condition, presumably treatable. This was such a surprising reaction that I contacted three other people whom I would trust to always be honest.
One, a Methodist minister, said that she had once lied in Year 6 and felt so dreadful afterwards that she never wanted to do that again. Another, a lady of over 80, said that she also had lied once when a child also aged about 10, and recounted the circumstances with amazing detail. She also never did it again. The third decided to disqualify herself if I included “white lies”.
David Butland
Bridlington, East Riding
***
Haven’t young people always been more tolerant of dishonesty than older people? As with friendship, it takes experience fully to understand the value of integrity.
Sara Neill
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
A deal for the Falklands
If the Falklanders wish to remain British, that is a very reasonable request to be supported, as says David Cameron (19 January). But I thought the underlying issue was about the minerals under and the fish in the oceans around the Falklands.
As the Falklands are neither heavily populated nor heavily industrialised, they probably need only a small proportion of the off-shore wealth for themselves in order to remain sustainable and to continue their British lifestyle.
So why can’t we come to a friendly agreement with Argentina about keeping the Falklands British but sharing its off-shore wealth with Argentina, which as a large and growing country must have greater need of resources?
In any case it must make more logistical sense to harvest this wealth in conjunction with mainland Argentina, rather than trying to do it all from faraway Great Britain.
H Trevor Jones
Guildford
***
As the 30th anniversary of the Falklands war approaches, two things are abundantly clear: Argentina will never relinquish its claim to the islands and the islanders will never willingly cede sovereignty to Argentina. A possible solution to the impasse occurs to me.
There are two main islands; East and West Falkland, the majority of the population reside on East Falkland around Port Stanley. Why not give control of West Falkland to Argentina with the population of this island being given the option to re-settle on East Falkland which would remain as a self-governing British Overseas Territory? An agreement could be reached sharing mineral and fishing rights for the whole area with a UN resolution ensuring compliance.
I am not suggesting that Argentina has a legitimate claim to the islands, but if a solution is not found another war remains a possibility; the last one cost more than a thousand lives and we must ensure that it is not repeated.
Jim La Bouchardiere
Telford, Shropshire
This ‘leak’ was just drivel
My old friend Stephen Glover (Media Studies, 23 January) implies that I have form for leaking information, but there was no question of leaking information about Theresa May, since the YouTube recordings comparing her speech with the UKIP leader’s similar attack on the Human Rights Act were already on a news website. The first accusation that I had leaked Cabinet information was in The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday last week, compounded by a vituperative piece in the same paper by Cristina Odone.
On Saturday, the Telegraph completely accepted that the articles were wrong, apologised to me, and particularly regretted the offence caused by Ms Odone. As Mr Glover knows, it is rare for a newspaper to admit error quite so fulsomely, and the reason for their speedy retraction was simply that I was able to prove that the leak could not have been from me.
Mine is simply a belated attempt to stop the sort of bilious drivel written by ill-informed columnists, usually in the Tory press, who never seem to check their facts, but do not let their ignorance inhibit their invective. It may not be very Christian of me – pace Ms Odone – but I decided no longer to turn the other cheek.
Chris Huhne MP
House of Commons
Women and children last
“Women and children first” regularly pops up after passenger ship accidents, as it has in the case of the Costa Concordia. However, it is a recent principle in the overall history of seafaring, only marking its 160th anniversary this year from the troopship Birkenhead disaster of 1852 – hence, also, “the Birkenhead drill”.
Sixty years on, loss of the Titanic in 1912 also saw it widely followed and finally ensured the carrying of adequate lifeboats for all on board (as Titanic did not).
In the wider age of sail, no ships had lifeboats as such, and the “law and custom of the sea” was that in extremis the few working boats carried were usually taken by those with the skills to escape in them: men of the crew, not passengers of any sort, albeit with exceptions. AWB Simpson’s splendid Cannibalism and the Common Law (1984) provides chapter and verse.
Pieter van der Merwe
National Maritime Museum
London SE10
In brief…
How we learn gender roles
Julie Bindel’s article on gender neutrality (Opinion, 24 January) resurrects the ill-informed opinions of late 20th-century feminism. It’s about time some knowledge of genetics informed these attitudes.
This does not mean that humans are “hard-wired to be masculine or feminine”; but to suggest that gender is “socially constructed… a set of rules laid down to benefit males” is laughable. The fact that a behaviour is learned does not imply a lack of genetic basis.
I doubt if boys are hard-wired to prefer blue and girls pink, but there is no doubt a strong genetic drive to learn gender roles. We need, as a society, to be careful about the gender roles on offer but we also need to avoid the simplistic rejection of traditions.
Colin Wigston
Edinburgh
Phone cut off
Mary Dejevsky seems surprised that the folk in Ambridge don’t reflect the rise of mobile phone use above landlines (Notebook, 25 January). Obviously she’s never lived in the country, where mobile signals are as fickle as the wind. In my house I can send and receive calls easily but a mile up the road poor reception makes you sound like the comedian with a broken microphone.
Jean Williams
Culcheth, Cheshire
Noisy cinema
With reference to cinema sound (letter, 23 January), I’ve often wondered why local cinemagoers mill around in the foyer until the big film starts. That is, until recently, when I sat through the adverts with my fingers in my ears. I’m not deaf, but I soon would be if I sat through that noise too often.
Evelyn Ross
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Foreign fields
Our 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 war cemeteries have been universally respected by local inhabitants (letters, 25 January). Unhappily, this might not be true of more recent conflicts.
Robert Davies
London SE3
Devalued
The Republicans of South Carolina, where I used to live, have put their “family values” party in an ironic dilemma: they will now have to choose between a Mormon and a polygamist.
Guy Ottewell
Lyme Regis, Dorset
Telegraph:
SIR – Mik Shaw (Letters, January 23) is not the first person to own a wooden tie. In 1769, Horace Walpole greeted French visitors at the gate of Strawberry Hill, his neo-Gothic villa in Twickenham (which has recently been superbly renovated), wearing a cravat carved from limewood by Grinling Gibbons and a pair of embroidered elbow-length gloves that had belonged to James I.
He later remarked: “The French servants stared, and firmly believed this was the dress of English country gentlemen.”
Julie Mason-Jebb
London SW14
SIR – Having worked in a psychiatric hospital, I was involved in trying to prevent drug use and drug-related crime for many years. Sir Richard Branson (Comment, January 23) identifies what many of those involved with fighting drugs have known for a long time – that the only way to beat the drug problem is to decriminalise it.
Sir Richard also points out that there are cheaper and more effective options than our present methods. Habit-forming drugs should be given through GP prescription. This would identify users and make it easier to offer them help. It would help them to avoid contaminated drugs and would reduce the availability of drugs on the street to new users. It would reduce crime, refocus our police and border agencies on to other work and “spoil the pitch” for criminal gangs.
When is a political leader going to be brave enough to grasp this nettle?
Terry Morrell
Willerby, East Yorkshire
Related Articles
Horace Walpole’s wondrous wooden necktie
25 Jan 2012
SIR – The growth in opiate use Sir Richard cites comes from a paper since discredited by the UN; his comments on Portugal rely on a report now generally accepted to be flawed, and Switzerland’s experiments were directed by the head of another pressure group, the International Anti-Prohibition League.
Prevention must engage, in various ways, with all sections of society, for example through health, education, enforcement and treatment, to produce a shift in global and local cultures. Enforcement is an essential part of this.
It worked with tobacco smoking. Achievements with drugs prevention in general will flow from enforcement, not from surrendering the legal status of drug abuse, and certainly not from “experiments” by a group who concede that they “do not yet know what will work best”.
Peter Stoker
Director, National Drug Prevention Alliance
Slough, Berkshire
SIR – There has been a vigorous international and domestic debate about drug policy for more than 20 years. Correlation does not imply causation, but Britain’s drug problems have got worse, at an increasing rate, during that debate and amid the strident demands of the drug legalisation lobby.
David Raynes
International Task Force on Strategic Drug Policy
Radstock, Somerset
SIR – Sentencing guidelines could allow drug dealers to carry six kilos of cannabis and still avoid jail (report, January 24). Compare this with the case of a local fisherman so respected that he was awarded the freedom of our borough for his services to the community. Recently found guilty of exceeding catch quotas, he faces a three-year jail term if draconian fines which threaten his livelihood are not paid.
Barry Bond
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex
It’s fair to cap benefits
SIR – I am disabled and work full time for £14,500 a year, from which I pay my mortgage and taxes.
Can the peers in the House of Lords who rejected a £26,000 cap on state benefits (report, January 24) explain to me why I should subsidise those who don’t work but who receive more than I do for working?
D. H. Todd
Ripon, North Yorkshire
SIR – No one can disagree with the desire expressed in the House of Lords to protect children, but do the Church of England bishops and Liberal Democrat peers seriously want a society in which all nurses, teachers and key workers give up work in order to increase their incomes?
Ian MacGregor
London N7
SIR – I am 67 years old and have paid my tax contributions for more than 40 years.
For that, I get a state pension of under £500 a month. I have no sympathy for those who complain about benefits being capped at £500 a week.
M. J. Benson
Toward, Argyllshire
SIR – During my working life I have moved home to chase work and I have downsized when times were hard.
It is common sense and economic reality, so why should those on benefits be treated more favourably?
Bob Pugh
St Ives, Dorset
SIR – I used to be against having a fully elected upper house, but this week the House of Lords has changed my opinion.
David Swanbrow
Sarisbury Green, Hampshire
Standards at Oxford
SIR – Examiners don’t just pick on the most depressing features of students’ work (“Oxford finals students ‘little better than school leavers’”, report, January 23).
I was chairman of last year’s fifth-term examination in Classics, and our report commented on the “many signs of the joys of literature”. Comments from the examiners included: “This was an extremely strong year, with hardly any weak papers, many very good ones, and some outstanding work” and “One of the most pleasing features was the diversity of answers which the questions provoked, and of arguments in support of them.”
What would be really unprofessional would be if tutors did not care, or did not tell one another, when something was disappointing.
Christopher Pelling
Regius Professor of Greek
Christ Church, Oxford
SIR – Dons marking Oxford finals papers seem far from happy with the quality of much of the work.
How, then, is one to explain the fact that the proportion of candidates achieving first and upper-second class honours is higher now than it has ever been?
J. R. G. Edwards
Birchington, Kent
Barefoot shopping
SIR – Like Madeleine Pallas, I too have been approached by a security guard in a supermarket because of my muddy riding boots (report, January 23).
We agreed that it would be unreasonable for me to walk around the food aisles wearing them, but he kindly offered to keep an eye on them if I left them at the door. Since then, I automatically take them off on my way in.
Dr Sarah A. Pape
Morpeth, Northumberland
Social care reform
SIR – When Paul Burstow, the health minister, says that there is no funding shortfall for social care services in England (report, January 18), this fails to acknowledge that additional money from the Department of Health is considerably outweighed by the Government’s 28 per cent cut to councils’ main grant.
Councils, providers, charities and directors of social services, all of whom we represent, see on a daily basis that the English care system is now at risk of a funding crisis. All parts of government must listen to the need to make social care a political priority.
Last week’s reconvening of cross-party talks is a first step. Hundreds of thousands of people are isolated in their own homes or falling into the NHS unnecessarily. Long-term reform is important but the immediate issues also demand attention.
Funding and reform go hand in hand and we can’t have one without the other. It is time to change this unfair regime and as a nation to show collectively that we care.
Cllr David Rogers
Chairman, Community Wellbeing Board, Local Government Association
Oliver Thomas
UK Director, Bupa Care Homes
Michelle Mitchell
Charity Director, Age UK
Peter Hay
President, Association of Directors of Adult Social Services
Cost of wind power
SIR – You report that forecasts suggest that the cost of wind power to households in 2020 will be £280 (January 23). In fact, this is the projected cost of all green policies, and will be offset by energy efficiency measures.
The cost of support for low-carbon technologies, including nuclear, is £89, of which only part will go to wind power.
Funding green technology reduces our exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices, and in the long term will keep bills down.
Jennifer Webber
Director of External Affairs, Renewable UK
London SW1
Irish Times:
Pain of emigration and immigration
Sir, – Emigration, coercive economic migration, is a terrible reality across the globe. Bishop John Kirby (Home News, January 24th) rightly takes Minister for Finance Michael Noonan to task for his remarks. The pain of leaving home and loved ones, the uncertainly of the migration experience, the complex and often hostile immigration systems that people encounter leaves many Irish emigrants at risk of becoming undocumented in their destination countries.
Bishop Ray Field (Rite Reason, January 3rd) highlights the plight of undocumented people living in Ireland. These people had to leave their countries, many for economic reasons. And yet they experience the same stress, anxiety and discomfort of the unfamiliar as other emigrants who have to leave their countries. The tragedy for many is the glaring lack of choice in their situation. We should remember that every emigrant is an immigrant outside their country. – Yours, etc,
Fr BOBBY GILMORE
EDEL MCGINLEY,
Migrant Rights Centre Ireland,
Parnell Square West,
Dublin 1.
Beyond austerity
Sir, – Your Editorial “Beyond austerity” (January 23rd) does little to help create an informed and realistic debate about the difficult choices which lie ahead for Ireland. The pious “hope-ium’ of those whose “Plan B” you largely approve, reflects for me, how public debate in Ireland can be conducted earnestly and within the pages of the newspaper of record, with only passing reference to salient and unpalatable facts.
Ireland’s yawning gap between what it raises from its citizens in total taxation, approximately €42 billion, and what it spends on public expenditure and salaries and pensions, €60 billion, is currently bridged by loans from the Troika. The majority of the signatories to a letter published by you (January 20th), calling for “an emergency budget”, draw their incomes from the public purse and against the aforementioned stark reality they simplistically argue for a tax and spend policy as a viable solution to stimulate employment and growth.
If the collective wisdom of the distinguished group seeking an “emergency budget” is simply bounded by a recognition that the bank bailout for Anglo and Nationwide was an error and the belief that a sound “Plan B” should be focused on capital, property and increased income tax on the higher paid to fund State-driven job creation, then readers have reason to be truly concerned for our collective future.
Ireland is borrowing to meet a huge level of historic overcommitment in public expenditure. In the 10 years from 2001, for example, expenditure on social protection has increased 266 per cent from €7.84 billion to almost €21 billion in 2011.
Your group of well-intentioned contributors ignores the harsh reality that our democratically elected decision-makers have over the past two decades created many more entitlements and claims on the nation’s wealth than national wealth itself.
The inconvenient truth remains that even if we were to get a substantial level of debt forgiveness for the folly of the bank guarantee, any credible “Plan B” must still focus on cutting the national cloth to a substantially reduced measure. There are no easy solutions to improving our international competitiveness and sadly many of the pillars of our public service have been less than effective in doing more with less. Under any and all credible Plan B scenarios we will have to recognise the futility of assuming that we can consume more than we create on an ongoing basis. – Yours, etc,
JOHN BARRETT,
Castleroberts,
Adare,
Co Limerick.
Introducing teens to alcohol at home
Sir, – Minister of State Róisín Shortall voiced frustration with parents who opt to give their teenagers alcohol (Front page, January 18th). She pointed out that this was a counterproductive strategy, however well-intentioned. While your reporting of her comments was reasonably neutral, the subsequent discussion in the media was far from balanced.
Most radio comment sought to present the Minister as attacking parents en masse. Indeed a spokesperson for the National Parents Council expressed annoyance at the Minister’s comments and elaborated on her support for the myth that giving teenagers alcohol in the home magically teaches them to drink alcohol responsibly.
We have published research on the views of Irish parents on this practice. This has confirmed that the majority of parents think introducing teenagers to alcohol at home is a bad idea. From my own experience of delivering talks to parents on teenage alcohol use, it has become clear to me that this majority of parents are very frustrated with the one in four parents who think it’s good to give their children alcohol, and perceive them as letting the side down.
Recent research studies from US, Australia and Northern Ireland confirm that teenagers who drink under adult supervision experience more, not less, alcohol- related harm than those who live with adults who are unwilling to “supervise” their drinking. This is because, on average, teenagers who drink with mummy and daddy still do most of their drinking with their mates in unsupervised settings. Rather than being simply ineffective, the introduction of teenagers to alcohol at home is actually harmful.
Unfortunately for us parents, we are bringing our children up in a society where intoxication is entirely acceptable if not expected, and where the majority of adult drinkers use alcohol in an unhealthy manner.
Irish teenagers are mirroring the harmful drinking practices of their elders but are starting their drinking careers about two years younger than a generation ago.
Nevertheless, there are effective evidence-based strategies which parents can employ to reduce the risk of alcohol-related harm for their children, although risk cannot be eliminated. These include the parents reducing their own drinking, establishing and consistently applying clear household rules and expectations and actively monitoring their teenager’s whereabouts. Interested parents could read through the “Straight Talk” guide on the Irish Health Promotion Unit website.
As someone who is very keen to see politicians grasp the nettle of Ireland’s drink problem, it is frustrating to see someone castigated when they get it right.
Despite the media’s effort to characterise the Minister as attacking parents, her comments were supportive of the majority view among parents in Ireland and most importantly, the advice she gave was backed up by scientific evidence.
It seems odd that the National Parents Council could be so out of touch with the views of real Irish parents on this issue and so willing to propose a practice which actually increases the risk of harm to children. – Yours, etc,
Dr BOBBY SMYTH, MRCPsych,
Clinical Associate Professor,
Department of Public Health
Primary Care,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – Conor Farren (Opinion, January 23rd), makes a valuable contribution to the debate about our cultural attitude to alcohol consumption and alcohol misuse in general. The drinks industry has been inputting constructively to this debate, and looks forward to the publication of the report of the National Substance Misuse Strategy Group that we have been involved in for the past two years. While we have concerns about specific recommendations calling for blanket bans and restrictions, we will support the overwhelming majority of the report’s recommendations on how to address alcohol misuse.
However, in considering this important issue, we must do so in possession of the correct facts. In this regard, Dr Farren is not correct in stating we are in the midst of a “massive rise” in alcohol consumption. The opposite is the case.
Consumption of alcohol in Ireland, as measured by the Revenue Commissioners, has been declining for a decade and this decline has accelerated in recent years due to lifestyle changes, the economic downturn, and lower consumer confidence. As a result, Irish consumption at approximately nine litres per capita, is approaching EU norms.
Demographic changes and emigration mean that this downward trend is likely to continue.
Policy-makers and all of us involved in this debate must bear this in mind when considering overall policy to ensure that our actions are targeted at those who misuse alcohol rather than on the need to reduce overall consumption that is already declining. – Yours, etc,
KATHRYN D’ARCY,
Director,
Alcohol Beverage Federation of
Ireland,
Lower Baggot Street,
Dublin 2.
Internet ‘piracy law’ petition
Sir, – I was quite astounded to read Elaine Edwards’s article (“Over 21,000 sign ‘piracy law’ petition”, January 24th) about the impending statutory instrument amending Irish copyright law.
Free access to information on the Internet, independent of the whims of large, powerful private interests is not a “loophole in the law”. It is a freedom which must be promoted and protected. – Yours, etc,
STEPHEN SHAW,
Rue Pierre Sémard,
Grenoble, France.
An Irish Robin Hood?
Sir, – On a day when the State is paying out €1.25 billion of taxpayers’ money to unsecured bondholders, I am reminded of the old Irish joke that runs: Did you hear about the Irish Robin Hood? – he robbed the poor to pay the rich! Is anybody laughing? – Yours, etc,
BERNARD KEOGH,
Dollymount Park,
Clontarf, Dublin 3.
Beethoven’s shopping list
Sir, – Fun to Read Indy beginning but please stop now or Wilbye Nono Moore! – Yours, etc,
ED FITZPATRICK,
Hazelbrook Road,
Terenure, Dublin 6W.
Sir, – Beethoven has been an inspiration to us all. Despite splashing out on gourmet feline paté for Debussy and hand-made boots from Schumann, he Berlioz a cent on his credit card (Maestro). – Yours, etc,
FINTAN GIBNEY,
Glasnevin Hill,
Dublin 9.
Sir, – PHew son! Evans above! I’ve been Mullen over A dam quip. You too? – Yours, etc,
JOHN GLEESON,
Lucan Road,
Chapelizod, Dublin 20.
Sir, – I decided to elevate the level of commentary and seek some classical soundings as follows: Bach . . .Wow! Offenbach . . . Wow Wow!! Debussy . . .Miaow!!! – Yours, etc,
PETER McNAMARA,
Ashbrook, Ennis Road,
Limerick.
Sir, – At the risk of appearing to support trumpeted up charges, I have a trombone to piccolo with whoever this high flutin’ editor is who is keeping this punfinished symphony going. I’ll give a tenor to anyone who chimes in with a way of stopping it before writers start xylophoning it in. It’s a cymbal of all that’s wrong with the country when this glocken-spiel is allowed to, like most shows, go on.
We need the police and the press to be in concert to properly conduct our affairs and reassert our bass-ic human rights. – Yours, etc,
EMMET O’BRIEN,
Fernwood,
Wilton, Cork.
Sir, – Nono! I am sick to Dett of all this musical Rott!
If it keeps Suppé, I will have a glass of Heinichen that might be Abel to Bloch de Greef.
If that doesn’t work, all that’s left is Dupré. – Yours, etc,
NOEL BROWN,
Woodbrook Park,
Templeogue,
Dublin 16.
Sir, – I think Beethoven should have his Chopin delivered and thus avoid having to carry the heavy Purcell all the way home. It would be difficult for him to get a good Holst of it anyway, because he usually takes his little dog along and has to endure everyone saying “Lovely little Puccini?”
All this punning is what one would expect from student Taverner Bartok, but it is such a hoot that I simply had to Arvo Part in it. – Yours, etc,
MARY McGOWAN,
Hillside View,
Killargue, Co Leitrim.
A pardon for Irish soldiers
Sir, – I’m scratching my head at the word “desertion” being used to describe people who went to fight one of the worst manifestations of human barbarism ever experienced on this earth.
I would have thought Éamon de Valera would have been waiting at the dockside or airport with medals to welcome back the soldiers from doing what he should have sent our troops to do. Instead he comes up with a term “The Emergency” to describe the horrific carnage of the second World War.
The idea of neutrality in a war like that is absurd, and I applaud the soldiers who went to fight the Nazis. They were not deserters, they were doing their job and their conscience justice.
Don’t look for a pardon, look for an apology. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN BYRNE,
Yatay,
Capital Federal,
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Sir, – I must take issue with Alan Shatter’s support for pardoning those who deserted Ireland’s defence forces during the Emergency (Front page, January 25th).
More than 40,000 men served with the Irish Defence Forces during the Emergency, giving up their jobs and normal life on Civvy Street to defend their country. It is a historical fact that both the British and the Germans drew up plans to invade Ireland, Churchill infamously telling the world on VE day that he had no compunction about invading neutral Ireland if necessary.
According to Mr Shatter, it was the 5,000 who deserted and “left this island during that time to fight for freedom” were the heroic ones in the Irish story who were “preserving European and Irish democracy”. That is a gross insult and dishonour to the men who swore allegiance to the Irish State and stood by that allegiance to protect their country and made sacrifices to that end.
As a Government Minister, and a justice minister at that, Mr Shatter’s agenda is deeply troubling. Ireland still has defence forces and laws against desertion, and the British army is still fighting wars: here is the Minister of Defence claiming that – in spite of the law – it is morally acceptable to desert the Irish defence forces if you are going to join the British army to fight in a war!
Many young men at the time joined neither the Irish Defence Forces nor the British army, believing the IRA (then engaged in attacks against Britain and even had some contact with German military intelligence) were the best army to soldier with. Under the law then (and now), both membership of the IRA and desertion from the Defence Forces is illegal. Between 1939 and 1945 six IRA men were executed by the State: Charlie Kerins, Maurice O’Neill, Thomas Harte, George Plant, Paddy McGrath, and Richard Goss. Additionally, Tony D’Arcy and Sean McNeela died on hunger strike during their imprisonment, and John Kavanagh was shot while trying to escape from prison. I suggest that if justice is to be applied equitably, then Mr Shatter has no choice but to also pardon those nine men and the hundreds of others who were interned without trial by the State during the war. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN O’LEARY,
Bachelor’s Quay, Cork.
Sir, – Each day seems to bring a new low in our self esteem. The country is knee-deep in the mire and as an aside Minister for Justice Alan Shatter frets about how to pardon brave and honourable Irishmen
who left the cushy Curragh to fight in a war for mankind.
They were labelled “deserters” and then further punished with the loss of pensions and entitlements. So the Minister should keep it simple and say “sorry” to any of their relatives who are still alive. Pay them the money robbed from them.
However, if Mr Shatter makes political capital out of those brave men, let him go the whole hog and name who in the Irish government was behind this reprehensible act. Furthermore he should then name the Army brass who feared a drain on their resources as they played soldiers back then while real lives were lost across Europe.
My grandfather returned from the trenches after the first World War and was condemned to a life in a kitchen because Saorstát Éireann wanted its pound of flesh. I suppose he can count himself lucky; he owned no land so there was no need to shoot him dead in the dark of night pretending he was a collaborator.
So say “sorry”, pay up and get on with this life, not some events 60 years ago. And if Mr Shatter wants to big it up then he should condemn the people who perpetrated this calumny on good men. Saying sorry matters only when we know who and what we are sorry about and all the perpetrators are outed. – Yours, etc,
JOHN CUFFE,
Old Fairgreen,
Dunboyne,
Co Meath.
Irish Independent:
In its death throes the previous government urged all and sundry to don the green jersey so as to ensure a soft landing for the Irish financial system. A crash landing ensued.
Now that Eamon Gilmore has urged the opposition to put on the green jersey, should the Irish public show him and the Government the red card before we have another unpleasant descent?
Liam Cooke
Coolock, Dublin 17
It seems that Social Protection Minister Joan Burton has kicked off the new year in the same vein as she left off in 2011, issuing statements and plans which imply widespread welfare fraud.
A new plan, we are told, will put “a time limit for social welfare recipients” which is clearly just another swipe at those forced onto the Live Register.
There is no doubt that one of the most socially corrosive crimes is fraud, and welfare fraud is no different. The sad truth of the matter is, however, that we in Ireland have a very high tolerance for it and this is particularly the case when the fraud is perpetrated by those at the top end of the socio-economic ladder — who, by the way, are responsible for the vast majority of it.
That tolerance also noticeably reduces whenever those on the lower parts of the same ladder are thought to be dipping their fingers.
Surely if Ms Burton is about more than vilifying those unfortunate enough to be unemployed she would come up with a few constructive, meaningful proposals that we as a society should be discussing.
The obvious one that needs to be looked at seriously again is a far-reaching job-sharing scheme. Those persons currently unemployed have an entitlement to work, that entitlement is at the core of the social contract. It should be possible to create an environment in which such job sharing is possible and, given the many benefits it offers, it is surprising that Ms Burton and her advisers have yet to seriously consider it.
Another initiative that she might consider is the imposition of fines on ministers for failure to address the grave social ill that is unemployment. Each minister should suffer an automatic fine for each person still on the full-time unemployment register at the end of each year.
It is time to stop attacking the unemployed and begin to realistically assess the position we are in. Every citizen has a right to a job and we need a minister who will fight to vindicate that right.
Jim O’Sullivan
Rathedmond, Sligo
This is a brief user’s guide to Irish political life. The capital of Ireland is Dublin. It has a population of a million people, most of whom will be shopping in Newry this weekend and will pay in euros, the currency of the South.
Under the Irish Constitution, the North used to be in Ireland. But after a disastrous 30-year campaign of murder by the IRA for Irish unity the Republic of Ireland voted overwhelmingly to ensure the North is now definitely in the UK.
Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland. It has a population of half a million, half of whom have houses in Donegal.
Protestants are in favour of the Border, which generates millions of pounds in smuggling for Catholics, who are opposed to the Border. Travel between the two states is complicated because Ireland is the only country in the world with two M1 motorways. The one in the North goes west to avoid the south and the one in the South goes north to avoid the price of drink.
We have two types of democracy in Ireland. Dublin democracy works by holding a referendum and then allowing the Government to judge the result. If the Government thinks the result is wrong, the referendum is held again.
Belfast democracy works differently. It has a parliament with no opposition, so the government is always right.
Ireland has three economies — northern, southern and black. The black economy is in the black. The other two are in the red.
Paul O’Sullivan
Address with editor
Well I must be off
best wishes John
