29 March 2014 Liz

I go all the way around the park listening to the Navy Lark. Our heroes are in trouble, again.They have an inspection by the admiral. Priceless

Cold slightly better Mary very under the weather visit her take Liz

No Scrabbletoday Perhaps Iwill win tomorrow.

Obituary:

Bruce Robertson , who has died aged 79, was managing director of the book design and artwork partnership Diagram and founder of the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title, an award presented annually by The Bookseller magazine.

Guardian:

Having retired from teaching in recent years, I am so appreciative of our public services and now have time to write and sing their praises. Everything I’ve encountered today, as I write, was thanks to our fantastic, publicly funded amenities, so often unfairly criticised by politicians. This morning I benefited from a local authority-subsidised adult education class, meeting other keen and sociable learners. This centre is buzzing and a lifeline for older students who cannot get out much. Later I called in at one of Bristol’s local libraries, where staff really go out of their way to find the books I want, or reserve them – and all for free. They had just organised a public talk and signing by the acclaimed local writer and recent Costa award winner, Nathan Filer.

With the first same-sex marriage taking place in Britain – in Brighton today (Report, 28 March) – is it not the time either to pass legislation permitting civil partnerships between heterosexual couples or to repeal the legislation recognising civil partnerships?
Peter Cave
London

Robert Shore (Let’s hear it for the Midlands, G2, 27 March), writing about the contribution the Midlands have made to Britain’s culture and industry, curiously made no mention of Burton upon Trent, which in the late 19th century was the most important brewing town in the world. Due to the remarkable waters of the Trent Valley, which are rich in natural sulphates, brewers in Burton were able to perfect the first pale beers in the shape of pale ale and its strong export version, India pale ale (IPA).

Before Burton, beers – including lager beer from central Europe – were dark. The Burton brewers harnessed the new technologies of the industrial revolution to make pale rather than dark malt and added Trent Valley water that drew out the full flavours of malt and hops.

Burton pale ale transformed brewing on a world scale. Brewers from Austria and Germany hurried to the town in the East Midlands to see how pale ale was made and returned home to fashion the first golden lager beers.

As a result of corporate greed and stupidity, most of the famous names in Burton brewing, such as Bass and Ind Coope, have gone. But Marston’s, with its Pedigree pale ale, remains a major figure in British brewing and it’s been joined by a clutch of new craft brewers in the town. One of Burton’s great brewers of yesteryear, William Worthington, is commemorated in a small brewery named in his honour at the National Brewery Centre that celebrates Burton’s great contribution to brewing.
Roger Protz
St Albans, Hertfordshire

• Robert Shore rightly reminds us of the importance of Birmingham and mentions the cities of the East Midlands, but what about further west into Shropshire? The iconic Ironbridge, now a World Heritage site, is shown, but there should be mention of nearby Coalbrookdale as an important centre of industry. In the county town of Shrewsbury lived some of the pioneers of the use of wrought iron in the building industry, as can be seen in one of the earliest iron-framed buildings, the Flax Mill. This technique proved to be the inspiration for the building of skyscrapers.

Shrewsbury, not far from the ruins of Wroxeter, the fourth most important town in Roman Britain, has connections with many famous people: Charles 1 visited, Charles Darwin was born here, Charles Dickens stayed here, Disraeli was its MP in 1841, the war poet Wilfred Owen lived here, as did the writer, Mary Webb. The reference to “blue remembered hills” in AE Housman’s A Shropshire Lad is an apt description of the land stretching into Wales.

Built above a loop in the River Severn, Shrewsbury has almost 600 listed buildings, narrow medieval streets, a castle, an abbey, of Brother Cadfael fame, many churches, a new theatre and a famous annual flower show.
Helen Wilson
Shrewsbury, Shropshire

• Devotees of heavy riffing and high volume will have noticed a glaring omission. No mention of the region’s status as the birthplace and spiritual homeland of heavy metal. Black Sabbath started it all, of course, but consider a lineage which includes Judas Priest, Napalm Death, Godflesh and Iron Monkey (among countless others). It’s no wonder that there was sufficient interest and material for Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to host an exhibition called Home of Metal in 2011. Surely a piece which found room for comedy singer Robbie Williams could have also given due credit to Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne and Bill Ward?
Olly Thomas
Brighton, East Sussex

• Why no mention of the greatest Midlander of all time, Robin Hood? He is in much need at the present time to ensure that the rich are robbed to give to the poor. Our contemporary sheriffs in Westminster seek to undermine this principle of social and economic justice, but Robin always had popular support.
Canon David Jennings
Market Bosworth, Leicestershire

• I was surprised that you failed to mention Charles Darwin. Shrewsbury, his birthplace, is nearer the centre of the region than the eastern outpost that is Grantham, home to Isaac Newton.
Paul Pascoe
Shrewsbury, Shropshire

• No wonder the Midlands are so often subsumed into the north. In the letter calling for HS2 to be speeded through parliament (28 March), the signatories describe themselves as leaders of eight major “northern” cities, yet the group includes Derby and Nottingham.
Dr Alex May
Manchester

Independent:

Where is this “real world” that Graham Hinitt (letter, 27 March) inhabited? It is entirely unclear why he believes that his role in financial services, which entailed, inter alia, long hours of record-keeping, was more real than that of teachers, or whether he believes that teachers should be doing more paperwork or should stop moaning about what they already do. 

Although my days as a teacher did involve increasing amounts of record-keeping and, obviously, teaching, they also required me to deal with the baggage that the pupils brought to school with them.

Over the years, this baggage included: acrimoniously divorcing parents who used the child as a stick to beat each other; eating disorders; abuse of drugs and/or alcohol; pupils with suicidal feelings; those who were being physically, sexually or emotionally abused at home; acute anxiety over academic performance; unwanted pregnancy; and those struggling with their sexuality.

I’m afraid Mr Hinitt is suffering from the delusion that because teachers are not engaged in wealth creation they are not living in the real world.

I can assure him that it was uncomfortably real to those pupils and often to the teachers who tried to support them.

Kathy Moyse, Cobham, Surrey

The trouble with some financial services managers, such as Graham Hinitt, is that even when they leave school they never actually work in the real world. They don’t understand how tough it is in the teaching profession, having only seen it from the point of view of the pupil.

Before my retirement I worked at one time in a secondary school – not as a teacher but in admin. Having previously worked in the “real world”, I gained a new respect for the teaching profession.

The hours were long  and much time was spent on record-keeping, as  well as actually in the classroom. Not possible to get a coffee whenever you feel the need – not with a class of pupils requiring your undivided attention the whole time.

Many teachers have worked in business before taking up teaching and they certainly would not consider it to be a soft option.

I suggest that Mr Hinitt spends some time volunteering in a school, I am sure his expertise would be much appreciated and he would gain useful knowledge.

Jill O’Kelly, Horringer, Suffolk

In the late 19th century, my grandmother taught classes of about 50 children and regularly fell asleep over a pile of marking in the evening – long hours and hard work. Yet she inspired generations of my family to follow her, because teaching is a joyous and rewarding experience.

The line of teachers has survived unbroken until now, but it is about to come to an end with the resignations of two members of my family,  one from the primary and one from the secondary sector, both consistently rated “outstanding” throughout their long careers.

It’s nothing to do with hard work and long hours; it’s because of frustration at not being able to do the job as it should be done.

Alison Sutherland (letter, 28 March) says it all: “daft organisational and curriculum ideas” imposed by people who have no idea of the implications. Teaching and learning are no longer a joyous experience for anyone.

My grandmother would be very sad indeed.

Christina Jones, Retford, Nottinghamshire

Why Crimea is so important to Putin

Mary Dejevsky (27 March) recommends bold action to negotiate and resolve our problems with Russia, but I don’t think she addresses the main reason why Russia wants to secure Crimea – which is the link Crimea provides with its naval base in Syria, preserving its ability to support its clients, mainly Assad, and its general ability to influence events in the Middle East.

This is also the reason why the West, pungently represented by the US’s Victoria Nuland, whose scorn for her European Union partners was so memorably recorded, gave so much power to the elbow of the anti-Russian streetfighters  in Kiev.

A secure pro-Western Ukrainian government intending to winkle the Russians out of Sevastopol would have been extremely helpful.

Russia is acting ruthlessly, but not from sheer weakness, as Barack Obama claims, rather from a determination to preserve, for good or ill, what power over the world’s most vital region remains to it.

The problem that needs to be resolved is not so much those that Mary Dejevsky explicitly mentions but the Israel/Palestine problem, which is spreading poison through all the world’s veins

Martin Hughes, Wokingham, Berkshire

Vladimir Putin’s colonialist occupation of Crimea offers Islamic jihadis a pool of potential recruits among the peninsula’s 300,000 Muslim Tatars, and a new Black Sea coastal forward base for terrorism only 200km from the EU’s eastern border.

The Crimean Tatars have no love for Russia which, in the 1940s, ethnically cleansed their grandparents from their ancestral homeland to Central Asia, from where they have been returning since the 1980s to a territory safely outside Russia since 1954.

Faced with new threats to their security and ethnic identity, the more embittered Tatars will be natural allies for Chechen separatists to the east of the Black Sea, battle-hardened by two wars with Russia and now fighting in Syria against Russia’s ally President Assad, and other regional activists.

A saner strategist than Putin might have considered that the last thing the world needs is any more disaffected Muslims – especially ones with a genuine grievance against the occupation of their country. We should not, therefore, be surprised when we see TV footage of Russians again reeling from Chechen-style bombing campaigns, orchestrated from a Black Sea arc with easy access to the whole Middle East.

The pity is that jihadis, once indoctrinated, don’t tend to feel geographically restricted from turning their wrath against other targets.

David Crawford, Bromley, Kent

Privatised power has run out of steam

When the largest gas supplier threatens us all with the lights going out, we surely know that the experiment with privatised power generation and supply has failed.

It is time for the public sector to re-establish control over our power supplies. We deserve a cheaper, sustainable, more reliable alternative. We would never put our national security at risk by selling our military defences to the private sector to be subsequently sold to foreign institutions, yet our energy supplies are essential to our daily security.

Lee Dalton

Weymouth, Dorset

With the CEO of Centrica threatening blackouts, has it occurred to anyone else that the privatisation of our national energy was the worst legislation in Parliamentary history? I know who I will  be burning in effigy on  5 November.

David Monkman

Ramsey St Mary’s, Cambridgeshire

end this sex discrimination

With the first same-sex marriage taking place in Britain today, is not the time ripe either to pass legislation permitting civil partnerships between heterosexual couples or to repeal the legislation recognising same-sex civil partnerships? Until such legislation is passed, is not unjustified discrimination being manifested?

Peter Cave

London W1

cow fodder  vs the gadfly

I am happy to enlighten Dave Keeley (letter, 28 March) on the origins of the word Farage. Obviously, it comes from the Latin farrago which my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary tells me meant “mixed fodder for cattle, hence fig, a medley, a confused group, a hotchpotch”.

As for the word Clegg, it seems to have Old Norse origins from “kleggi: a gadfly”, now meaning figuratively “one who torments and worries another” and “an irresistible impulse”. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Patrick Walsh

Eastbourne

I have long believed that the world would be a jollier place if we were allowed to pronounce two names in British politics in a slightly different way.

Farage should surely rhyme with the south London garage of my youth, ie “farridge”, while Gove must, in all conscience, rhyme either with “move”  or “shove”. See? You’re smiling already.

Steve Clarke

Portree, Isle of Skye

Farage vs Clegg was like two donkeys going round Aintree.

Amanda Baker

Morpeth,  Northumberland

how many mothers  are you buying for?

Is there any special significance in one town-centre card shop offering “Mother’s Day cards: five for a pound!”?

Godfrey H Holmes

Times:

Sir, Neil Jones (letter, Mar 27) is entertainingly provocative about BBC radio audiences. The Radio Joint Audience Research figures for the three months to December 2013 show that Radio 4 was listened to by just over 11 million people, and Radio 3 by just below 2 million. Neither figure is insignificant, and both contradict his suggestions that few people listen to Radio 4 and “hardly anyone has ever listened to Radio 3”.

Richard Doubleday

Bath

Sir, In answer to the letter from Mr Jones, I expect you will be bombarded with letters from people like me, still well under 50, who regularly listen to Radio 4 and have done for many years.

Robert Duddridge

Woodford Green, Essex

Sir, Elitist is the one thing Radio 3 and Radio 4 are not. They are available to all, free of charge — no TV licence is required to listen. They enable anyone, including the poorest in society, to listen to the greatest thinkers, artists and intellectuals of our time.

Stephen Follows

London W14

Sir, On March 16 the sun was shining and vast numbers of people under 50 (and many under 50 in spirit) were enjoying themselves on the South Bank to the soundtrack of not Radio 1, but Radio 3 at the start of its residence at the Southbank Centre. There were no clamouring voices demanding the music be changed. This is but one small example of the enjoyment and fulfilment that Radio 3 and 4 provide to their listeners. They engage, educate, provoke and transform, and allow communal experience without demanding physical presence, which for many would be impossible. They offer a wealth of knowledge and debate otherwise out of reach of many, and permit exploration of the most pressing topics, the farthest lands, the most astounding music and human endeavours.

These all seem to be excellent purposes. Perhaps Mr Jones should close his eyes and listen with more open ears.

Joanna Williams (aged 29)

London SW19

Sir, Even if it were true that no one under 50 listens to Radio 4, that would still give a potential audience of some 20 million. Is there not a wider point behind the call to get rid of BBC Radio? If its informal role of guardian (and definer) of what it means to “educate, entertain and inform” must now be given to the market to decide then, logically, we must also disband all other institutions that help us distinguish quality from mere popularity.

Without the foundation stone of “this is better than that because . . .”, all that will remain of our cultural life will be the sciences (where “truth” is testable and provisional) and the marketing of popular entertainment. However much we may disagree with others about what is good in culture, life without the debate — and someone to insist that there is a debate to be had — would be very much shallower.

David Boorer

Llandovery, Carmarthenshire

Sir, No one listens to the radio? Does Mr Jones not know any painters, bricklayers, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, scaffolders and kitchen fitters?

John Smart

Taverham, Norfolk

Telegraph:

SIR – Each year, as we approach the fourth Sunday of Lent, we are bombarded with an increasing number of advertisements and inaccurate references to “Mother’s Day”, an American invention that seems to have eaten into our retail soul.

SIR – It is not surprising that consumers do not switch suppliers all that often (“Millions paying too much for energy”).

SIR – Nick Clegg’s statement that only about 7 per cent of British legislation is imposed by the European Union is typical of the deception with which defenders of membership of the EU present their case.

Irish Times:

Sir, – On Monday, all four of the Dublin’s local authorities will have voted on whether or not to hold a plebiscite, the wording of which they do not know and for which the heads of a Bill of the enabling legislation have not even been discussed.

The subject of that plebiscite is the establishment of the office of a “Democratically Elected Mayor (‘DEM’) for Dublin”. The manner in which this question is being put to the elected members of those four councils means that the critical link between deciding to hold a local referendum and the wording of that referendum is broken, an extraordinary situation.

That Minister Hogan and his advisers think that in a modern democracy this procedure is acceptable illustrates the extent to which, since the foundation of the State, successive national governments have deprived local government of any real decision-making powers.

I have been a public representative for 13 years, and a member of the Labour Party’s working group on local government reform, and know something of how this will play out. I was also a representative on the forum set up by the minister to examine this issue. I know from that experience what this minister is likely to do if given a blank cheque to draft the terms of the plebiscite himself – which is what voting Yes on Monday would give him.

One only has to look at his track record. There was virtually nothing about devolving central government powers to local government in the new Reform of Local Government Act. These powers are absolutely central if the role of a DEM is to mean anything. The plain fact is that this minister is not going to devolve those powers to a DEM.

I don’t buy the “suck it and see” approach. The consequence of this will be less local democracy not more, within those four local council areas, and a handicapped directly elected mayor for the metropolitan area. Proponents of a Yes vote on Monday are prepared to wait years or even decades for the evolution of those DEM powers, if such an office is created, but are nor prepared to wait until we get the legislative basis for the office right in the first place without damaging local democracy in the four existing councils in the interim.

If the people of Fingal re-elect me in May (that’s local democracy in action), I don’t intend to stop working when this minister leaves the stage for the EU (as seems likely) and I look forward to working with someone else who is serious about local government reform and giving councillors and voters real choices in a plebiscite.

Yours, etc,

CLLR CIARAN BYRNE,

Fingal County Council,

Swords,

Co Dublin

Sir, – David Walsh (Letters, March 28th) seeks to debunk the “cliche” that oppressive gender roles are one reason why women seem to avoid politics. He rightly claims that many people view politics as an arena that involves unsocial hours, weekend working and a lack of a private life. What he fails to acknowledge is that both men and women are concerned with those unsocial hours and lack of private life yet it is disproportionately (and consistently so) women who are dissuaded by them. Perhaps he would say that “they” clearly have other priorities or more competing demands on their time than men. If that is so, David Beatty’s “oppressive gender roles” (Letters, March 26th) stand up to scrutiny.

And if the problem with gender quotas is indeed that they tend to generate demands for more I suppose we should be careful. Before we know it they’ll be looking for the vote, the right to stay in work, equal pay …

Yours, etc,

SEÁN Ó SIOCHRÚ,

Glenbeigh,

Co Kerry

Sir, – I disagree that a call by the National Women’s Council for a 40 per cent representation for women at Cabinet is arrogant (David Walsh, Letters March 28th) although I certainly think that it’s unrealistic. However his primary objection to the request seems to be that the NWC made no mention of merit or experience. It would be wonderful to think that every man in a Cabinet post is there due to merit or experience, but I’m sure that support for the party leader, as well as quotas to satisfy a coalition government trump merit or experience every time. Yours, etc,

SHEILA O’FLANAGAN,

Copeland Grove,

Clontarf,

Dublin 3

Sir, — As a firm supporter of politically correct nonsense cooked up by self-interested ideologues, I demand to live in a society where my concerns as a voter are ignored by politicians of both genders on an equal basis. The next time I see the interests of my country being subordinated to the interests of international financiers, oil companies, tax-dodging corporations or other states, I want to at least have the comfort of knowing that Irish democracy was devalued in a gender-balanced manner. Yours, etc,

EMMET MOOREHOUSE ,

Barnwall Court,

Balbriggan,

Co Dublin

Sir, – It is inconceivable in a client service business that an urgent letter dated March 10th would be left undealt with until March 24th pending the return of the director responsible from a business trip. All senior client-facing people are now equipped with mobile devices and are available 24/7 to avoid such eventualities. This policy, inter alia, greatly reduces the risk of a client fast becoming an ex-client.

Is it credible that the Justice Department did not send a scanned copy of the Attorney General’s letter to Mr Shatter when was abroad? Is it conceivable that Mr Shatter was not in telephone or email contact with his officials for almost two weeks, or if he was in contact that this vital issue was not raised? Hardly!

Others can argue the politics of the situation better than I but on a practical level, if Government departments are managed in the manner suggested by Mr Shatter similar situations will recur in the future. Yours, etc,

KIERAN McHUGH,

Woodcliff,

Howth,

Dublin 13

Sir, — I have difficulty with an assertion in Tom O’Malley’s article (“Nightmare scenario may render convictions unsafe”, Opinion & Analysis, March 27th).  He declares that “Many who have found themselves in [Garda custody] have later stated that they would have been willing to confess to anything just in order to regain their liberty”. To me, this smacks of sensationalism.  What relevance does it have to the general point of the constitutional right to privacy in communication with one’s solicitor? Yours, etc,

MARTIN KAY,

Lough Gur,

Co Limerick

Sir, – RTÉ is charged with reporting on national news in a fair and unbiased manner, thus allowing the listener/viewer to make up his or her mind. Since the now-retired Commissioner Callinan’s “disgusting” remarks in Leinster House, certain elements in the TV newsroom in particular have shown a distinct bias in their coverage that has been favourable to the “official” side and decidedly cool to the legitimate claims of the two Garda whistleblowers. Can this be because RTÉ TV news depends so much for its daily feed of news on the Garda Press Office? Thank goodness for newspapers. Yours, etc,

FM RUSSELL,

Lisdoonvarna,

Co Clare.

A chara, – In Miriam Lord’s column (“Twin egos once joined at the hip threaten Coalition”, March 26th) she wrote: “The intervention of Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar (who was being quietly congratulated by the likes of Róisín Shortall and Peter Mathews ) escalated the situation.” Can you please explain what she is trying to convey by writing “the likes of …” in relation to individuals? What are we to understand? Is she suggesting that it wasn’t actually Róisín Shortall or Peter Matthews themselves who were having a chat but some equivalents, some entities of which they, Shortall and Matthews are but iterations? The Irish Times is far from alone in its enthusiastic adopting of this term, rending individuals into equivalencies. It’s just that when one reads the likes of Miriam Lord adopting it, one loses faith in a worthwhile publication, the likes of The Irish Times , for example. Is mise,

MARY COLETTE

SHEEHAN,

Castlelyons,

Co Cork

Sir, – Regarding the comprehensive profiling of movers and shakers in the implementation of the smoking ban compiled by Patrick Freyne (March 22nd), the omission of the one person without whom none of it would have been possible was regrettable.

Most of the parties mentioned came in at a time when a glimmer of reputation or career enhancement was becoming possible through supporting the change. In contrast, the prime mover, Brian Timmons, had to fight much opposition and ridicule. He was probably risking his reputation and career when he devised, and acted on, the original idea, based on effects on his own health and additional research about damage from smoking in general.

As a civil servant in lower management in 1991/1992, he got the crucial igniting motion to introduce a voluntary code of non-smoking in civil service offices, passed through his union, the PSEU (Public Service Executive Union). This was the first step of the journey described. Only after that point did the idea catch on elsewhere.

Where completion of the public record in respect of this topic is concerned, it would be a pity for the heroic pivotal contribution of Brian Timmons to the roll-out of the smoking ban to go unacknowledged. Yours etc,

CAROLINE HURLEY,

Ashfield Rise,

Balbriggan,

Co Dublin

Sir, – May I assure Clíona Saidléar that it is not accent that upsets native speakers. What is grating to their ears is the disregard by many foghlaimeoirí for three basic elements necessary for the correct speaking of any language, namely syntax, grammar and pronunciation (gutturals, broad and slender consonants, etc). There are many different accents in every country and also within the Gaeltachts and they are readily and mutually accepted. I am speaking from my personal experience of living among speakers of English, French and Spanish. Yours, etc,

EOGHAN Ó LOINGSIGH,

Caisleán Ghriaire

Co Chiarraí

Sir, – I was almost reaching for my calendar to check for the beginning of April when I read of the rebranding of the “University of Dublin, Trinity College” to “Trinity College, the University of Dublin”. While this is not the first name change for my august alma mater it is most certainly Pythonesque, bringing to mind the People’s Front of Judea versus the Judean People’s Front! Yours, etc,

THEO RYAN,

Sitric Place,

Stoneybatter,

Dublin 7

Sir, – Students, taxpayers, society, the economy … would all be better served if the authorities in Ireland’s education establishments focused more of their attention on achieving high academic standards and less on the names of the institutions. Yours, etc,

ERIC O’BRIEN,

(former lecturer at

CRTC/CIT/“MTU”),

The Avenue,

Douglas,

Cork

Sir, – Paddy Wordworth (Opinion & Analysis, March 27th) is right when he states that our bogs contribute much more than turf to the Irish nation.

From his list of those undoubted benefits he omits however the traditional use that some members of the community have found for bogholes as cheap and convenient repositories for old TVs, refrigerators, couches and general household waste.

Yours, etc,

CHRIS GARVEY,

Lindsay Road,

Glasnevin,

Dublin 9

Sir, – Dick Ahlstrom’s article on “smart cities” (Mar 27th) rightly points out that it is giant technology companies who are mainly pushing this agenda; a case in point is Dublin City Council, which on the one hand wishes to install Wi-Fi in our public parks, while on the other it has removed all our badly needed public toilets. How smart is that? Of greater concern is that the computer giants are keen to push their products into schools – even primary schools.

Experienced teachers are despairing at the drop in our educational standards, a drop that is mainly due to pupils shortened attention spans, shortened by an over-reliance on technology.

Regrettably research skills have been dumbed down to “cut and paste” while, more worryingly, students have sub-contracted their learning, creativity and memory to their iPads and phones.

The majority of research studies have found that deep learning and creative thinking are achieved via a combination of good teachers, books and pupil interaction – not through computer screens. Unfortunately, unproven electronic gadgetry is being pushed (sometimes for free) on schools where they act only as a distraction and hindrance to learning in the classroom.

It is ironic that in Silicon Valley, home of this “technological wizardry’, the top primary schools have banned computers from the learning process. They know, as every experienced teacher knows, the best way young children learn is via a teacher, chalk, books and pupil interaction. Yours, etc.

JOHN DEVLIN

Erne Terrace,

Dublin 2

Irish Independent:

* When I was of age, my class and I were each given a communion book that was given a designated amount of time each day as we neared communion day.

Also in this section

In the interests of justice, Shatter must resign

Perfect opportunity for real garda reform

Shatter has decimated An Garda Siochana

I never questioned it because I was seven years of age and didn’t have the capacity. I looked up and every other boy and girl had a book, and we would all write down our feelings toward making our communion. My mind couldn’t comprehend that Mary or Joe’s families might not share the same beliefs as one another.

I can’t remember any of my classmates not partaking in this communion crash course, but I suspect numbers might have been diminished in different circumstances.

There should be a separation between religion generally and education in this country. There is nothing wrong with teaching children about respect and common moral values, but intertwining that with the staples of a religion is wrong and unnecessary.

If Mary’s parents want her to grow up within the Catholic Church, they can make that decision themselves, and take her to Mass and lead her into her communion, confirmation, etc.

If they don’t want to do that, they can just refrain from doing so without having to contact a principal for them to say Mary will have to sit out when the communion is mentioned.

So, if the making of communion was wholly a private decision and action taken within a family, how many of a class of 30 would there be receiving the sacrament on the day? There would be fewer frills and pink Hummers, let’s just put it that way.

JUSTIN KELLY

EDENDERRY, CO OFFALY

NOT ENOUGH WORK

* Wonderful news about Intel‘s $5bn (€3.6bn) spend in Ireland. But there is a profound sting in the “tale” we must get to grips with. Not very long ago, $5bn investment would have meant tens of thousands of additional long-term jobs. Not any more!

We’ll be lucky if the $5bn retains present employment levels. Multinationals like Intel must automate to stay in business.

Automation means more product with less work. We have achieved technological genius of making everything we need or want without working so hard any more. The big difficulty is figuring out a way of maintaining employment.

The impediment is in the ideology; we need 21st-Century thinking on work and jobs; a strategy of creating a lot more jobs from a lot less work.

An easy answer might be moving towards shorter hours, longer holidays and earlier retirement; more people working less.

We have been doing it for 100 years but need to accelerate the process. Automation can pay for it; it creates more wealth without work than all the work in the world could.

But we are still locked into old thinking of “earn your bread by the sweat of your brow”.

It does not cut mustard anymore; automation ensures there simply is not enough work to keep everyone working hard.

It’s the biggest problem facing economics and society but nobody will talk about it; nobody will even mention it.

It is what newspaper editorials should be writing about.

PADRAIC NEARY

TUBBERCURRY, CO SLIGO

HONOURABLE MEN

* The first item on the agenda of the incoming Garda Commissioner should be the promotion of officers John Wilson and Maurice McCabe.

However, as the former has retired, may I suggest that they join either Fianna Fail, Fine Gael or Labour. Only then will we be assured of two honourable politicians in the Dail.

IMELDA MULCAHY

AVE DE FLANDRE, WEXFORD

‘DISGUSTING’ DISASTER

* At a time when Russian forces have invaded Crimea, 239 people are still missing from a “disappeared” flight and an incurable Eboli killer disease has hit Guinea, we Irish have our own serious disaster: use of the word ‘disgusting’.

The whole sorry saga is actually disgusting.

The Garda Commissioner has now resigned/pushed because he would not apologise for using this ‘disgusting’ word, even though he claimed he wished to say sorry.

We are all totally confused as to who said/meant what.

I am reminded of the witty words of the satirist Samuel Butler, who died over 110 years ago: “I believe that he was really sorry, that people would not believe he was sorry, that he was not more sorry.”

As relevant today as it was back then!

SEAN KELLY

NEWTOWN HILL, TRAMORE, WATERFORD

WELL DONE, ELAYNA

* Congratulations to a wonderful student Elayna Keller from Our Lady’s College Drogheda (Irish Independent, March 28), who won top prize at the NNI Press Awards. She wrote a piece entitled ‘Kids can be cruel’ after her own experience of being bullied when she was younger.

In your article were the following few honest and wise comments from one so young: “My social skills were really stunted afterwards. I had no idea how to talk to people . . . writing is my way of getting my feelings out.”

I can relate so much to these comments after my dreadful experiences of school life in the 1960s, of which I have written about many times.

I have no doubt we will see more of Elayna’s writing abilities in the years to come.

BRIAN MCDEVITT

GLENTIES, CO DONEGAL

EXTRAORDINARY EMOTION

* Your online edition (Irish Independent, March 28) carried a video showing the extraordinary emotions of a lady who, having been deaf since birth, was enabled to hear for the very first time by using modern technology. She was so overwhelmed with emotion that she uncontrollably burst into tears on several occasions as a nurse called out the days of the week to her.

It was impossible not to be affected by her emotions as I contemplated all the things that we take for granted yet show little appreciation for.

JOHN BELLEW

PAUGHANSTOWN, DUNLEER, CO LOUTH

ACT OF SOLIDARITY

* Having been recently released from jail, I would like to thank all those who really overwhelmed the prison with their support.

The shock and disgust of the supporters was evident, at the “laissez faire” attitude, denial and ultimate complicity of the Government; allowing Shannon civilian airport to be abused by the US military.

For three months, the continuous vigils, pickets, the collection of signatures, press statements, and radio and television coverage was a tsunami of support from all over the world.

This cannot be ignored as it is a collective act of solidarity.

MARGARETTA D’ARCY

30 March 2014 Sharland

I go all the way around the park listening to the Navy Lark. Our heroes are in trouble, again.They have an party for the admiral. Priceless

Cold slightly better Mary very under the weather visit her Sharland too

No Scrabbletoday Perhaps Iwill win tomorrow.

Obituary:

Lord Kimball – obituary

Lord Kimball was a Conservative MP who made it his mission to champion country life and fly the flag for foxhunting

6:19PM GMT 28 Mar 2014

13 Comments

Guardian:

Contrary to Joanna Blythman’s call for a rethink on national dietary guidelines about saturated fats, a major guidance change at this point would be premature (“Why almost everything you’ve been told about unhealthy foods is wrong“, In Focus).

Independent:

The Crimean referendum may have been ‘illegal’ in terms of international law  but the result  was obviously quite genuine

Gavin Turner

Gunton, Norfolk

Heat pumps are not quite as “game changing” as Ed Davey is reported to believe (“Renewable energy from rivers and lakes could replace gas in homes”, 23 March). Typically 1 kilowatt (kW) of electricity is required to produce 3 to 4kW of useable heat from a heat pump. However, electricity can cost three or four times the price of gas per kilowatt-hour (kWh), so the running costs are not necessarily “relatively low”. This is broadly the case whether the electricity to run the heat pump is generated from renewable sources or fossil fuels, as in the case of electricity generated from renewables, there is a lost opportunity cost.

In addition, if the electricity to run the heat pump is generated in a fossil-fuel (eg gas-fired) power station, which may only produce 1kWh of electricity for every 2 to 2.5kWh of natural gas consumed, the overall energy gain is not as large as one might at first suppose.

Heat pumps certainly have their place in a coherent UK energy strategy, but they are not as revolutionary as you suggest in your article.

Dr John Coppendale

Stapleford, Cambridge

…

The installation of a district heating scheme supplied by heat pumps is very welcome. However, it should be noted that district heating, along with heat pumps, has rarely been found economic in the UK. In countries where district heating is widely used there is a cultural and regulatory environment that supports and encourages their use, and we don’t have this yet. We are seeing one small step, and should not confuse this with a giant leap.

David Wallis

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

…

Well  knock me down! The Energy Secretary has just discovered heat pumps. It only takes a crisis in the Ukraine for HMG to re-invent the wheel. I am 80 and clearly remember that in the 1950s the Festival Hall was heated by the Thames and a heat-pump system. That was a time when Croydon Council ran all its vehicles on methane gas recycled by its sewage works.

C Moorey

via email

…

Tony Brenton is a lone voice of reason (“Crimea is lost, but there is a deal waiting to be done” 23 March). The Crimean referendum may have been “illegal” in terms of international law, but the result was obviously quite genuine. If we cannot see that Russia has gone through a much more sudden and traumatic loss of empire than we did, we are very blind to 20th-century history.

By all means plan gradually to make western Europe free of its dependence on Russian oil and gas, which will ultimately make the Russian economy even more of a basket case and help to bring them to compromise with us; but, meanwhile, we should stop posturing and threatening, and try to get round the table with Putin anyway. The alternative of escalating conflict is far too serious for any of us to contemplate.

Gavin Turner

Gunton, Norfolk

…

The shadow Work and Pensions Secretary is right to say that “the problem with the Budget was that there was nothing for people who can’t afford to save” (23 March). Which doesn’t surprise me as the Chancellor was trying to play to the gallery of core Tory voters whom the party are afraid might turn to Ukip at the next general election.

Tim Mickleburgh

Grimsby, Lincolnshire

…

D  J Taylor almost but not quite nails the impact of Old Etonians in British society when he notes that, politics aside, David Cameron seems a more assured performer than Ed Miliband (23 March). The products of Eton are to be found on the left as well as the right, and some are very astute. That however is not what Eton has taught them. That is rather a sense of self-belief and self-confidence that was not imparted, for example, at my north London comprehensive school. So we find with the current Prime Minister that he is a mostly plausible public performer, but anyone looking to him for deep thinking about the problems facing our society is likely to be disappointed.

Keith Flett

London N17

Times:

Cash injection needed to boost NHS treatments

DOCTORS often take the attitude that any illness has a simple explanation as a first principle (“Revealed: how NHS betrays cancer patients” and “How did they miss our son’s tumour?”, News, last week). So patients go through a process of elimination before full diagnostic action is taken. This wastes time but saves money in the short term. Britain has some painful decisions to make but we cannot take proper care of people without paying for good treatment.
Hazel Richards, Manchester

Under pressure
While I fully support the Sunday Times cancer campaign, I was disappointed you did not mention that the UK has fewer doctors per head and spends less on health than comparable countries. The pressure on primary care is immense: consultations are up from 300m to 340m in three years, with no increase in full-time-equivalent GP numbers. Only 8% of the NHS budget is spent on primary care, compared with 10% five years ago. A colleague recently said of the NHS: “Quality. Cheap. Access. Pick two out of three.” How true.
Stewart McMenemin, Glasgow

Nothing but praise
Thank you for publishing Dr Tom Goodfellow’s explanation of why people are kept waiting past the six-week deadline for scans (“Scan delays fail to reveal true picture”, Letters, last week). Suffering from advanced prostate cancer myself, I have signed up for your campaign and have nothing but praise for the NHS. I will not survive but I have, through marvellous treatment developments, enjoyed an extension.
Rodney Hooker, Godmanchester, Cambridgeshire

Pancreatic cancer watch
Although not mentioned in your reports, pancreatic cancer has the lowest survival rate of the 21 most common cancers: five-year survival is less than 4% across the UK, a figure virtually unchanged for 40 years.

We are particularly supportive of the first two aims of your campaign: earlier diagnosis and faster access to treatment. At the moment 50% of pancreatic cancer diagnoses are made through emergency admissions. We also know 40% of pancreatic cancer patients visit their GP three times or more before being referred — a higher figure than for many other cancer patients.
Alex Ford, Chief Executive, Pancreatic Cancer UK

Camilla ready
Camilla Cavendish (“Dr Skype is waiting to save your life”, News, last week) is correct when she says that the NHS is “a world away” from being joined-up. So far only one hospital in north Staffordshire has committed to video technology; the rest of us have to go through a process invented in Victorian times.
Tony Kane, Cheadle, Greater Manchester

Support care law reforms
In 2011 the government assigned the Law Commission the task of undertaking a fundamental review of the laws governing the regulation of healthcare professionals in the UK. Ministers recognised that we were hamstrung by laws that were outdated, complex, highly prescriptive and difficult to change. Too often we knew what was wrong, but legal structures designed for a different era made it impossible for us to put things right quickly and efficiently.

The Law Commission was given the task of creating a single, streamlined legal structure covering all nine regulators that would enable us to provide better protection for patients, to be more responsive, to reduce the burden of regulation and to drive down costs. We remain committed to these aims.

The recommendations of Robert Francis QC after events at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust highlighted
the importance of regulation focused on promoting safe, compassionate care rather than intervening only after patients have suffered harm.

That is why we are calling on the government and all political parties to support the publication and urgent parliamentary consideration of the bill proposed by the Law Commission, which is due to be published on April 2, 2014. This will be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring about long-awaited reform.
Mark Addison, Chairman, Nursing and Midwifery Council, Professor Sir Peter Rubin, Chairman, General Medical Council

Sending out a message in fight against slavery

THERE is a simple answer to the question Cosmo Landesman poses about 12 Years a Slave’s failure to stir us to fight modern- day slavery (“Not a single leg iron smashed by 12 Years a Slave”, Comment, last week). The film, while having hugely important lessons for today, is, as Landesman says, anchored in history.

If we are going to hold out hope for the 29.8m people in slavery in the world today, then we need a contemporary message that engages individuals, governments, civil society organisations and companies to fight contemporary slavery in all its forms, and particularly in company supply chains. While slavery operates in many forms across this country, most of it is “offshored” in the supply chains of imported products.

The one person who has worldwide appeal is the Pope. His recently announced Global Freedom Network initiative, through which the Catholic Church will work with the Church of England, Islamic leaders and the Walk Free Foundation, aims to deliver co-ordinated worldwide action to ensure that ours is the last generation that has to fight the trade in human lives.
Frank Field MP, Chairman, Joint Select Committee on the Draft Modern Slavery Bill, House of Commons

Charity case
Landesman comments that the film has not generated the expected upsurge in support for anti-slavery organisations. No one has asked me to donate to such a charity, although there are people asking for money for other good causes every week.
David Harris, London SW13

Long shot hits the target

HAVING just read Camilla Long’s review of Jonathan Glazer’s ghastly Under the Skin (“Much ado about nothing”, Culture, March 16), we write to thank her profusely for being the only critic who has not been taken in by “the emperor’s new lingerie” (brilliantly pithy of Long) starring Scarlett Johansson. Despite Joss Ackland’s criticism of Long’s past reviews (“Film reviewer flunks her screen test”, Letters, last week), we agreed with every word she wrote and are perplexed that other, usually perceptive critics have been so bamboozled. That some have compared this very poor movie to the work of geniuses such as Stanley Kubrick and Nicolas Roeg is worrying. It would be interesting to know what Michel Faber thinks about this adaptation of his book.
Michael Walker and Genevieve Allenbury, London W4

PC brigade wrong on sharia wills

YOUR article on sharia-compliant wills (“Law body’s guide to sharia ‘backs discrimination’”, News, last week) included a hysterical overreaction by the Lawyers’ Secular Society to Law Society guidance on their drafting.

English law permits people to draft wills according to their own desires. If they want to give less to daughters than sons, they are allowed to do so. If they want to bequeath money to only persons of a specific religion, whether Muslim, Mormon or Methodist, they are entitled to do so, in the same way as they have the right to cut a child out of the will for any reason they wish.

Many relatives disagree with a will, but that is the decision of the person making the will. The job of a lawyer is to draft a will that reflects the client’s wishes. It is not their job to draft a will that “shows respect for diversity”: the Equality Act does not extend to the dead — yet.
Neil Addison, Barrister, New Bailey Chambers, Corn Exchange, Liverpool

Wrong call

I have just read the article “Jihadists urged to attack Queen at sports events” (News, last week). Then just a few pages later there was the story “School’s ‘£70,000 for prayer hailers’”, which alleges that Park View School in Birmingham has installed loudhailers in the playground to call pupils to Islamic prayer. The grovelling to the politically correct is truly at epidemic proportions.
Brian Watson, Purley, London

Points

Forced disclosure
It is telling and frightening that the Department of Health issued a ban on burning aborted and miscarried babies (“Thousands of foetuses burnt as ward waste”, News, last week) as clinical waste — and in some cases in furnaces used to generate energy for powering hospitals — only after a media investigation was about to reveal this evil practice to the public.
John Reid, Sunningdale, Berkshire

Need for speed
In his correspondence “Hitting the buffers” (Letters, last week) Gordon Vinell suggested that the UK is not large enough to justify having a high-speed railway line. Countries smaller than ours and with a greater density of population, such as Belgium and Holland, have established high-speed train services. In Taiwan such a line links the capital, Taipei, with the second city, Kaohsiung, a distance of 214 miles — about the same as London to Preston. The line carries more than 100,000 passengers a day. Here the main routes will soon reach full capacity, and rebuilding existing lines while they are fully operational is not feasible. Also there are regeneration benefits that a new railway line will bring to the regions.
John Chapman, Hythe, Kent

Opening doors
With reference to the reported state school antipathy to Oxford and Cambridge (“Anti-Oxbridge teachers hold state pupils back”, Letters, last week), there is nothing new under the sun. In the 1950s a headmaster at a north of England grammar school told a pupil, “If Leeds was good enough for me, it’s good enough for you.” That situation was dealt with by letters to various Cambridge colleges, one of which accepted the pupil.

My own route to Cambridge was orthodox, but with only two women’s colleges it was a steep hill to climb. The pupil and I met and married, but our youngest child faced her own hurdles before becoming the first woman to go to sea in a Royal Navy vessel. Her route involved saying “Why not?” several times. Things can, and do, change. Some doors need a firm hand to push them open.
Ann Franklin, Rugby, Warwickshire

Marriage counselling
Tanya Gold (“Cor blimey, Mary Poppins, you make William and Kate look radical”, last week) suggested that Norland nannies were “married to the job”, and that “there is always something suspect about an unmarried woman, something needing to be explained”. Being one of these unclaimed treasures myself, I am shocked Gold thought that this remark was worthy of a good journalist.
Angela Fowlis, St Andrews, Fife

Wish they were here
I was interested in the snapshot of Nottingham given in the Best Places to Live in Britain supplement (last week). You referred to “the big, open Old Market Square, lined with cafes and restaurants . . .” There is not a single cafe or restaurant in the square, nor has there been in many years. There are two large pubs and a coffee chain outlet in a corner. There is certainly nowhere that could even remotely be classed as suitable to go for an evening meal.
Cliff Billington, Nottingham

Bang out of order
Regarding how the universe was born (“The biggest bang”, News Review, last week), will this knowledge stop wars, house the homeless, feed the hungry or teach the illiterate to read? Thought not.
Terry Slater, Harlow, Essex

Corrections and clarifications

Newport Girls’ High School was listed as being located in Newport, Gwent, in our Best Places to Live in Britain supplement (last week). It is actually in Newport, Shropshire. We apologise for the error.

Complaints about inaccuracies in all sections of The Sunday Times, including online, should be addressed to editor@sunday-times.co.uk or The Editor, The Sunday Times, 3 Thomas More Square, London E98 1ST. In addition, the Press Complaints Commission (complaints@pcc.org.uk or 020 7831 0022) examines formal complaints about the editorial content of UK newspapers and magazines (and their websites)

Birthdays

Warren Beatty, actor, 77; Eric Clapton, guitarist, 69; Robbie Coltrane, actor, 66; Celine Dion, singer, 46; Astrud Gilberto, singer, 74; MC Hammer, rapper, 52; Norah Jones, singer, 35; Eddie Jordan, former F1 team boss, 66; Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Ikea, 88; Lord (Mervyn) King, former governor of the Bank of England, 66

Anniversaries

1842 ether used as an anaesthetic for the first time, by US surgeon Crawford Long; 1856 Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Crimean War; 1979 Tory MP Airey Neave is killed by an INLA car bomb; 1981 President Ronald Reagan is shot by John Hinckley Jr; 2002 death of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother at the age of 101

Telegraph:

6:58AM GMT 29 Mar 2014

81 Comments

SIR – I would like to know on what basis the Prime Minister claims that voters “were happy to wait for a say on Britain’s place in the EU until after the general election”.

SIR – Those in charge of the nation’s health want us all to be obliged to ingest fluoride with our drinking water, ostensibly to protect our teeth.

Irish Times:

Irish Independent:

Madam – In last week’s Sunday Independent Allison Pearson in an article entitled “You can’t help but think, ‘what a waste’” speculates on why L’Wren Scott, Mick Jagger‘s girlfriend, took her own life. As she states, “suicide is always a chilling mystery, a desolating act, and often an accusation”.

Also in this section

Think the unthinkable

Separating religion and education

In the interests of justice, Shatter must resign

Suicide is always a tragedy and can leave surviving friends/relatives with many questions. This is especially true when the person who does this act is young and from an outside perspective appears to have so much to live for.

It is not so much a desire to end their lives but a desire to end whatever pain the person is enduring that is paramount in the person’s mind. Human emotions are powerful entities. They have the ability to give us profound periods of ecstasy such as the love we may feel for someone, but equally they can bring us to the edge and beyond in despair. Each of us is different and reacts to various situations in a variety of ways. This has to do with personality as well as previous traumas experienced. Unless the feelings associated with what life throws at us are expressed at the time, they build up and manifest in different ways. If you don’t speak them out you will act them out.

Young people need to be educated on the importance of expressing their feelings and having them validated. It is never too early to start this. In this way they gain confidence in themselves and their abilities to deal with life’s stresses in adulthood are much greater and have a more solid foundation.

It is not so much the hand of cards you are dealt with in life, but what you do with them that is more important. Greater openness and acceptance in the fact that we are emotional beings will lead to a greater chance of people having the confidence to express their feelings and not act them out in destructive ways such as suicide.

Hopefully we won’t have the need to speculate after the event what emotional triggers brought the person to commit the ultimate act of self destruction. The person will be attuned to their own emotional well-being and have the confidence to seek help and hopefully resolve whatever turmoil they are in.

Thomas Roddy,

Galway

COMMISSIONER AN HONOURABLE MAN

Madam – It was with deep regret that I learned of the resignation of my former colleague, Martin Callinan, a decent and brave man who sacrificed his career to satisfy the howling mob, yet rightly did not fully accede to all their demands.

Martin was always a decent and honourable man who believed in doing right. When the mob have finished with Alan Shatter, where will they turn their eyes next – the CRC, the HSE, the church, the legal profession? And are we now to forget about the kind of discretion that might have been exercised by a humane garda in the past? Maybe some of those who are loudest in the mob today, might some day have need of that discretion.

John Barry,

Malahide, Co Dublin

TIME FOR APOLOGY TO CALLINAN

Madam – Garda chief Martin Callinan resigns. It is time that the entire Irish media and many politicians in Dail Eireann, who for the most part do not have a creative solution to the problems facing this nation, apologise to Mr Callinan and the Irish public for creating an environment that not only brought discredit on Mr Callinan, and by extension 13,000 members of the Garda Siochana, but also caused the resignation of an outstanding leader.

No citizen should be pressured into resigning nor should consideration be given to firing such an individual for the use of a single word. Surely the Irish citizen is sufficiently educated to live with and accept or reject a single word used by a man in a position of power and influence and accept or reject his explanation without concluding that the punishment for such an expression of opinion is resignation or firing? This whole affair indicates we have a very immature republic/ democracy.

Vincent J Lavery,

Irish Free Speech Movement,

Dalkey, Co Dublin

GOOD LUCK WITH ‘NEW POLITICS’

Madam – Maurice O’Connell’s letter (Sunday Independent, March 23, 2014) made interesting and novel reading. Ireland needs and deserves a ‘new politics’ for the very obvious reason that the old ones have been a catastrophic failure, at least for the majority of the ‘plain’ people. It is perfectly understandable that he “‘can see no coherent and potentially politically effective group in Leinster House’, likely to effect the necessary change”.

After all, why should they surrender their hard-won privileges? Patriotism, like everything else, has its limits. In any case it would mean admitting to a colossal lie perpetrated on the people for almost a century, and they in turn would have to admit to being duped to such an extent. There’s the rub, as Shakespeare put it.

Your noble endeavours deserve every success on ‘the long, hard road to such a new politics’.

William Barrett,

Surrey, UK

QUOTA FOR FEMALE TDs IS FARCICAL

Madam – A Leavy (Sunday Independent, March 23, 2014), appears to be under the illusion that only a ‘token’ percentage of women are allowed stand for election to Dail Eireann; as if they need permission to raise their numbers.

He struggles with the notion that there must be some sinister reason why many more women do not put themselves forward for election. Quite simply, if they aren’t in, they can’t win. The daft idea of there being a 50 per cent quota of female TDs elected, is a farcical scenario to attempt.

What is the answer if strictly half of those going forward are women but only 10-20 per cent win?

Should a hefty portion of the successful male candidates be forced to give up their seats?

Why not scrap elections for women altogether and just proceed with a selection of Dail female TDs who are acceptable in political circles and stick them into Leinster House seats, while the men can fight it out among themselves in the current fashion? This would be much easier than “forcing” us to vote for women, especially if they are not our choice of candidate.

Robert Sullivan,

Bantry, Co Cork

MEN ALSO AFFECTED BY PATRONAGE

Madam – Further to Sheila O’Flanagan’s and A Leavy’s letters (Sunday Independent, March 23, 2014), Ms O’Flanagan may appear to make a persuasive case for all-female quotas but things are not as simple and one-sided as she and A Leavy imply.

Ms O’Flanagan asks: “How many male politicians have achieved office because they are part of a political dynasty rather than because they have done anything noteworthy?”

It’s a valid question but the same could be asked in relation to some female politicians.

She also asks: “How many businessmen found themselves moving up the ladder because of the school they went to?”

Again, it’s a valid question but it’s not just women who are adversely affected: throughout history, men of superior ability have been, and, we can be sure, continue to be, passed over in favour of lesser men for appointment to office because they have not belonged to the right cliques or been in favour with relevant powers-that-be.

Hugh Gibney,

Athboy, Co Meath

GIVE NO MERCY TO VIOLENT CRIMINALS

Madam – In response to Jim Cusack’s article (Sunday Independent, March 23, 2014) on the recent burial service of a known criminal; as a practising Catholic it galls me to witness the Catholic Church allowing this practice to continue when the person or persons are known criminals. The celebrant who officiated at the service stated that “gangs had lost any sense of mercy”. Should a protector of known extortionists, money launderers and drug dealers be afforded a Christian burial? What mercy have these criminals shown to the young vulnerable people who have had their lives destroyed? Pope Francis referenced the Mafia – he warned them “that they will go to hell” for their criminal activities.

Haven’t we our own Mafia here? The words of scripture come to mind, “All who draw the sword will die by the sword” – Matthew 26. I rest my case.

Journalists have risked their lives in an effort to expose and shame these criminals – why not the churches?

Name and address with Editor

CALCULATE COST OF SPORTS INJURIES

Madam – Eoghan Harris asks: “Can any classic field game such as hurling or rugby be completely safe?”

The answer is no. The HSE informs us that every taxpayer in Ireland is paying €3,313 every year because of alcohol abuse.

How much are sports injuries costing us?

Mattie Lennon,

Blessington, Co Wicklow

PUT UP YOUR FEET, MARGARETTA

Madam – I refer to the news (Sunday Independent, March 23, 2014), that Margaretta D’Arcy had been released from prison. At the risk of being unkind to an elderly, unwell lady, I must protest at her promise to continue her protest at Shannon Airport. Does she not take into account what a great friend to Ireland the US has been – both commercially and in helping to attain a peace in the North? Has America no right to defend itself against terrorism? At best her behaviour is laughable and at worst it takes up valuable garda time. My advice to “The Margaretta” is “go home m’dear, put up your feet and relax”.

Dan O’Connell,

Cork city

CALL STATE BY ITS PROPER NAME

Madam – John McClung (Letters, March 23, 2014) tells us he is sick of Northern Ireland being referred to as ‘the North’. In return could he ask the people there to respect Ireland by calling it Ireland. Not ‘the South’, ‘the Republic’ or ‘the Republic of Ireland’. Ireland is the official name. The Republic of Ireland is its descriptive name. Perhaps he would like to contact the media there and ask them to exercise their right to ‘edit where necessary’ also?

John Brady,

Phibsborough, Dublin 7

PRIORITISE BRAIN-INJURY HEALTHCARE

Madam – As well as wholly agreeing with Mary Farrell’s point that “We can’t trust shambolic HSE to run disability sector” (Sunday Independent, March 16, 2014), I think it is sadly conspicuous that the State has no means to audit the effectiveness or value of the mixed-performing disability service contractors to which the HSE has “passed the buck” (in all senses, of course).

In the brain injury sector – with adult services being non-existent in Co Meath, she says, (as in many elsewheres too) – the level of HSE contracting-out, buck-passing, is far greater in Ireland than in any other European country, I believe.

However, we share a similar prevalence of brain injuries: two per cent of all our populations, that’s one in 50 among us, have a daily-living disability from brain injuries, resulting from head injuries, strokes and also tumours, aneurysms and other causes.

That’s practically 100,000 people in Ireland. A multiple of that number are closely concerned, with families and friends.

Being so important, individually and in public health numbers, anybody with their wits about them among our health “leaders” would prioritise this challenge, not just pass the buck for even more of eternity.

By the way, those who have had brain injuries would be very much better re-enabled to take part and contribute to all our lives (maybe rather well) if there were adequate rehab and disability care systems.

That would be a boost for everybody.

There are also fantastic savings available from smaller ongoing health care costs (by saving people from worse health), let alone lightening (emotional and financial) burdens on carers.

Roll on better, independent, insightful analysis and advocacy in this area.

Paul Barrett,

Nenagh, Co Tipperary

COWARDLY MURDER

Madam – No murder in the history of the Troubles can evoke more emotion than the murder of Jean McConville in 1972. That her body was also given special treatment and ‘disappeared’ in order that her family suffer more is even more sickening.

That 10 children were left without a mother didn’t seem to matter. Their father had already died, and so they became orphans.

Her surviving 10 children got no dispensation from the IRA, only the occasional threat to keep quiet – even though Gerry Adams, the republican leader in Belfast at that time, came from a family of 10 surviving children himself.

There was no empathy in their hearts, no honesty in their deliberations, no thought of what might happen to her children.

They lied about her keeping an army radio, passing on information and even coming to the aid of a dying soldier – as if she should be afraid to do this.

They tell us how Bloody Sunday, also in 1972, showed us what the British are really like. The murder of Jean McConville reveals a lot about egomaniacal cowards consumed with a perceived power over those who had no guns. Such are the origins of evil.

John O‘Connell,

Derry

WE ARE NOT ALL AMERICANISED

Madam – I read today in the (Sunday Independent, March 16, 2014) that Jim Culloty’s home had been ‘burglarised’ when he was at Cheltenham.

No it wasn’t, it was burgled. Since when did your newspaper become American?

I have also read articles by Irish reporters saying that they have ‘gotten’ something.

Is this the influence of some of your staff having spent their ‘gap year’ in America?

Carole Molloy,

Foxrock, Dublin 18

Sunday Independent

31March 2014 Mary

I go all the way around the park listening to the Navy Lark. Our heroes are in trouble, again.They have an party for the admiral, Mrs Povey tries to get promotion for Henry. Priceless

Cold slightly better Mary very under the weather visit her

No Scrabbletoday Perhaps Iwill win tomorrow.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Labour is the only realistic option to win the next general election and counter the punitive policies inflicted on the least affluent people in the UK. My heart sinks at Ken Loach‘s attempts to sell Left Unity as a viable alternative (Labour is not the solution, 28 March). Look at our electoral system – no party other than Labour has a realistic chance of getting a majority and, whatever its faults, it offers the best and quickest way of getting rid of the current lot of small-minded, nasty, scapegoating politicians.

Independent:

Times:

Future research at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew is vital to resolve looming ecological or agricultural crises

Sir, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is first and foremost a scientific institution. Kew’s research is essential to address looming ecological and agricultural crises. Recent cuts in the science budget (Mar 28) threaten to undermine this. I trust that, after the proposed restructuring, Kew’s director will prioritise science. If it is to provide a credible voice on issues such as food security and biodiversity, Kew must be able to perform research of the highest quality.

Dr Samuel Brockington

Department of Plant Sciences University of Cambridge

Telegraph:

SIR – As Barbara Woodhouse’s daughter, I am sure my mother would have thought that training dogs in a simply “positive” or “negative” way was too inflexible.

SIR – William Hague is right to say that Europe must stand up to Russia.

SIR – It is unacceptable that any religious group’s laws should be promoted above others. The same law should apply to everyone.

SIR – In Britain, people often talk about how the EU needs reform, but do not recognise the reforms that have already been made, which stem from much hard work by Conservative MEPs and a Conservative government.

Irish Times:

Sir, – I refer to Breda O’Brien’s column (Opinion & Analysis, March 23rd). Surrogates have been referred to as gestational carriers for the past 20 years. It is the legal term that was used by the first court to distinguish traditional surrogates, who relinquished their own genetic child, from women who were merely carrying the child of another. The term is the proper one in the US, and the only type of surrogacy that is permitted in most US states.

She is accurate in saying surrogates earn on average $30,000 for their services over the three months of IVF treatment and nine months of gestation (equal to approximately $2 per hour), and that the overall cost for intended parents is between $100,000 and $150,000. These numbers are clearly expressed on our website and cost sheets.

However, contrary to the assertion that when it comes to the final cost, surrogates are getting the short end of the stick, most of the remaining funds are not for the agency, but paid for the IVF, lawyers, travel and medical expenses/insurance for the surrogate and the child. The agency fees are actually less than the amount the surrogate earns.

Ms O’Brien states: “You do not find wealthy women acting as surrogates.” Our surrogates come from an array of socioeconomic backgrounds, a good percentage of whom are nurses making six-figure salaries. The majority of Circle’s surrogates are middle class, educated, and, most important, financially secure women.

It was also disappointing to see the “women are being exploited” argument surface again. Within this misconception is the notion that women are too ignorant or ill-advised to make an informed decision about becoming surrogates. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Our surrogate screening team spends on average six weeks per candidate to ensure that Circle’s surrogates are fully educated on the process and aware of what surrogacy asks of them.

Ms O’Brien looks to Germany (rather than England, which permits reasonable compensation to surrogates) as a moral compass. However, Germany, despite its law banning compensated surrogacy, regularly permits intended parents to return from the United States with children born through gestational surrogacy, and to get German citizenship for those children. There is a process established for this return, which is all Ireland is looking to do as well.

What Ms O’Brien is missing most of all is the great joy that surrogacy provides to everyone involved.

At the end of the day, it’s the child’s welfare and best interests that are at the heart of every surrogacy arrangement at Circle Surrogacy. Our relationship-building between intended parents and surrogates has meant that every child born through our programme knows from where they came. – Yours, etc,

DEAN HUTCHISON,

Director of Legal Services,

Circle Surrogacy,

High Street,

Boston,

Massachusetts

First published: Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 02:00

Sir, – The Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, continues to insist that Mr Callinan made his own decision to resign – and he is technically correct. However, the fact of the matter is that Mr Callinan had no real choice given the actions of the Taoiseach in the lead-up to his decision.

It is obvious that Mr Kenny made a calculation that in order to retrieve anything from the awful treatment of the whistleblowers at least one of two had to go. He had previously invested so much emotional and political capital in Alan Shatter that he could not safely give him the chop. So there was only one doll still sitting on the wall and he had to be bounced.

By sending a very senior emissary to Mr Callinan’s home late on Monday evening last with the dire news that the Government was in a lather over the phone taping and that the Taoiseach was particularly upset (“this is terribly, terribly – and I mean terribly – serious, Martin”) he took any decision away from the retirement-aged commissioner.

Notwithstanding this, Mr Callinan still double-checked the following morning to ascertain if there had been any reduction in temperature, only to be told by the same official that “nothing has changed” – roughly translatable by anyone with a brain as “you know what you have to do”.

It is very important to maintain a firm grasp of reality so that “spin” does not ultimately replace it. Yours, etc,

LIAM MEADE,

Bellewood,

Ballyneety,

Co Limerick

Sir, – What would now be the chances that in maintaining intact his loyalty to Mr Shatter the Taoiseach will reinstate Meryvn Taylor’s old job of Minister for Equality and Law Reform in the upcoming cabinet reshuffle?

Mr Shatter would thereby be kept at the Cabinet table and would be able to concentrate on what he seems to do best while the operational issues he has spectacularly failed to master are subsumed into one of his colleagues’ portfolios. Yours, etc,

THOMAS O’CONNOR,

Caherush,

Quilty ,

Co Clare

A chara, It doesn’t hugely matter whether Alan Shatter knew on March 10th or on March 24th what was going on. If he knew on March 10th and did nothing, it is not good enough; and if he runs his department in such a way that it knew on March 10th and he wasn’t informed until March 24th, it isn’t good enough either. Is mise,

REVD PATRICK G BURKE

Castlecomer,

Co Kilkenny

Sir, – The University of Dublin may very well be right to remove the Bible from its crest and replace it with an “open book”. The step is no doubt intended to be more “inclusive”. But the college’s description of the removal of the Bible as a “forward-facing” step is not without its own semiotics. Would it not then be equally appropriate to leave behind the uniquely Christian appellation “Trinity” in the same “backward” periods of the university’s history as the Bible? Yours, etc,

FERGUS A RYAN,

Station Road,

Portmarnock,

Co Dublin

Sir, – I see that Trinity College has opted to blow “religious symbolism out of the college’s ancient crest” (March 29th). Whether this is motivated by an ecumenical heart or plummeting rankings is open to question. I do note that repenting of religious symbolism hasn’t extended to the ancient and, from a marketing perspective, more significant name. To avoid their rattling around for eternity in hollowed-out hypocrisy might I suggest TCD employ the following answer to the obvious question: “Why, pounds, shillings and pence!” Your, etc,

IAN HICKEY,

Lauderdale Terrace,

Bray,

Co Wicklow

Sir, – As a chronicler of the Irish in British construction ( The Men Who Built Britain , published in 2001), I am often asked acerbically “what about the women?” I am delighted therefore that the President will on his state visit to Britain honour the contribution of Irish women to Britain’s national health service. While Irish women worked in a great many occupations the NHS is probably the one sector which is most readily identified with Irish women emigrants in the second half of the twentieth century – a time when that institution stood for selfless service to the common good.

In the same era the construction industry was the largest single employer of Irish male migrant labour in Britain.

The indispensability of the Irish, and their colossal contribution to the building of modern Britain, were warmly acknowledged in Scottish contractor Sir William McAlpine’s 1998 remark to me that “The contribution of the Irish to the success of this industry has been immeasurable.”

The President’s awareness of this achievement has been expressed many times in his UK speeches so further public acknowledgment on this occasion might seem superfluous.

However the very inclusion of the NHS event in this itinerary points up the uniquely symbolic nature of all such gestures made on British soil in the course of a state visit by an Irish president. We cannot know which actions originate with the British and which with the Irish governments but undoubtedly they are agreed by both.

For that reason I very much hope that this visit will not be allowed to pass without some gesture or statement from the President acknowledging the contribution of generations of Irish construction workers, past and present, to the material wellbeing of both countries. Such a statement ought to clearly convey not only Irish recognition, but also British acknowledgment, of these men’s worth. They and their families deserve no less. Yours, etc,

ULTAN COWLEY,

The Potter’s Yard,

Duncormick,

Co Wexford

Sir , – What must rank as one of the fastest U-turns in modern times has been the decision of World Vision US, a Christian humanitarian organisation with an annual budget of about $1 billion , to reverse its policy after two days on hiring employees in same-sex marriages.

Last Monday it announced that it was changing its employment policy to allow the hiring of such employees. By Wednesday, after pressure from evangelical and pentecostal Christian organisations throughout the US, it reversed its decision. A major pentecostal denomination, The Assemblies of God, had urged its members to boycott World Vision and instead support evangelical organisations which followed biblical teachings .

In its message last Wednesday addressed to its “Dear Friends”, the president of World Vision US, Richard Stearns, said that that the organisation now realised it had made a mistake and was choosing to “revert to our longstanding conduct policy requiring sexual abstinence for all single employees and faithfulness within the Biblical covenant of marriage between a man and a woman. We have listened to you and want to say thank you and to humbly ask for your forgiveness. We are brokenhearted over the pain and confusion we have caused many of our friends who saw this decision as a reversal of our strong commitment to Biblical authority.”

The incident shows the power of the US fundamentalist Christian movement to successfully oppose any recognition of the human right to marriage equality. Yours , etc,

BRENDAN BUTLER,

The Moorings,

Malahide,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – Today while standing in a queue at the checkout in our local supermarket I saw two separate incidents of mothers struggling valiantly to resist their children’s demands to buy them sweets displayed beside the counter. I was surprised, because I thought the cynical practice of placing sweets beside the checkout had been abandoned some years ago. At a time when the country is struggling with the tragic effects of widespread childhood obesity it is reasonable to ask supermarkets to stop putting this rubbish on display where parents are blackmailed into buying. Apart from the fact that frequent consumption of sweets is bad for children, it encourages the idea of eating whenever one is bored. The world is sometimes boring but it is better for children to learn to develop patience. Yours, etc,

CARLA KING,

Shillelagh,

Co Wicklow

Sir, – When told the reason for daylight saving time the Old Indian said: “Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.” Yours, etc,

KEVIN DEVITTE,

Mill Street,

Westport,

Co Mayo

Sir, – Only one headline could have further enhanced the uplifting photo of Barack Obama and the pope on your front page (March 28th), and that would have been your large headline on page 9 of the same paper: “Slight chill in air as Obama meets pope”. An excerpt from Paddy Agnew’s Rome report there – referring to the photo session – states that “the president was all smiles but his interlocutor remained sombre, serious and impassive”. Well … as they say … he could have fooled me!

Yours etc,

PADRAIG J O’CONNOR,

Lower Dodder Road,

Rathfarnham,

Dublin 14

Irish Independent

* Six months ago, I had a chance meeting in a pub with an Australian and an American. The Australian, who has lived in Dublin for many years, was visiting the area to show his visiting American friend some of the well-known tourist sights. He said: “It’s good to get out of the city. In the city sometimes it’s hard to see the horizon.”

Also in this section

Think the unthinkable

Speak about feelings

Separating religion and education

At the time, that remark resonated with me. I live in the countryside. I see the horizon every day from my home. I tried to imagine living in my home and not being able to see the horizon, it was difficult at the time.

Not any more. Since then I have discovered that my home is directly in the path of a proposed pylon corridor that is part of the planned EirGrid gridlink project.

The plan to erect 45m-high pylons carrying 440kV power lines from Cork to Kildare will mutilate the horizon and the landscape of this country forever.

It will change not just for me and all the other so-called NIMBYs but for everybody in this country and for future generations. It is an issue that is too big to ignore.

Now when I look at the horizon, this is what I think. The countryside is not a vacuous space that the Government and its vested interests can carve up and exploit at the expense of many.

The countryside is alive and well, living and breathing. It belongs to all of the people of Ireland and it is up to us, the people, to be proactive in protecting it for future generations.

MAURA MURPHY

TALLOW, CO WATERFORD

MORE WORK FOR TEACHERS

* I’m amused at the suggestion by DCU president Brian MacCraith that one way to get around teachers objecting to correcting their own students in the new Junior Certificate is for an online system that would have teachers anonymously correcting students from other schools.

Basically he wants me to do unpaid work previously paid for by the SEC because essentially it is how the present Junior Cert operates. Teachers don’t know the students they are correcting in July.

I wonder how motivated I and others might be in such a system? I have had pay cuts of plus-15pc, been told I no longer have a reasonable chance at promotion, barely get a chance to actually teach as another initiative lands on my desk, and had suggestions from the minister that CCTV cameras might be installed in my classroom. Not to monitor the kids, you understand – but me!

So excuse me if I would not be enthusiastic for such an idea. At least now those correcting are given payment. However, my union colleagues will probably be ballot-whipped into this eventually and told it’s “the only deal in town”. I despair.

BARRY HAZEL

ASTI CEC, BRAY, CO WICKLOW

AIRLINE INEQUALITY

* The news that the boss of Aer Lingus, Christoph Mueller, was paid €1.5m last year while he expects his workers to endure further cuts smacks of inequity and injustice.

Given that his workers are facing the prospect of a 20pc cut to their pensions and the imposition of coordination to their defined benefit scheme, the increase in the contribution rate from 25pc to 40pc to the chief executive’s pension pot must really stick in the craw of those workers.

Unions are often accused of bellyaching but they won’t take this lying down and they can’t be blamed either. The Government needs to sit up and pay attention. A third marginal rate of tax, or “rich” tax, should be introduced and the raising of corporation tax explored.

The Transport Minister should also step in before this gets out of hand and a summer of travel chaos ensues.

KILLIAN BRENNAN

MALAHIDE ROAD, DUBLIN 17

TARGETED HEALTHCARE

* Thankfully, I rarely see cancer in my under-six population. I more often detect something of concern in my older patients and early diagnosis can make a huge difference.

The Government has decided that all under-sixes should get free GP care irrespective of need but has raised the income threshold for medical cards for the over-70s and some are losing them as a result.

Healthcare must be targeted to those for whom there is proven need and benefit from improved access to their family doctor.

DR ELUNED LAWLOR

LOUGHBOY MEDICAL CENTRE, KILKENNY

FAIR TREATMENT

* Darragh Roche, chairperson of University of Limerick’s Clubs and Societies’ Council (C&SC), justifies (Letters, March 27) the vote rejecting the Life Society, claiming there were “several objections and legitimate questions . . . not answered adequately”. However, not a single objection, nor any inadequately answered questions, were identified to UL Life Society before (or after) the vote by C&SC delegates.

In fact, according to C&SC’s own rules, approval of new societies is on the basis of satisfying the conditions in their guidelines for new societies.

That UL Life Soc did satisfy these conditions was explicitly stated to council before the vote by the C&S Development Officer with responsibility for this.

These conditions include membership being open to all UL students, as per C&SC’s common constitution for all societies.

This specific membership fact was also explicitly restated by myself in the information and Q&A session before the vote.

To give the impression now that we would be “vetting” potential members is simply wrong.

Our reasonable expectation is to be shown the same fair treatment as any other club or society in UL, in accordance with the “policy of inclusion” mentioned by Mr Roche.

MANUEL KUHS

UL LIFE SOCIETY CHAIRPERSON,

UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK

GARDA CRISIS

* The most disgusting part of our recent political shambles is not the precise meaning of each word uttered by various ministers, the commissioner and the Taoiseach, but their part in blatant obstruction of finding the truth.

This political positioning protecting their own at the expense of justice and what is right has been shown to the public in broad daylight.

Fortunately, no amount of forced and belated withdrawals of what has been said can hide this underlying political dishonesty – and contempt for finding the truth.

This is disgusting politics. All those who stand by Mr Shatter and his contempt for whistleblowers and GSOC have no place in Dail Eireann.

NICK CRAWFORD

NEWCASTLE, CO WICKLOW

* Whistleblower, beware. On March 10, by notifying his boss regarding the existence of some tapes, Martin Callinan became perhaps one of the highest level whistleblowers in state history; 15 days later he was retired.

JOHNNY WATTERS

KEVINSFORT, SLIGO

* One of the main qualities the next garda commissioner will need is to be shatterproof.

TOM FARRELL

SWORDS, CO DUBLIN

Irish Independent

1April2014 Mary

I go all the way around the park listening to the Navy Lark. Our heroes are in trouble, again.They have an party for the admiral, Mrs Povey tries to get promotion for Henry. Priceless

Bring Mary Home

No Scrabbletoday Perhaps Iwill win tomorrow.

Obituary:

Guardian:

l/Getty Images

Independent:

Times:

Sir, Oliver Kamm’s assertion that secular values, not religion, have made us a tolerant society (Thunderer, Mar 29) lacks intellectual rigour. It could be argued that the reason we have a modern, civilised democratic society in Britain is because of our Christian heritage, not despite it. Why else do modern democracies exist almost entirely in Western countries with a Christian heritage?

Kamm’s article implies that advances in civilisation and liberal democracy have taken place only in recent times, during which religious adherence has declined. This is not the case: it has been a long, slow process over decades, and even centuries, during which Christianity, with its emphasis on love of one’s neighbour, has prevailed as the norm. One has only to think of William Wilberforce’s fight to end the slave trade or the predominantly Christian founders of the modern Labour Party to find evidence of religion’s positive influence in creating a fairer society. On the other hand, one need look no further than Stalinist or Maoist Communism to find evidence of what aggressively secular, anti-religious thinking is capable of.

Hugh Rawson
London SW17

Sir, Oliver Kamm applauds Ian McEwan (Mar 28) for arguing that, “the secular mind is better equipped than religion to reach reasoned and compassionate judgments”. Tellingly, Kamm does not credit “religion” with a mind, although it is debatable whether the modern “enlightened” Western mind would have evolved without the input of Christianity. That aside, the allegation that faith is inherently lethal is itself a harmful misrepresentation which secularists indiscriminately employ to marginalise religion in the public sphere. Religion and for that matter secular belief systems are powerful because they motivate — for good or evil. They may indeed be dangerous, but that is likely to be when they are used to justify actions which their proponents take on grounds that contradict the core tenets of the religion they profess to follow. The rational response to the abuse of religion is to take theology seriously and to direct the force of faith to the compassion that is found in all the major world religions and is central to Christianity.

David Harte
Winchester

Sir, Oliver Kamm contrasts slaveowner Thomas Jefferson’s secular values with freedom fighter Jephthah’s rash promise. Comparing the best secular values with the worst religious ones doesn’t do justice to either. To compare the outcome of secular values with religious ones, it would be better to compare either best with best or worst with worst.

Tony Harrop
Reading, Berks

Sir, The book of Judges has as one of its main themes the lament that “in those days . . . everyone did as he saw fit”. The horrific sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter that Oliver Kamm cites is one such example. Yet Judges is immediately followed by the book of Ruth, a story of self-sacrificial love and loyalty, and featuring a kinsman redeemer who is surely a foreshadow of Christ.

Kamm writes that religion “is more frequently a source of confusion rather than light”. Sadly that is more true of his own article.

Paul Harrod
Bristol

Telegraph:

SIR – On the A10 between Cambridge and Ely a large rookery on either side of the road stretches for at least a mile.

SIR – LikeBrian Sewell I am homosexual and not comfortable with the word gay, which is a cop-out, a dilution of the true state of homosexuality.

Irish Times:

Sir, – Una Mullaly argues that citizens are disappointed by the lack of progress of “reform” since the 2011 general election (Opinion, March 31st).

While I share her appetite for a changed society, the media analysis on this issue is increasingly trite and too focused on the failures of politicians.

While many in the media regularly express disappointment at Government inaction on reform, I’m not so sure that many Irish citizens necessarily feel the same way.

For example, close to 50 per cent of the population still voted for the conservative parties of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail in the “radical election” of 2011. The Irish people voted to keep the clapped-out Seanad and rejected a proposal to strengthen Oireachtas committees. Only a minority of our citizens bothered to vote and put children’s rights in the Constitution in 2012.

Next year the Government will hold a referendum on same-sex marriage. I have no doubt that the usual forces of apathy and conservatism will resist this, as happens every time a Government feels brave enough to put its ahead above the parapet and propose a social reform to the Constitution. To succeed, the campaign will need to be hard fought by civil society and individual citizens alike. Politicians alone, it seems, simply cannot win the argument.

Given the record of recent referendums, you can hardly blame politicians for being reluctant to spend their political capital on reforms towards which the population seem at best apathetic.

Rather than another critique of the failure of top-down reform, I’d prefer to see a wider discussion of why our citizenry has become so apathetic and uninterested in how our society is governed. Yours, etc,

IAN O’MARA,

Haddington Road,

Dublin 4

Sir, – Finding an individual to lead the Garda Síochána in the 21st century is not going to be easy. The recent problems it has encountered and the difficulties it has endured are a wake-up call to policy-makers in the Republic to realign the priorities of its police and reintegrate them into the body politic of the nation.

The police do not operate in a vacuum. They are answerable to the law, accountable to the public they serve and are quite correctly subject to the forensic scrutiny of an investigative media.

Their practices and procedures should be transparent and articulated to the public in a coherent and unambiguous way. But who is to bell this cat, An Garda Síochána?

The next commissioner should not, under any circumstances be appointed from the existing management team at Phoenix Park. This has too much of a “Buggin’s turn” flavour about it and existing senior officers are carrying far too much baggage.

No, the next officer-in-command should be appointed from a reservoir of proven talent in industry, the professions and science.

Those charged with the responsibility of appointing the next chief should do so expeditiously – and yet with caution. The person selected has an overflowing in-tray to tackle. Good luck to whoever gets that poison chalice. He or she will need it.

Yours, etc,

FRANK GREANEY,

Lonsdale Road,

Formby,

Liverpool

Sir, – If institutional Ireland were a stick of rock, the words “loyalty is prized above honesty” would run through it. The Irish authorities always choose loyalty. Yours, etc,

JEANETTE F HUBER,

Ard na Lir,

Scilly,

Kinsale,

Co Cork

Sir, – Your report (March 28th) on the plans of BW Energy and the Rethink Pylons group for a pylon-free alternative to Grid25 raises important issues of national significance, as access to a reliable, affordable and clean energy supply is vital for our national well-being. The case for co-firing biomass at Moneypoint instead of increasing our use of wind-led renewables looks compelling on the grounds of cost, energy security and reliability.

Even more compelling is the argument for replacing Moneypoint with small nuclear reactors. For example, the proposed biomass option has an estimated fuel cost of around €75 per MWh while the small nuclear option has a fuel cost of only €8 per MWh. A nuclear plant at Moneypoint would also reduce emissions cheaply and safely while requiring no new pylons or overhead lines.

The primary advantage of biomass over nuclear is that biomass is classified as renewable while nuclear is not. However, both are low-carbon options and it is the low-carbon aspect that will be most important beyond 2020. In the post-2020 world, the economics of small reactors will be vital in helping us reduce our emissions in a cost-effective manner.

Perhaps a useful compromise would be to convert the peat stations to burn more biomass while replacing Moneypoint with small nuclear plant when it closes in 2025? This would satisfy our renewables mandate and reduce emissions while keeping the cost of low-carbon energy affordable.

If the Rethink Pylons report does nothing more than stimulate a much needed rational analysis of all our electricity supply options for the coming decades it will have been well worthwhile.

Such analysis has been lacking to date and the consequences for our economy and our citizens could be far-reaching. As Solomon once said: “Without foresight, the people perish.” – Yours, etc,

DENIS DUFF,

Burnaby Woods,

Greystones,

Co Wicklow

Sir, – At a time when Trinity College ought to be eagerly promoting its status as one of the seven premier ancient universities of these islands as its most potent weapon in an ever decreasing armoury of internationally recognised competitive advantages, the board of the college seems to have embarked on a fundamentally misguided campaign of destructive self-effacement (“Is nothing sacred? Trinity drops the Bible”, March 29th).

Leaving aside the aesthetic shortcomings of the new “corporate identity” (numerous as they are) and the fact that the college cannot unilaterally change its arms without making application for a new grant of arms to the relevant heraldic authority, when the board of a university is concerned that the institution may be associated with the alleged cut-price tawdriness of Ikea and Ryanair, it says more about lack of confidence in the brand of the university than it does about its visual identity.

One does not see the University of Cambridge concerned that it may be identified with the values McDonald’s nor the University of Oxford concerned that it may be associated with those of Lidl. In such challenging times of necessary change, the board of Trinity College would be well advised to take better care of its stock of existing selling points and avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Yours, etc,

KYLE LEYDEN,

Pall Mall,

London

Sir, – With regard to the proposed changes to the logo of Trinity College and the reasons/excuses being offered for these changes, is one allowed to ask just how far this political correctness (read madness) will be allowed to go? I am quite sure that when a prospective student considers a number of universities, the institution’s logo, or its perceived “inclusiveness”, must be well down on the list. Surely what makes a university inclusive in fact is how it treats its students. One might also ask if the political correctness behind this decision is to be extended to any crests that might be embedded in the college’s masonry.

In an era of harsh economic reality, where funding for education should be used to draw out its optimum value, it beggars belief that such time, energy and resources should be devoted to a process which resulted in such an extraordinary decision. Yours, etc,

ANGELA CURRIE,

Garland Hill,

Sir, – In the media the Minister for Health, Dr James Reilly continues to state that GPs in Ireland are among the highest-earning doctors in Europe and that having 1,000 medical card patients on one’s books is worth €250 000 per annum to a GP practice.

As a former GP and also a former president of the Irish Medical Organisation, the Minister knows this to be obtusely untrue.

Dr Reilly is clearly spinning stories for the benefit of his Oireachtas colleagues and attempting to manipulate the opinion of the general public on this matter.

I would like to respectfully ask the Minister to desist from this unhelpful and mischievous propaganda and I challenge him to produce the documentation to support either of his claims.

General practice is now failing and sadly most of the destruction is at the hands of this Minister.

Dr Reilly’s only legacy will be that of dismantling the one part of the health service that actually worked, the one part that had no waiting lists, the one part of the health service that was value for money and the one part of the health service that consistently delivered the highest satisfaction rate among patients.

If he continues down this path of destruction it could take decades to recover what he has done in three short years.

The Minister has the foundations of a first-class health system at his fingertips. We have the best-trained doctors in the world and we are the envy of Europe with regard to our practising doctors.

For the sake of our families, our friends and our future the Minister must stop the systematic devastation of family medicine in Ireland, he must follow the lead of his colleagues in Europe and the rest of the world, invest in general practice and build a health service we can be proud of, not one of which we are ashamed. Yours, etc,

CHRIS GOODEY,

Chief Executive Officer,

National Association

of General Practitioners,

Kildare Street,

Dublin 2

Sir, – Regarding Dr Muiris Houston’s “Medical Matters” column (March 25th) I think the heading’s suggestion that “summer time can be fraught with danger” gives a misleading impression, for though the actual time changes at the end of March and in October have been shown to be associated with an increase in accidents, summer time itself is surely of benefit to society as a whole.

Many, I know, greet the arrival of summer time with relief and dread the early advent of darkness in autumn. Personally, like Muiris, I would love to see the reintroduction of double summer time, remembering it nostalgically from my youth.

Failing that why not change to be on a par with Spain and other EU countries. I know Senator Feargal Quinn and others would favour this.

Surely our longer daylight hours would benefit the economy, tourism, energy conservation, the elderly like me, those suffering from SADS and those needing exercise and outdoor activities for medical and social reasons.

Yours, etc,

HENDY JOYCE,

Dublin Road,

Arklow

Sir, – As usual at this time of the year, when the clocks change from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) to British Summer Time (BST), there is a clamour to scrap the change and move permanently to BST. If we have BST all year long then in midwinter it will remain dark until about 9.15am. Some of your readers will recall a three-year experiment in the late 1960s when the clocks did not change to GMT. The idea was abandoned due to a sharp rise in the deaths of schoolchildren on the roads in the early morning. Yours, etc,

TIM BRACKEN,

Blarney St,

Cork

Sir, – I find myself in total agreement with John Devlin’s argument (Letters, March 29th) that the “best way young children learn is via a teacher, chalk, books and pupil interaction” .

It is really a no-brainer to follow the way of Silicon Valley, where “the top primary schools have banned computers from the learning process ”.

Take a look at what the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget says: “Each time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered himself, that child is kept from inventing it and consequently from understanding it completely.”

Overdependence on screens for information stunts oral expression and calculation. Ask most people when will Easter fall this year and they will generally take out their screens to answer!

Written communication also suffers from the use of screens. Being involved in primary education and communication I come acrross the increasing poverty of the written and oral word every day of my life. I believe I am not alone in this observation. DH Lawrence advised us: “Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you have to say and say it hot.” – Yours, etc,

BRENDA MORGAN,

Asgard Park,

Howth,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – Donald Clarke’s article (“Clubs where women aren’t welcome to join”, March 29th) is fine as far as it goes, but this subject has been discussed so many times before and one of the points clearly established is that both men and women are entitled to join clubs catering for their own sexes (and indeed do so). When Mr Clarke attacks men-only clubs as “reactionary” but ignores women-only clubs (of whose existence he must also surely be aware) he just ends up sounding reactionary himself.

As Mr Justice O’Higgins famously said in the course of the High Court case involving Portmarnock Golf Club in 2005: “it is permissible to have – exclusively – a bridge club for Bulgarians, a chess club for Catholics, a wine club for women and a golf club for gentlemen”. Perhaps it is Mr Clarke rather than the clubs who needs to be dragged “kicking and screaming into the 19th century”? Yours, etc,

WILLIAM MONGEY,

Ard Haven,

Waterford

Sir, – Perhaps not many of your readers are great users of public transport. Let me therefore point out a rather disconcerting phenomenon now frequently observed on Dublin buses, namely the application of make-up (by ladies). We hear much of health and safety. Is there not a danger that an errant mascara wand could deliver a nasty poke in the eye were a bus to brake suddenly. Then there’s the question of propriety. What next? Nail clipping on the 15B? A little light depilation on the 46A. — Yours, etc,

FRANK BYRNE,

Cormac Terrace,

Terenure,

Dublin 6W

Sir, – I write in response to Vincent Browne’s column (“Big Issues ignored as Callinan resigns”, March 26th). It is untrue to assert that deference to status or wealth is the motivation behind the assistance of the Catholic Communications Office at certain Catholic funerals.

Among the services offered by the CCO, one is to assist a parish as it responds to the demands of media queries and/or media presence at a particular local funeral. The CCO enables media personnel to access accurate information regarding the funeral liturgy. Feedback indicates that this is viewed as a useful service. Yours, etc,

MARTIN LONG,

Catholic Communications

Office,

Maynooth,

Co Kildare

Sir, – Your heading above Chris Garvey’s letter (“Uses for Ireland’s boglands”, March 29th) tickled my funny bone. I expected to read of development proposals for the barren terrain bounded by Merrion Street to the east and Kildare Street to the west, where the living dead stumble into fetid drowning pools, strange animals roam, vultures swoop, and no birds sing!

Yours, etc,

OLIVER McGRANE,

Marley Avenue,

Rathfarnham,

Dublin 16

Sir, – The most recent political poll suggests that a sizeable percentage of us are not satisfied with the manner in which the Government is administering the justice system and we are opting for Sinn Féin as an alternative. Hmm. Yours, etc,

CON WOODS,

Newmarket on Fergus,

Co Clare

Irish Independent:

Also in this section

Pylons will mutilate our beautiful countryside

Think the unthinkable

Speak about feelings

The Lord Mayor and the burghers in Cork City Hall have decided in their expansive wisdom and generosity that President Michael D Higgins should shortly be given the Freedom of the City.

No great harm in that, you might say – the only problem is that we, the ordinary people of Cork, will, as usual, end up footing the rather expensive bill through our rates, property and other taxes.

Conversely, there is no money for those citizens who are crippled with negative equity and unsustainable and crucifying debts, no money for the many children daily going hungry to school, no money for the homeless, the aged and the disabled or the thousands who are jobless and in despair.

No money to bring home the thousands of our young and not so young who have been forced to emigrate. No money for our struggling small businesses or to fix our potholed and broken roads.

Miraculously, however, we have plenty of money for a meaningless shindig in the present economic climate and in the throes of a raging recession.

It is, of course, in microcosm, another measure of the disdain and disconnect that those in positions of power and influence have for the lives and travails of ordinary citizens who have been force fed on debilitating austerity for the last six years.

No doubt the people of Cork and elsewhere will express their feelings on this and other matters next May.

JOHN HEALY

BISHOPSTOWN ROAD, CORK

HEARTWARMING STORY

* Reading the Irish Independent on March 24, a beautiful photograph on page 14 caught my attention; surgeon Pat Kiely and formerly conjoined twins Hussein and Hassan Benhaffaf from Cork.

Speaking as a co-founder of charity Straight Ahead (which I confess I was unaware of), Dr Kiely referred to problems caused by delays in carrying out spinal surgery on children at Crumlin and Tallaght hospitals.

Dr Kiely and his fellow surgeons have already given up their free time to operate on 26 children at no cost to the parents.

The twins’ mother, Angie, was quoted as saying “their generosity moves me . . . what they do is life changing”.

It was heartening to hear of such dedication and generosity at a time when we have been bombarded with stories of the obscenely high executive salaries/pensions in organisations like CRC, Rehab, etc – some even having the nerve to tell us they should be earning more and are entitled to bonuses but have (generously) not taken them for four years!

Do these people realise or care about the enormous damage being done to the whole charity sector?

Well done to Dr Kiely and fellow surgeons for the wonderful work you do.

JOHN O’DONOGHUE

MOHILL, CO LEITRIM

HELPING CHILDREN

* I write regarding Sinead Moriarty’s comment piece entitled ‘We’re too busy being paranoid to help a child in distress’ (Irish Independent, March 28).

About three years ago, I noticed two small children playing on a narrow path outside a newsagent’s beside a very busy roundabout in south Co Dublin. I advised the older one, a five-year-old boy, to please be very careful as it was just at dusk and traffic was heavy.

They were still there when I came out and I asked if their mother was in the shop. They said, ‘No, she’s gone to work’. It transpired that the five-year-old was ‘looking after’ his three-year-old sister. I took them to the far side of the road where the path was much wider and safer, and decided I should wait with them until a parent arrived to collect them.

Around 20 minutes later, I asked the boy if he knew where his house was and he pointed to the far side of the roundabout. It seems he had navigated this roundabout safely earlier!

We began to walk, me hoping we were going the right way, and the children chatting away happily. We reached their house about 10 minutes later to find people running around frantically looking for them, including their father who had just fallen asleep in the chair and was horrified to know they had gone so far from home.

I was very glad that I was the person who found them, but the thing is it never crossed my mind to call the police or that my motives might be suspect to anyone. I just wanted to know that they got safely home.

As a mother of four adult children, I would always be very aware of a child with apparently no adult accompanying them.

LILIAN CHAMBERS

BLACKROCK, DUBLIN

TIME FOR THE UNSELFIE

* The so-called selfie in our brave new world serves as the ultimate distraction. One’s self.

This, if I may say so, to use a word of some disputation currently, is little short of being “disgusting”.

Great hardship is being endured by men, women and children in this country and in countries across the world, and to propagate the concept that the self or narcissistic preoccupation should prevail is to veer dangerously close to fascism.

It is a time not for the selfie but for the antithesis of the selfie.

The unselfie.

JOHN KELLY

MULLINGAR, CO WESTMEATH

21ST-CENTURY THINKING

* There is need for far fresher ideas than those implemented by Government (Editorial, Irish Independent, March 31) to overcome the unemployment problems that are accumulating in an entirely unprecedented work situation.

Work is being eliminated on a truly massive scale by rampant automation and much more than stopgap programmes for a few is needed.

There is need on a world basis, or at least a large trading bloc such as the EU or US, to move to much shorter hours, longer holidays and earlier retirement for all.

The maths are simple; more people working less or fewer people working more.

There is also need for Government to generate much more public service employment. Private enterprise will require fewer people even working shorter hours as technology advances.

Employment change is the most urgent crisis we face; greater even than climate change. If employment escalates out of control, as it will without drastic action, and society breaks down, climate change will matter only to the birds.

We need 21st-century thinking for 21st-century employment. There seems little sign of any yet.

PADRAIC NEARY

TUBBERCURRY, CO SLIGO

2 April 2014 Mary home
I go all the way around the park listening to the Navy Lark. Our heroes are in trouble, again. They have to search for a stolen yacht Priceless
Mary Home, Peter mr Sorenson we are both very tired
No Scrabble today, too tired Perhaps I will win tomorrow.

Obituary:

Sir Robin Dunn – obituary
Sir Robin Dunn was a Lord Justice of Appeal who was decorated in war then dealt with film stars and traitors in peace

Sir Robin Dunn
6:50PM BST 31 Mar 2014
8 Comments
Sir Robin Dunn, the former Lord Justice of Appeal, who has died aged 96, was among the more engaging and colourful members of the bench; he was also awarded an MC in the Second World War .
Dunn’s often lengthy divorce cases made him a fierce critic of their cost to the taxpayer. His bench also became a platform for outspoken social commentary, including, most notoriously, his 1974 remark about the differences between wives north and south of the border.
In the North, said Dunn, wives did not mind their husbands beating them but drew the line at adultery; in the South, the opposite was the case. He withdrew his observations the next day, and apologised to the angry women of the North.
But despite the odd maverick outburst, Dunn was widely liked and respected, and was being tipped as a likely candidate to take over as president of the Family Division shortly before his promotion to the Court of Appeal in 1980.
As a committee member of the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, he was at the forefront of its legal battle with the League Against Cruel Sports in the mid-1980s, after the hunt fenced in the League’s so-called “sanctuaries” which it owned on Exmoor.
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Sir Robin Dunn at the Bristol Assizes in 1970
Dunn was also unusual in the ranks of the judiciary in having served as a regular Army officer for 10 years; in 1980 he was made Honorary Colonel Commandant, the highest honour that the Royal Artillery can bestow on a non-serving officer.
The son of a Royal Artillery brigadier, Robin Horace Walford Dunn was born on January 16 1918 and educated at Wellington and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, where he won the Sword of Honour. He joined the RA in 1938, and fought during the Second World War in France, Belgium and North Africa. He was thrice wounded, mentioned in despatches and awarded a Military Cross in 1944.
On July 8 of that year, Major Dunn, as he then was, was Battery Commander and Commanding Officer’s representative with 1st Battalion the Royal Norfolk Regiment during an attack on Lébisey wood, near Caen, accompanying the CO on foot with his signallers carrying the wireless sets.
During the whole period of the attack he was under heavy shell and mortar fire, but never failed to maintain communications with the regiment. In the later stages of the assault he organised a fresh fire plan to assist the infantry, who were being held down by an enemy post in the south-west corner of the wood.
The citation for his MC stated: “It was largely due to his efforts that the infantry were enabled to clear the wood with comparatively few casualties. Towards the end of the action Major Dunn was wounded in the head, but refused to go for treatment until ordered by the CO of the Norfolks. During the whole operation Major Dunn, under heavy fire, exhibited a calm and resolute bearing which was an example to both his own party and the infantry.”

Robin Dunn with Field Marshal Montgomery
After the war, Dunn attended Staff College but left the Army as an honorary major in 1948, the same year that he was called to the Bar by Inner Temple. He soon established himself as an eloquent and persuasive advocate, frequently appearing for the rich and famous. While still a junior, he represented Vivien Leigh (in her successful divorce action against Laurence Olivier), and the publisher George Weidenfeld, who was granted a divorce after his wife’s adultery with the writer Cyril Connolly.
Another client was the Russian-born marathon walker Barbara Moore, who alleged she had been defamed by a series of advertisements for shoes, bananas and oranges which surrounded coverage in the Daily Mail of her walk from John O’Groats to Land’s End. She said the advertisements implied that she had undertaken the walk for financial gain rather than to prove the capabilities of a 55-year-old woman on a vegetarian diet.
“Some people may think she’s a crank,” said Dunn, “but most great causes have been started by single-minded people who some consider to be cranks.”
From 1959 to 1962, Dunn was Western Circuit junior counsel to the Registrar of Restrictive Trading Practices. In 1961 he represented the Attorney General at the election petition over whether Viscount Stansgate (Tony Benn) should be allowed to take his place in the Commons following his Bristol South-East by-election victory.
Dunn took Silk in 1962, and as a QC his clients included the former MP Patricia Fisher, injured when a bottle of jewellery cleaner she had bought at Harrods exploded in her hand; the racehorse trainer Florence Nagle, to whom the Jockey Club refused to issue a licence because she was a woman; and the “spoilt” wife of the Swiss film producer Robert Velaise, himself described by Dunn as “a debonair international playboy, expert skier and water-skier, the dashing Don Juan with women”.
One of the highlights of Dunn’s career was the Vassal Tribunal in 1968, at which he represented The Daily and Sunday Telegraph. The inquiry concerned the activities of the homosexual Admiralty spy in Moscow, John Vassal, but an important side issue was whether journalists should disclose their sources.
Dunn was appointed a Judge of the High Court, Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division (later Family Division) in 1969.
He was soon ordering the pop singer Gene Vincent to pay maintenance arrears to his former wife or go to prison; granting a divorce to a young wife who objected to her husband’s dressing up in drag; and refusing to believe a petitioner who claimed that his wife charged him half-a-crown for sex.
As presiding judge on the Western Circuit from 1974 to 1978, Dunn proved a tough sentencer. In 1977 he jailed stately home robber Denis Morley — who went in for fast cars, beautiful women and gambling — to 15 years. The trial was the longest in Exeter Crown Court’s history, involving 170 witnesses and more than 700 exhibits. He also gave mandatory life terms to several murderers .
Probably Dunn’s best-known judgment on appeal was in the Sidaway case in 1984. Mrs Sidaway was suing Bethlem Royal Hospital over damage to her spinal cord. She said she was not told of the possibility of such damage before she consented to an operation. But Dunn agreed with the then Master of the Rolls, Sir John Donaldson, that a doctor (or surgeon) fulfilled his duty to inform a patient if he acted in accordance with a practice rightly accepted as proper by a body of skilled and experienced medical men.
Because the surgeon had assessed the risk of damage to the spinal cord at only one to two per cent, he had considered it too remote a risk to form the basis of Mrs Sidaway’s decision on whether or not to consent to the operation. The judges held this to be reasonable after listening to other expert witnesses.
The decision — later upheld by the Law Lords — was welcomed by medics, but criticised by others as legitimising the idea of passive patients and authoritarian doctors. Some went so far as to claim a professional conspiracy, with lawyers closing ranks behind the doctors.
Dunn was among the judges who ruled that a wife’s once-a-week sex ration was fair, and who turned down the Moonies’ request for a retrial following their failed libel action against the Daily Mail.
He warned divorced parents not to try to take revenge on their former husbands or wives by refusing them access to their children. “These courts have said over and over again, that although you can dissolve marriages, you cannot dissolve parenthood,” Dunn observed. He also warned divorced mothers not to expect that custody of their children would automatically be granted to them.
Dunn retired from the Court of Appeal in 1984. He was, variously, treasurer of the Bar Council (1967-69); deputy chairman of Somerset Quarter Sessions (1965-71); and a member of the Lord Chancellor’s Committee on Legal Education (1968-69). He was knighted in 1969 and sworn of the Privy Council in 1980.
In 1994 he published Sword and Wig: The Memoirs of a Lord Justice. He later wrote a book about stag hunting on Exmoor, one of his passions. He was a fierce opponent of the National Trust’s decision to ban stag hunting on their land.
Robin Dunn married, in 1941, Judith Pilcher, who died in 1995; they had a son and two daughters, and one daughter survives him with his second wife, Joan (née Stafford-King-Harman), whom he married in 1997.
Sir Robin Dunn, born January 16 1918, died March 5 2014
Guardian:
When Kingsley Amis was a young man, he was one of many authors swindled by RA Caton, the unsavoury proprietor of the Fortune Press. He took his revenge by incuding in each of his novels an unpleasant, and often unlucky, minor character with Caton’s name. I suggest to the writers who have rallied to protest at the cruel ban on books for prisoners (‘It’s the most bonkers thing I’ve ever heard’, 29 March) that the name Christopher Grayling has a certain cracked ring to it. I can see him as an incompetent potboy getting a kicking from Thomas Cromwell, or a bumbling spy caught in a Le Carré double-cross; indeed, the possibilities are endless.
Peter Grant
Oxford
• Ha! The solar panels on the roof in the artist’s impression of the proposed England-Scotland spiral interchange show this is the Guardian’s April Fool spoof (Scotland plans to move to right after independence, 1 April): a cost-benefit analysis would show that there is not enough sunshine in the frozen north of the UK to make it viable.
Lyn Summers
Lancaster
• Most aspects of the plan to revise the road infrastructure in Scotland are perfectly feasible and overdue. However, as a Scottish resident, I disapprove of the cost to the taxpayer of the spiral interchange at the Scottish-English border. Surely the best place to make the change would be when the motorist goes through immigration and visits duty-free, which will be unavoidable without the Schengen agreement.
Matthew Williamson
Isle of Bute
• Great April Fools’ Day story this year (England cap shambolic winter with humiliating defeat by the Netherlands, 1 April).
Geoff Dobson
London
• Anthropomorphic buses are but a later manifestation of what the Romans did for us (Letters, 1 April). A recently discovered fragment of a casket from Caistor is inscribed: “Cunobarrus fecit vivas (Cunobarrus made me, may you live happily).”
Jane Lawson
London
• When I lived in Bishop Auckland 60-odd years ago, there were two outlying so-called villages, Seldom Seen and Never Seen (Letters, 1 April). I went to the former, once. I never saw the latter.
John Abbott
London
The kite flown by a rightwing thinktank that everyone should have to pay for access to healthcare (£10 each can save the NHS, 31 March) marks a crucial turning point in switching towards a fully paid-for health service. This process has been long planned. First Blair encouraged and then pressured NHS hospitals into becoming independent foundation trusts, self-standing suppliers within a competitive market. Cameron took this much further by ruling that all NHS functions would be open to tender by any qualified provider. The Lansley health and social care bill, hatched in deepest secrecy before the 2010 election with not a word about it in the Tory manifesto so that it had no electoral mandate, opened the floodgates for full-scale privatisation of the NHS. But always the mantra was repeated that the NHS would remain “free at the point of service”. Now that assurance is being kicked away.
The thinktank authors decry the NHS as “an outdated, cosseted and unaffordable healthcare system”. They don’t mention that the Tory government has deliberately imposed a £20bn cut in NHS funding over the current five-year period to put it under intolerable strain and maybe breakdown in order to pave the way for a gradual switch to a fully paid-for private service, which has always been their secret aim, just like before 1948. Nor do they mention that the NHS, at a cost of 8% of GDP, is the most cost-efficient in the world, half the comparative cost of the private US healthcare system.
We now see why the Tories have been so keen to demean the NHS on every occasion over the past few months. Cue the need to junk the old, failing NHS and announce the dawn of a brand-new, burnished private healthcare system – and at a bargain price of £10 a month. But remember tuition fees: capped at £3,000, then trebled. If every UK adult paid £10 a month, this new tax would raise £5.4bn. Treble that, or more, and we’re talking serious money for the healthcare privateers.
Michael Meacher MP
Labour, Oldham West and Royton
• How dare Norman Warner and Jack O’Sullivan denigrate the NHS in such strident terms? I refer them to the carefully documented report in August 2013 by Dr Don Berwick, who was commissioned to investigate patient safety in the NHS. Berwick recognised that healthcare is political and that the current sustained denigration of the NHS is an ideological campaign which smears “a world-leading example of commitment to health and healthcare as a human right” that should be emulated, and that although the NHS does have patient safety problems, so “does every other healthcare system in the world”. Noting that big changes are needed, Berwick also says the achievements of the NHS are enormous and suggests that “drama, accusations and overstatement” are best avoided.
Reform, which published Warner and O’Sullivan’s report, believes that “by liberalising the public sector, breaking monopoly and extending choice”, high-quality services can be made available to everyone. Recent experiences with private providers to the NHS in Cornwall and Suffolk, for instance, indicate otherwise. Reform was set up by a Conservative MP and a Tory strategist. The membership of Reform’s advisory board shows that it is funded by private companies, with chief executives, chairmen and directors of major pharmaceutical companies, global investment banks, and accountancy firms constituting the majority of board members. Could there be an ideological or possibly even some other agenda here?
Gwen Parr
Pulborough, West Sussex
• It is extremely misleading to describe the thinktank Reform as “independent”. In 2012, its top six funders included Prudential Insurance, KMPG (consultants involved with the NHS), McKesson (a pharmaceutical distributor and healthcare information company), Baxter (a private healthcare company) and BMI (which runs 66 hospitals and treatment centres in the country). These organisations all have a vested interest in the tendering out and privatisation (“reform”) of the NHS and in reports that support the idea of charging for NHS services.
Sean de Podesta
Brighton
• It would have been good if the Guardian had mentioned Norman Warner’s and Reform’s vested interest in criticising the NHS. Warner is an advisory board member of Synlab, a German firm involved in NHS privatisation, while Reform is funded by BMI Healthcare, Serco and Sodexo – organisations that have much to gain from the break-up of the heath service (hat-tip to @SolHughesWriter on Twitter for this information).
Ian Sinclair
London
• The suggestion of an NHS membership fee is the latest example of weird and unsocial reasoning. People apparently won’t put up with tax rises to help the NHS; so let’s complicate matters by charging fees. How does that help – unless the motive is to exclude those unable to pay the fee from NHS services? The denigration of tax leads to lower taxes, leading to reductions in public services, which leads to the wealthy paying for private medicine, private education and, one day no doubt, private street lighting and refuse collections, leaving the dispossessed with ever-dwindling services.
Peter Cave
London
• Alternatively, Warner and O’Sullivan could propose a 0.05% rise in income tax, to raise roughly the same amount, but with no extra collection charges, unlike their scheme, which, if it is anything like road tax, would lose over half the amount collected in administration.
Rod Parfitt
Cleeve, Somerset
• I read with interest your article on a potential £10 per month membership for the NHS. As a surgeon in the NHS, one of the major issues I face with planned and emergency surgery is obesity. Most obese patients are aware of the health consequences of their obesity; however, they don’t seem to know of the hazards they face for abdominal surgery. Simply moving them on and off an operating tables can be hazardous for the staff alone. The risks of surgery and post-operative complications can lead to a prolonged recovery with a risk of major disability. Perhaps there should be an increased membership fee in line with BMI?
Kathryn McCarthy
Consultant surgeon, Bristol
• Nice juxtaposition of headlines on page 2 on Monday: “Pay £10 a month to use the NHS” and “Poorest homes face £120 council tax rise as safety net goes”.
Jeanne Warren
Garsington, Oxfordshire
• The health sector regulator Monitor is committed to parity of esteem for physical and mental health services, and is not recommending that funding for mental health services should be cut by 20% more than for acute hospitals (Mental health services need targeted investment, not even more cuts, 26 March). Under the NHS payment system, national prices are not set for mental health services. Pricing decisions for mental health services are made at local level by commissioners and providers, who are expected to have regard to the national rules but can make their own price adjustments where there are good reasons to do so.
Professor Ric Marshall
Director of pricing, Monitor

Your editorial (29 March) argues that the Byles bill now before parliament, which, for the first time, allows peers to resign, could lead to aspirant politicians using the Lords as a springboard into Commons seats, thus diluting its independence. Though understandable, such fears turn out on examination to be insubstantial.
It is not likely that many people would get peerages under the existing arrangements, then resign and then move on to the Commons. This would clearly be an abuse of the system, which intends lords to remain in the house as working peers. It would not be appealing for a party leader to appoint someone so motivated, as they would be heavily criticised for doing so. The Lords appointments commission, which has to approve political appointments, would be unlikely to support many such people. Constituency parties would be unlikely to choose them as candidates, as their opponents would highlight their ruthlessly self-seeking behaviour.
If it did it happen on any scale, the law could be changed to prevent it; then any politician on the make who had sought to use this route might be left stranded in the Lords. Moreover, anyone going down this route would, under the terms of the bill, be barred for ever from Lords membership, from which so many ex-members of the Commons have obtained a valuable opportunity to serve in their later years.
If the bill was amended in the Lords to prevent ex-members standing for the Commons, however, that would be the end of the current bill. No more private members’ days remain in the Commons this session to consider Lords amendments. The government has made it clear that, so far as it is concerned, unless the bill clears the Lords intact, that will be the end of it. And if the Byles bill fails it will be a major negative for those who argue that piecemeal reform of the Lords rather than a big bang is the right way forward. If as limited and simple a measure as the Byles bill cannot get through, what prospect is there for further piecemeal change in the future?
David Lipsey
Labour, House of Lords
Last night Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage held their second debate (Voters give credit to Farage in head-to-head with Clegg, 27 March). In the first debate, Clegg clearly triumphed on facts and statistics. But the European issue is a complicated one, as much based on emotions, historical attitudes and nostalgia as on detailed knowledge. It may seem astonishing that we Britons debate a possible exit from the EU in the year of the centenary of the first world war.
There have been no new or deadly battles between any EU members since Britain decided to stay in the EEC in 1975. Almost all the countries that were once Soviet satellites have been EU members, bound to democracy and the rule of law by the Copenhagen principles, a far more successful soft-power strategy than all the west’s military interventions put together. It would be sheer lunacy to abandon a European future for a backward-looking, isolated and diminished role.
Shirley Williams
Liberal Democrat, House of Lords
In a conventional share flotation, the price shares will fetch is an important issue for the seller, which needs to balance the interests of existing owners in raising cash against the dilution of ownership involved in expanding the share base. Hence the need for expert advice, underwriting etc. In the Royal Mail case (Undervaluing Royal Mail cost taxpayer £750m in one day, 1 April), the institution was going to be sold/privatised no matter what and the appropriate objective was to raise as much cash as possible for the public purse. The obvious way to proceed would have been through an auction based on sealed bids. Shares could then simply have been allocated to willing buyers, in order of price bid. The full volume would have been allocated and revenue to the owners of the institution – the taxpayer – would have been maximised.
The shares would have ended up with those who valued them highest, just as now, but without the intermediary profit. This would also have saved us the cost of the advice of the experts who valued the shares so inaccurately.
Chris Perry
Instow, Devon
• Vince Cable believes what he did was right: “achieving the highest price … was never the aim of the sale”. That’s just the point, Mr Cable: the Tories’ aim was to flog it off regardless. A failed sale would not have been a disaster.
We are witnessing the disaster that all privatisations have engendered, with soaring energy prices, water bills, rail fares, bus fares and on and on, as the new companies, now mostly foreign-owned, try to keep their greedy managers and shareholders happy, while their services decline. And soon Royal Mail services will show the same trend. Perhaps it was just bad timing, but over the weekend I and most other people in north-west London received a flyer from Royal Mail’s operations director telling us that TNT Post UK may be delivering some of our mail, when they feel like it, so our Royal Mail postman “may no longer be wholly responsible for your postal service”. But it doesn’t tell us who to complain to when a letter fails to arrive.
David Reed
London
• Perhaps Vince Cable would care to visit Mid Devon to see some of the benefits he claims were the reason behind the dramatic undervaluing of the Royal Mail share offering. Within two months we received a letter informing us that due to implementing efficiency measures our post was to be rescheduled and may be later. It now arrives between 3pm and 4pm. Royal Mail said it was contractually entitled to deliver mail up to 4pm. The result? A long-established business renting office accommodation in our converted barn has given in its notice because, being mail-order driven, it is unable to cope with such a service.
Andrew Dale-Harris
Oakford, Devon
• There are few business people who manage to cost their organisation £750m with one decision and even fewer who do that and remain in their job. You itemise some of the ways this sum could have been spent, but I find it equally depressing that Vince Cable doesn’t even show any remorse. In the current austerity climate, it is surely vital that every available pound is both collected and spent on the correct priorities.
Pete Radcliffe
Warrington, Cheshire

Your coverage on the situation in Ukraine has dealt almost exclusively with Vladimir Putin and Russian intentions. This is unfortunate. While the events regarding Crimea are serious, focusing mainly on them misses the major problems facing Ukraine: poverty and corruption. These have stifled Ukrainian progress, causing severe economic hardships for the population. Thousands of Ukraine’s young and talented have left the country to work abroad. The diaspora continues.
Ukrainians need to look in the mirror. They have had full independence since 1991 and are ostensibly a democracy. Their “orange revolution” failed because of corruption and their new government under Viktor Yanukovych failed because of corruption and his government’s failure to address the real problems in the country.
Ukrainians need to stop blaming Russia, communism and Stalin and start enacting major reforms. The power to do this is in their hands. The Maidan demonstrators in Kiev represented a good start. There were progressive forces among the demonstrators that signalled the direction in which Ukraine should move. Ukrainians must hold the government accountable and ensure that meaningful reforms are enacted.
Robert Milan
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
• Your report of the US and EU reaction to the Crimean situation is depressing (21 March). The US will always do and say whatever it likes, and there’s no changing that. It is worrying that the EU has decided to take action, however limited, against Russia, as it has the potential to lead to an economic cold war directly affecting all EU citizens. But it is completely outrageous that the UK government should take such an active stance against Russia and Putin. As a British citizen, I am incensed that it should act in this way.
For many years successive British governments have refused to even talk to Argentina about a change of ownership of the Falklands, stating that the will of the inhabitants is paramount. Nobody can possibly be in any doubt as to the will of the vast majority of the Crimean inhabitants, even if there were legal or technical problems surrounding the recent referendum. So for the British government to condemn Russia and Putin and to threaten and take economic action against them for acceding to the will of the Crimean inhabitants is nothing short of 24-carat-gold-plated hypocrisy.
Alan Williams-Key
Madrid, Spain
• Many commentators have seen fit to draw an analogy between the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the aggressive expansionism of the Nazi government of Germany that precipitated the second world war. But perhaps the more relevant analogy is the war that preceded it.
The leaders of the great European powers in 1914 did not plan to lead their nations into years of terrible destruction, but they did, through a combination of ambition, ignorance, miscalculation and pride. Let us hope that our leaders are not so foolish, because the potential consequences are not the destruction of a first world war or a second world war, but the nuclear destruction of a third world war.
Alex Gill
Ottawa, Canada
Seems it’s OK for the US and some of its allies, including Israel, to thumb their noses at “international law and order” by invading and occupying other people’s territories when they feel their national self-interest is threatened. When Russia does the same, however, these defenders of the “free world” pretend to be outraged. Double standard indeed!
Ron Date
Victoria, British Columbia,
Canada
Chasing the grey vote
I live in a benighted country that unlike most countries in the democratic world has compulsory voting at all levels of government and am often berated that such compulsion is an infringement of my democratic freedoms. However, I have always been conscious of the fact that with compulsory voting the elected politicians can never totally ignore some or even most sections of society and concentrate only on that part of society that votes. The article Osborne targets grey vote (28 March) reminds me of the strength of a compulsory voting system. When politicians “woo actual voters and sod the rest” democracy suffers and long term the society suffers as well.
The advantage of compulsory voting is that politicians must at least pay lip service to the whole of the society because everyone votes and this advantage far outweighs any infringement on my freedom.
Edwin Carter
Blackburn, Victoria, Australia
Property and generosity
Peter Johnston’s letter (Reply, 21 March) on the apparent discrepancy in the availability of homes in the UK overlooks the elephant in the housing complex: property as a long-term investment. Everywhere in the developed world the demand for the expansion of housing and the consequent erosion of irreplaceable agricultural, recreational and environmentally sensitive land is seemingly irresistible.
While greedy developers and those who depend on construction for their living are partly to blame, the underlying problem is multiple home ownership, accompanied by favourable taxation treatment and the publicly subsidised costs of development. It is in the interest of most investors in residential property to promote the myth of scarcity, as well as frequently maintaining vacancies, to enhance the capital appreciation on which they rely, rather than accepting a reasonable income from rental or leasing.
There is a strong parallel with food production and distribution. It is accepted that there is adequate food produced world-wide to feed the current population, though not at the excessive and wasteful level of first-world nations. Those who control the production and distribution of these essential resources look to the wealthier nations for their profits, rather than satisfying the needs of the wider population.
The injunctions of Pope Francis to the wealthy to “help, respect and promote the poor” will fall on deaf ears, as long as he and other spiritual leaders fail to address the underlying causes of inequality and rely instead on the trickle-down effect – and earning a place in heaven – to motivate them to be a bit more generous to the needy. The world has never worked that way and probably never will.
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
Syria’s fight to the finish
It’s become clear that the Syrian struggle now is not Assad’s government against the rest – but rather Assad’s Alawites and the Shias and Christians and others against Sunni Islam (including al-Qaida) – ie minorities of all shades against the Sunni majority (Iran-controlled militia calls on Iraqis to shed blood for Assad, 21 March).
This is the struggle the Middle East is now engaged in. The Alawites face extinction or permanent subjugation by a Sunni majority that they have dominated for too long. That’s why, in fear of extinction, they will not compromise or admit defeat. The outlook is bleak – a fight to the finish.
Alaisdair Raynham
Truro, UK
Briefly
• I was delighted to see Tim Entwisle’s commentary in support of taxonomists (21 March). Many people call us bean-counters, but they miss the point. Far from being an arcane branch of biology, taxonomy underlies the study of the world’s biodiversity, and its distribution and evolution.
Species have varied and often astounding strategies for making a living here on Earth. It takes time to develop expertise in a group of organisms, but we now live in an academic world that is too impatient to invest in that time, saying that we are somehow not “productive” enough.
Sandra L Brantley
Albuquerque, New Mexico, US
• The apparent demise of the ice-cream cone (Shortcuts, 21 March) reminds me that as a child we had wafers. These were either wrapped or, as was the case with my uncle in his small shop in Defynnog, prepared on demand. A rectangular wafer was placed in a hand held device which was filled with his own ice-cream another wafer placed on the top and the whole pushed up to be held gently and licked from the sides. Like the wafer the shop is long gone.
Steve Thomas
Yarralumla, ACT, Australia
• Re Oliver Burkeman’s columns, as I don’t necessarily want to change my life, would it be possible to offer an edition of the Guardian Weekly without this headline on one of its pages please?
Adrian Betham
London, UK
Independent:

Students from state schools are more likely to achieve top-grade degrees than those from the independent sector (report, 28 March), and there is a call for leading universities to place more emphasis on applicants’ backgrounds when offering places to study. Great, so all graduates will be on a level playing field in the jobs market, right? Wrong!
Too many employers are unforgiving in the requirements for their graduate jobs. As well as a minimum of a 2:1, they also require 300 or more Ucas points (BBB or higher at A-level). For jobs in IT, to take an example, TARGETjobs lists employers requiring 300 Ucas points or more including: Accenture, CHP Consulting, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Ocado, PA Consulting, SunGuard, Tessella, and TPP.
Many employers have exceptions for those with illness or family circumstances, or for those who are exceptional in sporting or similar achievements, but the barrier still remains for many. Forget how brilliant you are in your chosen subject: what did you do when you were 18? This question might more accurately be framed as “Which school did you attend when you were 18?”, because three times as many private school pupils gain three A grades at A-level as those in state schools.
Leading employers visit universities’ careers fairs but, while almost all will attend Russell Group universities, the number of employers attending universities in the lower half of the “university league tables”  dwindles.
Some employers are coming round to the idea that recruiting graduates from Russell Group universities and with 300-plus Ucas points does not lead to a very diverse intake, and diversity is essential for success in the global markets. Some employers visit universities outside the Russell Group. Some are more open-minded about your past life: TARGETjobs lists AVEVA and Hewlett Packard as employers who do not have a minimum Ucas points cut-off for IT jobs. In accounting and finance, the professional services firm PwC has recently relaxed its graduate  intake requirements for audit and assurance so that if you obtain a first-class degree, the Ucas points requirements drop to 240 (CCC).
As well as universities levelling the applications playing field, employers also need to play their part. I am teaching some fantastic accounting and finance students. Are there any enlightened employers out there who would like to offer summer internships to the highest achieving students? Many do not have the academic requirements you stipulate and may not have the strongest CVs in terms of relevant work experience or volunteering but they are intelligent, diligent, sometimes brilliant.
Dr Maria Gee, Senior Lecturer in Accounting, University of Winchester
I was concerned by your editorial on tuition fees (1 April), which questioned the fairness of making those who do not go to university “stump up” for those  who do.
Applied more generally, this principle would remove the argument for collective, public provision of any service. Why should the healthy “stump up” for the sick to be treated, those without children for others’ education, or those with cars for public transport?
Taken to its logical conclusion, this argument would destroy the civilised basis of our national life and create the situation found in the USA where those who can pay for services will do so and those who can’t are excluded and marginalised.
Alan Brown, Bromborough, Wirral
Plainly, the right language matters
Your article on Plain English (28 March) reminded me of the start of my Probation Service career in Barnsley in the early 1960s, where to know the difference between a shovel and a spade was a matter of civic pride.
For a social worker to use the term “sibling” in court invited a broadside below a career water-line. When once asked by a chairman what the term meant, his clerk advised: “I think it’s something to do with chickens, sir.”
One day a “gentleman of the road” appeared, brought off the street for some minor matter which couldn’t be dealt with on the spot. As if speaking to a simpleton, the chairman slowly and deliberately explained to the defendant, to the accompaniment of a nodding clerk, “Your case is being adjourned sine die. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” came the reply.
It seems judgements on plain English can depend on who is dishing it out.
Roy Spilsbury, Penmaenmawr, Conwy
Simplicity and clarity can go too far, even in official communications. I was once told of a major group in dispute with the Revenue. Top accountants were involved, top solicitors engaged. The issue was referred to leading counsel. They drew up a long, closely-argued case.
The Revenue’s reply arrived by return of post: “Thank you for your letter. I do not agree.”
Robert Davies, London E3
Books for prisoners
The issue of prisoners receiving parcels containing books is not straightforward.
Having taught in prisons for many years, I need no convincing of the value of books in that environment. I came across many prisoners who, for the first time in their lives, were reading and enjoying a variety of books. However, I have some sympathy with prison governors whose perpetual security nightmare is maintaining some degree of control over contraband entering prison. Drugs are easily concealed and screening is neither cheap nor quick (most prisons have to buy in the service of sniffer dogs, for example).
I do wonder how many parcels sent to prisons contained books. Not as many as the literary establishment likes to think I imagine; items of clothing are likely to be higher on the list. Be that as it may, governors know their prisons and it should be left to their discretion to decide what is and isn’t manageable rather than politicians making rulings calculated to appeal to the “give them nothing” brigade.
Sue Turner, Lowdham, Nottinghamshire
April Fools at the wicket
At first glance it seemed obvious that Scottish/UN peacekeeping story was your April Fool spoof (“Peacekeeping plan drawn up by UN in event of a Scottish Yes vote”, 1 April) but then I reached the sports section to read some nonsense about Holland beating England at cricket. How ridiculous! Did you really think we’d fall for that?
Michael O’Hare, Northwood, Middlesex
Loved the item about the UN’s proposed post-independence referendum peacekeeping force; “Avril Prime” was a gem. I’ve already booked the last remaining room from which to watch the manoeuvres. BMW’s ad was a surprise, though.
John Crocker, Cheltenham
Hey, you had me going there!  That lead story on the front page (1 April) about the Royal Mail flotation. Apparently Vince Cable’s City chums agreed to buy RM shares and promised to hold on to them. But then it’s said they went and sold them straight away at a vast profit.
I mean, honestly, how believable is that? Wasn’t born yesterday y’know!
Ed Sharkey, Barton-under-Needwood, Staffordshire
Texting in the street
Apple’s pedestrian-avoidance plan for the terminally phone-struck (“Text-and-walk plan for those trying to do two things at once”, 31 March) is  one more blow in the drive to render normal human behaviour redundant.
The massive surge in numbers of those who “walk and talk” has become one of the most annoying features of the urban landscape. It’s bad enough coping with the ear-plug barkers shouting into thin air, but ten times worse with those who simply stare at their phones while veering randomly into fellow pedestrians.
The moment you step out of that door it is essential to have your mobile amulet to hand, ready to combat the hideous dangers of actually observing the world around you. Now, combine that, as some already do, with a bicycle …
Christopher Dawes, London W11
Financial community rumbled again
What arrant nonsense is this clamour for the head of Martin Wheatley, Chief Executive of the Financial Conduct Authority. The plunge in insurance company share prices was due to the financial community fearing that they had been rumbled, again, and with just cause. The pity is that the inquiry is not going to be as wide-ranging as at first suggested.
Peter English, Rhewl, Denbighshire
Is this contract really a job?
I am reassured that the Chancellor has signed up to a full employment pledge, or perhaps aspiration. However I am unclear if a zero-hours contract is a job, as it appears to involve a firm commitment neither to work nor to wages, or am I just an economic illiterate?
Lee Dalton BSc Econ, Weymouth, Dorset
Times:
Rising fees seem not to deter many students but interest on their debt is worse
Sir, Fees of £6,000 may end up as a credible position but it is deeply worrying that Labour sees this as its starting point rather than the result of calculations based on a well-designed student finance and university funding system (“Reducing fees would mean fewer students”, Mar 31).
Before you go near the headline- grabbing sticker price of fee levels, there are bigger questions around how students should be supported while they study, how universities should be funded, what the balance of contribution should be and what a well-designed graduate loan system looks like (not like the current one, that is for sure).
We hope to offer some clear thinking and simple steps to improve the loan design, bring down the massive subsidy on loans from the government and re-balance the contribution between the state and individual to higher education. This is less complicated than it sounds. You may end up with fees at £6,000 in some parts of the system, but it is strange to know the answer before you’ve done your sums.
Libby Hackett
University Alliance
Sir, The 45 per cent estimate (leader, Mar 31) means about 9 out of 20 graduates will not repay their loans. The other 11, who not only repay their loans but will continue paying in taxes a lot more than the 9 for the rest of their working lives, might be forgiven for wondering if they are all in this together.
Paul Murgatroyd
Norwich
Sir, You argue that students should pay more for their education. You oppose transferring costs to taxpayers. When I had my hip replaced by the NHS, two of the junior doctors involved turned out to be former students of mine. They told me that my education benefited them. I clearly benefited from their education, as will all the patients they treat until they retire. Those patients will contribute benefit to the community.
It is arguable that each student benefits from their education more than any other single person does. However, if you aggregate all the benefits gained by all beneficiaries, the overwhelming share of the total benefit goes not to the individual student, but to society as a whole. That is why we support education from general taxation.
Philip Burgess
Inchcoonans, Perthshire
Sir, The latest figures show that applicants to university are at their highest level, so graduating with about £40,000 of student debt has not so far been a deterrent to those seeking to benefit from a degree.
However, I wonder how many are aware of the small print. Since 2012 the student loan debt book is finance lent at RPI plus 3 per cent: this is from date of payment not from graduation. But there is minimal information on this: a student logging into his student loan account on the SLC website will not be able to see this, and googling it produces a similar vacuum of data. My son’s loan, currently about £13k, appears to be accruing interest at over £800 per annum. Next year there will be interest on interest and so on until repayment.
Our young people deserve transparency as to the terms and conditions of their indenture. Only a minority will repay their loans, and their repayments will have to carry the write-offs of all the others.
Emma Mackinnon
Fareham, Hants

Don’t blame the witnessess, the solution must start with a co-ordinated community response
Sir, The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, Sir Peter Fahy, is frustrated by the HMIC report about domestic violence (letter, Mar 31)?
A victim who spends years being physically and psychologically tortured in her own home (and it is usually a woman) is unlikely to be able to deal with the criminal justice system. The answer is the coordinated community response, practised in the UK since 1997.
My former employer, Standing Together Against Domestic Violence, can give him some guidance if he genuinely wants to find out how to respond effectively in partnership, to domestic violence. Specialist domestic violence courts were also set up to deal with this issue and were successful until government and community leaders lost interest.
Why does the State not take responsibility for prosecution rather than relying on the victim’s evidence? Why does a prosecution for a domestic murder rarely fail despite the lack of a live witness? Why is not more said about the perpetrator and the importance of holding them to account while supporting the victim? These are primary functions for police leadership. Sir Peter Fahy may be frustrated, but I am furious that he and others blame the victim for not being in a position to be a prime witness. The statutory sector must stop making excuses and work in a way that fundamentally changes the whole response and delivers justice.
Anthony Wills
Iver, Bucks

Alliance may be the last surviving British wartime sub, but there is a German U-boat too, now acting as a memorial museum
Sir, You report that HMS Alliance is “the only surviving submarine from the Second World War” (“Sailors tell tales of heroism, love and war”; Mar 31). While she may be the only surviving British submarine, the German U995 has stood as a museum in front of the Kriegsmarine memorial at Laboe (Kiel Fjord), since 1972. She was commissioned in 1944 and saw service off north Norway attacking allied convoys, sinking two merchantmen and two Soviet patrol craft. From the end of the war until 1965 she served in the Norwegian navy after which she was sold back to Germany and refitted ready for her current role.
Stephen J. Lockwood
Glan Conwy, Colwyn Bay

Superstition and religious faith do not necessarily go together, in fact researchers tend to find the opposite
Sir, Melanie Phillips (Opinion, Mar 31) asks why the large numbers who believe in telepathy, astrology and other paranormal phenomena do not believe in God. And she performs some interesting mental gymnastics to answer her own question — it’s because those who believe in the supernatural resent the moral constraints implicit in religion and prefer “morality-free magic”.
That would be an intriguing explanation, if there were anything in her premise, but paranormal “faith” and religious faith are not mutually exclusive. The One Poll survey that she quotes does not say that they are and nor does a half-century of empirical research. Social scientists have sometimes found a weak negative relationship between the two sets of beliefs, but most studies show either no relationship at all or a mild positive one. In other words, believers in the paranormal are just as likely to believe in God as anyone else.
Stephen Miller
Emeritus Professor of Social Research, City University London
The recent England T20 squad had no players from the winning T20 county sides – what is cricket coming to?
Sir, Those who follow county cricket are told regularly that its main aim is to provide players for England, who then attract large sums of money to be ploughed back into the domestic game. But if the purpose of county cricket is to hone skills and match-winning attitudes, why is it that not one player from the last four teams to win the domestic T20 was included in England’s recent T20 squad? Whatever the reason(s), the selections (including three replacements) were not exactly “spot on” were they?
dr dave allen
Hon Archivist, Hampshire Cricket

Telegraph:

How Dylan and Caitlin pronounced their names
“Dullan” or “Dillan”, “Kaytlin” or “Kathleen”?

Dylan Thomas (1914-53) with his wife Caitlin (1913-94), whom he married in 1937  Photo: BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY
6:58AM BST 01 Apr 2014
29 Comments
SIR – As we approach the 100th anniversary of his birth, can we have some definitive rulings on how to pronounce the Dylan in Dylan Thomas? And for that matter, the Caitlin in Caitlin Thomas?
I know the Welsh say “Dullan”, but I have heard that the poet preferred, and used, “Dillan”. I gather his friends called him something entirely otherwise and much more coprological.
Similarly, Augustus John always insisted that Caitlin was “Kathleen”, not “Kaytlin”.
Any discussion of the poet and his wife has now become a self-conscious matter of style between those who parade their knowledge of Welsh and those who claim artistic kinship with Bohemian London by insisting on different pronunciations of the first names. Does anyone know how they called each other?
Nigel Thomas
Elham, Kent
SIR – After conducting my first wedding as an Anglican priest, on Saturday, I sat down to read that day’s Daily Telegraph.
Two contributions relating to marriage struck me. One was a report on a course of action urged by the bishop in charge of the area in which I lived as a lay person. He is a man for whom I have immense respect and someone whom I regard as a friend.
The second was an opinion piece by a self-confessed homosexual art critic, whom I have never met, but whose comments in his specialist field I have always enjoyed.
I might have expected to find myself in agreement with the bishop and at variance with the art critic. To my great surprise, it was the other way round.
Rt Rev Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham, and seven unnamed retired bishops, had apparently urged homosexual clergy to follow their conscience and defy the Church of England’s restrictions on same-sex marriage. The comment article was by Brian Sewell: “Why I’m no convert to gay marriage”.
Related Articles
How Dylan and Caitlin pronounced their names
01 Apr 2014
Local champions opposing ugly developments fight with their hands tied
01 Apr 2014
Mr Sewell wrote: “Civil partnerships seemed the final necessary reform, giving homosexuals the right to inherit each other’s property, just as may a man and his wife, and if they want a family, there is now no barrier to them adopting children.”
I had hoped that Church of England liturgy would come to include provisions for church blessing of civil partnerships. I fear that the precipitate and profoundly undemocratic way in which the Marriage Bill was hustled into law has set obstacles in the way of persuasive change. The Church of England will now have extreme difficulty in relating to the law on marriage.
Rev John M Overton
Buxton, Derbyshire
SIR – Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, says that Tories against gay marriage must move on. I have. I no longer vote Tory.
Oliver Pickstone
York
Going up in the air
SIR – New Royal Mail prices contain large hidden rises, especially for airmail. The 10g, 40g and 80g rates are abolished, so one must pay the 20g, 60g and 100g rates instead. What used to cost 88p, £1.88 and £3.08 now cost £1.28, £2.15 and £3.48.
Dr Bernard Lamb
London SW14
BSTeething trouble
SIR – I hear people complaining of being over-tired due to the loss of an hour’s sleep. I know the arguments about British Summer Time reducing accidents. But does research show peaks in the accident rate immediately following the change?
Nigel Parsons
Cardiff
Migrant moths
SIR – My wife and I were astonished to see a hummingbird hawk moth on a daffodil on Saturday. Do they succeed in over-wintering here or have south-easterly winds brought them from the Continent?
John Rieley
Lindfield, West Sussex
Black Death awoken
SIR – Earlier this year scientists assured us that an ancient virus dormant in the permafrost posed no threat to humans as it only ever affected single-celled organisms.
How dormant is the Black Death virus disturbed in the Crossrail excavations?
Roger Gentry
Sutton at Hone, Kent
Cinderella law
SIR – Robert Buckland MP is helpfully working towards legislation to make the emotional abuse of children a criminal act. He was asked yesterday morning how emotional abuse would be identified, and he said that expert witnesses could assist.
Expert mental health clinicians have reported to the Family Courts for several years on emotional abuse. This abuse is easy to obscure and difficult to identify. The work requires highly experienced clinicians who are allowed sufficient time to interview children and parents.
This Government has cut the number of expert reports. They argue that social workers can identify mental health problems and also that judges will make decisions based on “common sense”.
But social workers are not trained in mental health. And establishing the presence of emotional abuse will not be reached by the exercise of common sense alone. The Government has driven many senior expert witnesses away from the work by severe financial cuts. Those who remain are no longer allowed sufficient time to interview troubled families.
We hope that Mr Buckland will include in the legislation provision for sufficient funding of expert mental health clinicians to do the work that is required.
Dr Judith Freedman
Convenor of the Consortium of Expert Witnesses to the Family Court
London NW3
Kilt conundrum
SIR – Peter Humphreys says of knees and toes that either both or neither should be visible at any time.
As a habitual kilt-wearer, whose wife has forbidden him from wearing sandals when wearing a kilt, what should I do?
James Willis
Glasgow
Prince in peril
SIR – While Prince George looks very nice with Lupo, you should never put a child’s face that close to a dog.
Leslie Watson
Swansea, Glamorgan
SIR – My mother-in-law advised me not to have my children’s names visible on their clothes as a stranger could address them and make them think he knows them.
Prince George is supervised all the time but other children could be in danger.
Anne Weber
Thorpe End, Norfolk
Where have all the Captain Mainwarings gone?
SIR – You report that George Osborne, the Chancellor, wants the return of the “Captain Mainwaring” type of bank manager. Sadly, this particular individual disappeared some time ago, with most of his staff. Apart from counter services, branch matters nowadays appear to be dealt with by call centres.
For several weeks now, I have been trying to contact a branch of my bank without success. In my day, I would have rung the manager concerned and sorted everything out within five minutes.
Now, letters addressed to “The Manager, X Bank, Y Branch” go straight to a call centre and even when addressed to a manager by name, they are often redirected. A bank manager used to have many years of experience, with knowledge of his patch and his customers.
Now one must deal with young “relationship managers” or “lending managers”. Targets seem to be the order of the day, despite having cost the banks millions in reparation payments after customers were sold the wrong services because of them.
Alan Hayhurst
Timperley, Cheshire
SIR – I wonder what Captain Mainwaring would have thought of quantitative easing.
William Rusbridge
Tregony, Cornwall

43 Comments
SIR – Christopher Hope reports that an independent review by Sir Terry Farrell recommends that every community should have a “champion” to fight unsightly development. Communities already have such champions; they are called district councillors.
I am a district councillor and I continually fight battles on behalf of my constituents in relation to proposed inappropriate developments. The problem is not the lack of people willing to fight and raise issues.
The problem is that the Government has introduced policies, in particular the National Planning Policy Framework, that have as a starting point a “presumption” in favour of development.
Factor in to this situation the government inspectors who decide appeals, then add the threat of costs being awarded against an authority, and it is easy to see how poor development is being allowed.
Why create another layer of involvement in the planning process? Let those of us who were elected to represent the people have a stronger voice in order to make a stand against poor design and bad planning decisions.
Cllr Jenny Roach (Liberal)
Exeter, Devon
SIR – The articles by Rupert Christiansen on the proposed new architectural horror in Edinburgh, and Jonathan Glancey on homes fit for people, both point to what has done so much to wreck our towns and cities.
Since the Fifties and Sixties, an ever more tired and soulless late modernism has become a dogma amongst architects and planners. There are steel, glass – always vast areas of glass – and concrete, with nowhere any suggestion of a human scale and character, no decoration, just soulless engineering triumphs. London has suffered especially badly.
When someone such as the Prince of Wales speaks out against this blight of soulless dullness, he is mocked. Town planners and local authorities seem all too ready to give assent to dreariness that brings in money.
One can only hope that some day soon the tide will begin to turn, so we can have new buildings of dignity and character, which do not turn their backs on human scale.
Roger Payne
London NW3
SIR – Why should local authorities not be made legally liable for damage to property arising from their having given planning permission for development on land known to be liable to flooding?
This might cause them to take a more responsible attitude to granting such permissions and make them less susceptible to greedy developers’ often dubious means of persuasion.
Sir Charles Wolseley Bt
Stafford
Irish Times:
Sir, – Phil Hogan, through the offices of a handful of councillors in Fingal, has given Dubliners a massive April Fool’s this year. Whereas 84 per cent of all Dublin’s councillors and 78 per cent of all Dubliners have indicated a will to have a democratically elected mayor, Swords County Hall has set the process back, probably for years.
The Fingal councillors in question should remember that most of their constituents are in Blanchardstown, part of the built-up west of Dublin, and see themselves as Dubliners. Blanchardstown is within the area defined by the CSO as “Dublin city and suburbs” and should remain so.
Swords County Hall has held Dublin transport back for years, calling for an underground metro to serve an outlying town, when a very good bus service will do. Now this self-centred vote brings into question Fingal councillors’ understanding of the concept of being part of a city.
Mr Hogan should now redraw the boundaries so that Swords and Fingal can continue to do the very good job they do of running a mainly rural part of Co Dublin.
That would leave the city of Dublin, including Blanchardstown and the airport, to get on with being the great European capital city its people deserve. Yours, etc,
DAVID O’CONNOR,
Dublin Institute
of Technology,
Bolton Street,
ODRAN REID,
Social, Economic and Planning Consultant,
Willow Park Grove,
Dublin 11,
PADRAIG YEATS
Sir, – When I first came to live in Santry, over 40 years ago, the city/county boundary ran between the sitting room and the hallway of my very modest house. Since then the boundary has been moved a number of times, with very little regard for the social consequences of the changes. The result has been the completely chaotic state of the northern fringe area of Dublin city. Every morning the radio informs us of the traffic build-up on the Drumcondra road between Whitehall Church and the city.
Do Fingal councillors never listen to the radio and if they do, do they wonder where all those commuters are coming from? Are they not aware of how they and their constituents are dependent on the services provided by the city? Have they got their own hospitals, third level colleges or cultural institutions?
Can they not accept that some overall authority will have to be agreed to resolve the problems that are unique to the greater Dublin area? Yours, etc,
LOUIS O’FLAHERTY,
Lorcan Drive,
Santry,
Dublin 9
Sir, – I hope that the good councillors of Fingal have the decency to include their voting record in their decision to prevent Dublin having a directly elected mayor on their posters and flyers for the upcoming local elections. In that way the people can decide if Dublin and democracy have been served by their decision. Yours, etc,
RORY J WHELAN,
Roschoill,
Drogheda,
Co Louth
Sir, Could it be that the Fine Gael councillors on Fingal County Council were influenced by a bigger animal up the food chain, to quote a phrase from the TV series House of Cards , in their No vote against a directly elected mayor for Dublin? Yours, etc,
BRIAN AHERN,
Meadow Copse,
Clonsilla,
Dublin 15.
Sir, – I got up early and ate a healthy breakfast to ensure I would be fully awake before picking up today’s edition of The Irish Times . Opening it with some trepidation, I was determined that I would not be caught out by any prank stories celebrating April Fool’s Day. This year your front page seems to have taken this tradition just a bit too far. The top “story” informs us that the Garda has been keeping thousands of possibly illegally made secret telephone recordings for years. Your next “story” describes how a mere 16 councillors from Fingal appear to have perverted the course of democracy in Dublin by denying its ordinary citizens of the right to vote for our mayor.
But really, your last “story” was just too much! “Politicians win respect of randomly chosen citizens”. Seriously? Just how gullible do you think we all are? Really, you are going to have to try harder on this next year. Yours, etc,
VICTORIA MULLEN,
Old Bawn Road,
Tallaght,
Dublin 24
Sir, – Acres of newsprint have been devoted to the conflict in Ukraine and the Russian takeover of the Crimean peninsula, with Russia being portrayed as the arch-villain of the piece. It is only now that we find a rare voice pointing out that the proposed eastward expansionism of the EU and with it Nato is a well-grounded cause of concern for Russia. Derek Scally, writing from Berlin (March 29th), quotes former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt describing Russia’s annexation of Crimea as “completely understandable”. (One is not claiming his approval thereof.)
There is widespread ignorance in the West of the history of Crimea vis a vis Russia. How many people for example, know that it is only 23 years since Crimea became part of Ukraine? Under Catherine the Great in the early 18th century the Crimean peninsula was absorbed into the Russian empire. It was strategically significant for Russia to have a naval base on the Black Sea, and the Russian navy has been in the Crimea for almost 200 years. (Incidentally, Gibraltar was “acquired” by the British empire later in the same century, also for strategic reasons. Thus did big powers protect their own interests.) Crimea then remained an independent region of the Russian Federation. Its population, language and culture were predominantly Russian.
In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev, then head of the Soviet Union, himself a Ukrainian and former leader of the Communist Party there, did an extraordinary thing (of which he could not have foreseen the political consequences). With a stroke of the pen he assigned Crimea to the Ukraine “to further brotherly love between Russians and Ukrainians”.
One wonders how he had the power to do this. However, since the Crimea and Ukraine were still part of the Soviet Union, the political change had no effect on people’s lives. It was in 1991, only 23 years ago, on the collapse of the Soviet Union, that Crimea, with its majority Russian population, found itself overnight part of a new Ukraine, a different country. Colloquially, Crimeans said they had been handed over “like a sack of potatoes”.
According as Ukraine’s new nationalism expressed itself ever more forcefully, Crimeans resented restrictions they felt demeaned them, for example the downgrading of the Russian language. They wanted Russian to remain (with Ukrainian) an official language. Given their loyalty to Russia,the result of the recent referendum was a foregone conclusion. The result was derided by Western governments and media. Crimeans however who, strange as it may seem to Western observers, do not want to join the EU, are grateful to Putin who enabled them, after a 23-year “exile” to return to the Russian motherland. Yours, etc,
MARIE C O’BYRNE,
Louisville,
Monaghan

Sir, – Is it not somewhat ironic that the Fianna Fáil spokesperson on justice is complaining that the former Garda commissioner was apparently sacrificed in order to protect the Minister for Justice when, in 2005, a former secretary-general of the Department of Health and Children was sacrificed in a blatant attempt to protect the political standing of the now Fianna Fáil leader, Mr Martin.
Indeed, in relation to Fianna Fáil’s call for the resignation of Mr Shatter – before the various inquiries and the commission of investigation into the penalty points and phone recording issues are completed and reported upon – it is worthwhile to recall that back in 2005 in relation to the Travers report on nursing home charges, RTÉ reported Mr Martin as saying that the opposition’s attacks on him on this matter had no credibility, because they called for his resignation before the report was published. As the seanfhocail goes, “what’s sauce for the goose …” Yours, etc,
JOHN GILLEN,
Downside Park,
Skerries,
Co Dublin
Sir, – There is a lot of noise being made about appointing a new commissioner. Surely the establishment of the Garda Reserve included a reserve commissioner — can we not just have that one? Yours, etc,
DECLAN KEANE,
Prosperous,
Co Kildare
Sir, – Anyone following media coverage of the Garda commissioner’s retirement could be forgiven for thinking that he cannot have had any operational responsibility for illegal phone taping. Paradoxically, many of those media commentators now bemoaning his apparent martyrdom are the very ones who had previously been most vociferous in calling for his head. Yours, etc,
PETER MOLLOY,
Haddington Park,
Glenageary,
Co Dublin
Sir, – Sources close to me are fed up listening to sources close to the former Garda commissioner. Yours, etc,
GERRY O’DONNELL,
Castleknock Meadows,
Dublin 15
Sir, – According to Frances Ruane and Emer Smyth, the ESRI Post Primary Longitudinal Study demonstrates that “the current Junior Cycle is not providing an engaging and challenging experience for young people”. The reason promulgated for its inadequacies is the fact that a considerable amount of the current teaching cycle is devoted to “preparing for the Junior Certificate examination, spending extra time on study and grinds, and increased class time on ‘practising’ exam questions”.
This being so, the central issue is surely the nature of the methods used to assess the learning rather than the quality of that learning or the teaching behind it. It is worrying therefore that the new Junior Cycle that will be taught from September is currently without an agreed or even suggested framework of how exactly it will be assessed.
As a teacher of English who has undergone all the currently available in-service training – a one day seminar – I have major concerns about the way in which the Department of Education has gone about its reform of the Junior Cycle. While I welcome many aspects of the new curriculum, I suspect that those behind it have not fully considered the rationale behind much of it. We have been informed that the new methods of assessment are still being determined while Ruairí Quinn is simultaneously asserting that the ship has sailed. Is it not foolhardy to set sail without knowing one’s destination, or that the new destination is going to be an improvement on the old? Yours, etc,
CAROL McGUIRE,
Clogher Road,
Dublin 12
Sir, – Tom Arnold, chairperson of the Constitutional Convention, and indeed of the Irish Times Trust, wrote (April 1st ) of the apparent success and inclusiveness of the convention.
Perhaps it was a success. Perhaps too, next time, it might include some representation from the just under 1,000 elected local government politicians who have an equal – but different – mandate from TDs and a greater mandate in this Republic than the appointed Senators and Northern Ireland representatives who were so included. The involvement of other citizens was a welcome development. Given the specific recognition of local government in the Constitution that exclusion was not. This point was made to the convention while it was sitting — we still await a reply. Yours, etc,
Cllr DERMOT LACEY,
66 Beech Hill Drive,
Donnybrook,
Dublin 4

Sir, – With regard to Chris Goodey’s comment (Letters, April 1st) that the Minister for Health’s statement that GPs in Ireland are among the highest- earning doctors in Europe is “obtusely untrue”, I remember reading a survey many years ago that medical card patients were worth, on average, around €90,000 a year to a GP practice. So many years later, €250,000 a year seems to me to be probably just about right. Considering that patients without medical cards, a big percentage now, pay on average €50 for a visit, I think the dogs in the street know that most of the doctors in general practice in this country are very highly paid. Yours, etc,
BRIAN McDEVITT,
Ardconnaill,
Glenties,
Co Donegal

Sir,  – I was pleasantly surprised that you published the letter from Jim Stack regarding the lack of media coverage of the views of “50 per cent of those who actually vote”.   I cannot understand how it is acceptable that these views are consistently ignored in our national media.   While grateful for this first step in acknowledging this imbalance, may I look forward to it being redressed in the future by The Irish Times ?
Yours, etc,
MARY STEWART,
Ardeskin,
Donegal Town

Sir, – I couldn’t agree more with Frank Byrne (Letters, April 1st) regarding women applying make-up on the bus. I had the misfortune recently to be seated beside a young lady who had the audacity to embellish her eyelashes with mascara while I was eating a box of chips and chicken nuggets. Mascara doesn’t go too well with salt and vinegar, or indeed sweet and sour sauce! There was a time when such behaviour wouldn’t have been tolerated. Yours, etc,
PAUL DELANEY,
Beacon Hill,
Dalkey,
Co Dublin

 
Irish Independent:
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Think the unthinkable
The Lord Mayor and the burghers in Cork City Hall have decided in their expansive wisdom and generosity that President Michael D Higgins should shortly be given the Freedom of the City.
No great harm in that, you might say – the only problem is that we, the ordinary people of Cork, will, as usual, end up footing the rather expensive bill through our rates, property and other taxes.
Conversely, there is no money for those citizens who are crippled with negative equity and unsustainable and crucifying debts, no money for the many children daily going hungry to school, no money for the homeless, the aged and the disabled or the thousands who are jobless and in despair.
No money to bring home the thousands of our young and not so young who have been forced to emigrate. No money for our struggling small businesses or to fix our potholed and broken roads.
Miraculously, however, we have plenty of money for a meaningless shindig in the present economic climate and in the throes of a raging recession.
It is, of course, in microcosm, another measure of the disdain and disconnect that those in positions of power and influence have for the lives and travails of ordinary citizens who have been force fed on debilitating austerity for the last six years.
No doubt the people of Cork and elsewhere will express their feelings on this and other matters next May.
JOHN HEALY
BISHOPSTOWN ROAD, CORK
HEARTWARMING STORY
* Reading the Irish Independent on March 24, a beautiful photograph on page 14 caught my attention; surgeon Pat Kiely and formerly conjoined twins Hussein and Hassan Benhaffaf from Cork.
Speaking as a co-founder of charity Straight Ahead (which I confess I was unaware of), Dr Kiely referred to problems caused by delays in carrying out spinal surgery on children at Crumlin and Tallaght hospitals.
Dr Kiely and his fellow surgeons have already given up their free time to operate on 26 children at no cost to the parents.
The twins’ mother, Angie, was quoted as saying “their generosity moves me . . . what they do is life changing”.
It was heartening to hear of such dedication and generosity at a time when we have been bombarded with stories of the obscenely high executive salaries/pensions in organisations like CRC, Rehab, etc – some even having the nerve to tell us they should be earning more and are entitled to bonuses but have (generously) not taken them for four years!
Do these people realise or care about the enormous damage being done to the whole charity sector?
Well done to Dr Kiely and fellow surgeons for the wonderful work you do.
JOHN O’DONOGHUE
MOHILL, CO LEITRIM
HELPING CHILDREN
* I write regarding Sinead Moriarty’s comment piece entitled ‘We’re too busy being paranoid to help a child in distress’ (Irish Independent, March 28).
About three years ago, I noticed two small children playing on a narrow path outside a newsagent’s beside a very busy roundabout in south Co Dublin. I advised the older one, a five-year-old boy, to please be very careful as it was just at dusk and traffic was heavy.
They were still there when I came out and I asked if their mother was in the shop. They said, ‘No, she’s gone to work’. It transpired that the five-year-old was ‘looking after’ his three-year-old sister. I took them to the far side of the road where the path was much wider and safer, and decided I should wait with them until a parent arrived to collect them.
Around 20 minutes later, I asked the boy if he knew where his house was and he pointed to the far side of the roundabout. It seems he had navigated this roundabout safely earlier!
We began to walk, me hoping we were going the right way, and the children chatting away happily. We reached their house about 10 minutes later to find people running around frantically looking for them, including their father who had just fallen asleep in the chair and was horrified to know they had gone so far from home.
I was very glad that I was the person who found them, but the thing is it never crossed my mind to call the police or that my motives might be suspect to anyone. I just wanted to know that they got safely home.
As a mother of four adult children, I would always be very aware of a child with apparently no adult accompanying them.
LILIAN CHAMBERS
BLACKROCK, DUBLIN
TIME FOR THE UNSELFIE
* The so-called selfie in our brave new world serves as the ultimate distraction. One’s self.
This, if I may say so, to use a word of some disputation currently, is little short of being “disgusting”.
Great hardship is being endured by men, women and children in this country and in countries across the world, and to propagate the concept that the self or narcissistic preoccupation should prevail is to veer dangerously close to fascism.
It is a time not for the selfie but for the antithesis of the selfie.
The unselfie.
JOHN KELLY
MULLINGAR, CO WESTMEATH
21ST-CENTURY THINKING
* There is need for far fresher ideas than those implemented by Government (Editorial, Irish Independent, March 31) to overcome the unemployment problems that are accumulating in an entirely unprecedented work situation.
Work is being eliminated on a truly massive scale by rampant automation and much more than stopgap programmes for a few is needed.
There is need on a world basis, or at least a large trading bloc such as the EU or US, to move to much shorter hours, longer holidays and earlier retirement for all.
The maths are simple; more people working less or fewer people working more.
There is also need for Government to generate much more public service employment. Private enterprise will require fewer people even working shorter hours as technology advances.
Employment change is the most urgent crisis we face; greater even than climate change. If employment escalates out of control, as it will without drastic action, and society breaks down, climate change will matter only to the birds.
We need 21st-century thinking for 21st-century employment. There seems little sign of any yet.
PADRAIC NEARY
TUBBERCURRY, CO SLIGO
Irish Independent

3April 2014 Quiet day
I go all the way around the park listening to the Navy Lark. Our heroes are in trouble, again. They have to tach Navigation Priceless
Mary better potter around
Scrabble today, I win by three points, Perhaps Mary will win tomorrow.

Obituary:

Captain Harry Beckingham – obituary
Captain Harry Beckingham was a bomb disposal officer who dealt with lethal butterflies in Hull and survived gas poisoning in Ilford

Captain Harry Beckingham
6:17PM BST 02 Apr 2014
4 Comments
Captain Harry Beckingham, who has died on his 94th birthday, was a bomb disposal officer in the Second World War.
On the outbreak of war, Beckingham, a draughtsman fresh from technical college, was posted to 35 Bomb Disposal Section, which was subsequently incorporated into 5 Bomb Disposal (BD) Company RE.
He was given a day’s training at Sheffield, at the end of which, as he said afterwards: “We were given a drawing which showed how to deal with an unexploded bomb.” This depicted a wall being constructed around the bomb with corrugated metal and sandbags, with an area left so that a man could crawl inside and place a charge.
After the start of the Blitz, Beckingham worked on unexploded bombs first in the north of London and then – after moving to the Duke of York Barracks – in the West End, Fulham and Victoria.
One day his section was called out to the centre of Ilford to dig for a bomb when “out of the blue a German plane swooped down on us, machine guns blazing as he roared past”. Beckingham dived for cover, while the rest of his squad took shelter in nearby shop doorways.
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The next thing he knew, he was waking up in hospital. It turned out that he had fallen into a concealed camouflet – a chamber filled with odourless carbon dioxide created when a bomb exploded underground.
Such accidents almost invariably proved fatal. The bottom of the hole could be 30ft deep, and there was often no way of knowing that the bomb had already exploded. Rescue attempts were forbidden because they usually only added to the casualties.
Fortunately for Beckingham, a policeman had seen his head suddenly disappear, and his colleagues had rushed over and pulled him out — although not before he had breathed several lungfuls of the deadly gas.
Henry William Beckingham was born at Ludlow, Shropshire, on February 28 1920 and educated locally. He was commissioned in 1943 and posted to 12 BD Company RE in Leeds. That summer he was kept busy clearing butterfly bombs from the hedges and ditches around Hull. He had to use straw, set alight, to burn off the thick undergrowth so that he did not miss any of these lethal devices.
In September 1944 he was posted to Task Force 135, which had assembled at Plymouth for the liberation of the Channel Islands. He was involved in clearing British minefields in the Weymouth and Penzance areas until May 1945, when he embarked for Jersey as commander of a detachment of 24 BD Platoon.
He went to the Pomme d’Or Hotel on the esplanade and took prisoner the head of the German civil administration on the island. The hotel was to be used for the Task Force’s commander, and he checked the place for booby traps.
Beckingham took his unit to Guernsey at the end of the month and was involved in clearing mines and bombs along the coasts of the Channel Islands until May 1946, when he was demobilised in the rank of captain.
After the war he worked for the building division of English China Clay at St Austell, Cornwall, and subsequently as a consultant at Ilkley, Yorkshire. Settled in retirement at a village in Cumbria, he enjoyed sailing, gardening, and travelling.
Beckingham published Living with Danger: Memoirs of a Bomb Disposal Officer (1997) and Achtung! Minen! Guernsey (2005).
Harry Beckingham married first, in 1945, Joan Walker, who predeceased him. He married, secondly, in 1990, Mavis Hayward, who survives him with a son and a daughter from his first marriage.
Captain Harry Beckingham, born February 28 1920, died February 28 2014
Guardian:
Once again we can applaud the UK government and its partners for taking a global lead on the rights of women and girls (Jolie steps up campaign to eradicate use of mass rape as weapon of war, 31 March). The London summit in June will bring unprecedented focus to sexual violence in conflict and, for that, Angelina Jolie and William Hague deserve great credit.
As the Guardian points out, the challenge will be to translate public attention into lasting change. In that mission, I believe one thing is particularly crucial: engaging youth. Let’s make sure that young women – and men – are given the platform in June so that they are not passive victims but agents of change. Ms Jolie and Mr Hague have, with others, led the way. Now, to ensure a future free from sexual violence in conflict, the experiences and recommendations of young people affected by these horrific crimes must shape the summit’s outcome.
Tanya Barron
Chief executive, Plan UK
Shirley Williams asserts (Letters, 2 April) that ex-Soviet satellite members of the EU are “bound to democracy and the rule of law”. Would that include the laws in Estonia and Latvia that deprive native-born residents of citizenship rights on the basis of ethnicity?
Ian Sutherland
Bury, Lancashire
• The gift of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s eminently re-readable short novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (What book would you send to a prisoner?, 1 April) would encourage any prisoner, like Shukhov in the gulag, to develop a personal code of survival under the regime inside while purposefully preparing for release into a much harsher environment outside.
Dr Mark Stroud
Llantrisant, Glamorgan
• Experience suggests that, for some prisoners, Jane Austen is just what they’re waiting for. One of our reading groups at a women’s prison reported a lively session with Pride and Prejudice. “That first scene, guy walks in and says no one here worth dancing with – all been there, haven’t we?”
Professor Jenny Hartley
Prison reading groups, University of Roehampton
• Dangling participle alert (Evans tells jury of ‘absolute hell’ of sex allegations, 1 April): “While giving explicit details of how he and the young man performed sex acts, the judge stepped in to halt the questioning by Evans’s barrister.”
John Sibbald
Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear
• Surely conscious uncoupling (Letters, 31 March) is what the railwayman does between the engine and the carriages?
Stuart Waterworth
Tavistock, Devon
• Flintshire has the Devil’s Village (Letters, 28 March), but we are the only place in the world to have the place names Purgatory and Paradise just a few miles apart. We’ll be walking this route next All Souls’ Day as part of the Laurie Lee festival: cordial and indulgent invitations to all.
Stuart Butler
Stroud, Gloucestershire
• And when in grumpy mood, we’ve been known to take a seaside break at Buggerru in south-west Sardinia.
Tony Scull
Ilkley, West Yorkshire
Your report (Scotland plans to move to right after independence, 1 April) reminded me of a similar decision, back in the 1970s, by an ex-colonial country, determined to throw off the shackles. To smooth the transition, it was suggested that cars should make the switch first, followed by buses and trucks a week later.
Barry Wendt
Ambleside, Cumbria
• I presume there is a Möbius strip inside the traffic interchange towers shown in your illustrations of Scottish plans for the road system after independence? Without such a geometric device, the traffic would emerge on the same side of the road.
David Reed
London
• 1 April. Page 3: a recommended diet, consisting almost entirely of green vegetables and warning of the dangers posed by dried figs. Page 5: Scotland, after independence, would adopt driving on the right and introduce vast spiral interchanges on its borders. Page 6: Phyllida Barlow’s latest sculpture, Dock, which appeared to be the contents of a colossal builder’s skip emptied into a room at Tate Britain. Which was the spoof?
James Hornsby
Abington, Northampton
• Every 1 April, Guardian readers need to beware of the spoof story. This year it was just too easy to spot: “Osborne vows to create full employment.”
Anthony Matthew
Leicester
• Two fools in the news on 1 April: the first sells off a 300-year-old national asset at nearly half price; the second lauds the deviousness, low cunning and total untrustworthiness of President Putin. I really do believe that the average market trader and person in the street would apply more intelligence and common sense to their analysis than this prize pair put together.
Mike Saunders
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire

ms/Demotix/Corbis
Ken Loach’s article (Labour is not the solution, 28 March) has received a fantastic response – 250 people joined Left Unity over the weekend, when we held our first national conference.
But Labour supporters would rather see us pack up our things and go home. They tell us not to rock the boat for fear of letting the Tories in next year. New Labour was founded on the assumption that Labour could tack as far as it liked to the right and still count on the left vote for lack of an alternative. And tack right it did. Now we have a Labour party signed up to Conservative spending plans, privatisation and a benefits cap that will hit disabled people hard and push 345,000 children into poverty. And whatever you do, don’t mention the (Iraq) war.
Left Unity’s conference in Manchester on Saturday agreed to campaign against austerity and war, to introduce a 35-hour week and a mandatory living wage, and to renationalise the rail and energy companies. These are policies that the vast majority of British people support but Labour, ever in the pockets of big business, will not even consider them. What does this say about the Labour party today? What does it say about the state of British democracy? This is exactly why we need Left Unity.
Salman Shaheen
Principal speaker, Left Unity
• As every year passes, the influence of the left in the Labour party diminishes; it’s almost non-existent now. In 1994, Ralph Miliband wrote in Socialism for a Sceptical Age: “The emergence of new socialist parties in many countries is one of the notable features of the present time … their growth is essential if the left is to prosper.”
The parties Ralph Miliband was referring to have developed into the Party of the European Left, an alliance of left parties in European countries. Opinion polls indicate that those parties, which have a clear policy of opposing austerity and privatisation, and which support the re-founding of Europe on a socialist basis, will get increased support in the forthcoming European elections. Syriza in Greece has 23.9% support, Izquierda Unida in Spain 14.1%, Front de Gauche in France 9% and Die Link in Germany 8%.
In Britain we have no opportunity of voting for such a party. Left Unity’s conference agreed to support the Party of the European Left’s call for a refounding of Europe on a socialist basis. For socialists in the Labour party there is an alternative – Left Unity.
David Melvin
Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester
• In threatening to split Unite from Labour (Back workers or lose election, Miliband told, 2 April), my friend Len McCluskey would be sadly destined to repeat history. Small splinter left parties in Britain have never succeeded, only played into the hands of the Tories by dividing their opponents and undermining the ability of Labour – the only party capable of forming an alternative government – to win. Far too many of my constituents, like many others, are being devastated by this Tory-Lib Dem government and are desperate to defeat them.
Peter Hain MP
Lab, Neath
• Deborah Orr wrote a very interesting article (Workers are treated with contempt in Britain. This should be Labour’s focus, 29 March), which, if I read her right, called for what at one time was described as a “middle way” between adherence to the state and reliance on the market. Leave aside the fact that her knock at New Labour may well have been misplaced (I do not believe for a moment that the Brown government was defeated in 2010 because it was New Labour), and it is possible to see that the critique she offers has been debated for the past 30 years. The battle lines of the 1980s were about a throwback to Friedrich Hayek and the “liberated individual” of Margaret Thatcher’s free-market values, and old Labour with its paternalistic, top-down approach to solving genuine problems.
The question that Orr did not answer is how you mobilise the power of people in their own lives with the influence of the state to tackle vested interests, from wherever they come, and to unite people against such vested interests across national boundaries in a rapidly developing global power struggle. The truism that all of us have to address in politics is: “Those who have power are those most likely to be in power.”
David Blunkett MP
Lab, Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report makes it clear that the future of world agriculture is precarious (UN warning over world’s food supplies, 31 March). The international mechanisms to address the complex challenges remain weak, and the UK must, as it has done in energy policy, show leadership. We need to re-engineer the UK’s food and farming system, not only because we can no longer look to global markets for a safe, secure food future, but also because we need that system to play its full part in adapting to, and reducing the severity of, climate change.
As a priority, less food must be wasted from field to fork: producing more is pointless when so much energy, effort and land is squandered through waste. Decarbonising food supply across the supply chain to cut greenhouse gas emissions is essential, but we also need to give farmers incentives to manage land in ways that store carbon to cut emissions further. Last, we need to reappraise the supply of farmland as a long-term productive resource: in a world of falling crop yields, volatile markets and unpredictable weather, farmland cannot for much longer be regarded as simply ripe for “development”.
Graeme Willis
Campaign to Protect Rural England
• If most of those working on an ageing aeroplane warned the owners there was more than a 50% chance of it crashing, then the plane would be grounded. As most climate scientists now say there is a more than 75% chance of average global temperatures exceeding a 4% rise by the end of this century, if not sooner, we surely want to take drastic action as soon as possible. The costs of not reducing greenhouse gases will far outweigh the cost of investment in alternative sources of energy. Governments, transnational corporations and others need to act now to prevent catastrophic global warming.
But they need us to tell them so – now. As well as emphasising the urgency for action, we also need to work on building up the resilience of local communities to adapt. Local communities as well as nations need to come together to work on local projects to respond creatively to climate change. Green or environmental groups, such as Transition Towns, that are already doing this need greater local and national support. We need to work together for the common good, for example, to promote local food, and we cannot afford to wait to do this until an emergency happens, such as the floods on the Somerset Levels.
Rev Timothy Fox
Lancaster
• The letters from Raymond Blanc et al and Caroline Lucas MP (1 April) call for action to combat climate change, but their suggestions will not achieve what is needed. Caroline Lucas rightly says that “80% of known fossil fuel reserves” will have to stay in the ground if we are to tackle the problem by cutting emissions. However, as China, India, Brazil and others continue to expand their energy use massively, it is now beyond all reasonable doubt that nothing like 80% will stay unburnt, even in the unlikely event that countries such as the UK were to reduce their usage to zero.
Environmentalists, businesses, governments and the UN now need to accept that the only feasible solutions are to remove greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere by means of reforestation and carbon scrubbing, and to cool the planet artificially by means of geo-engineering.
Richard Mountford
Tonbridge, Kent
• The latest pre-election trial balloon from David Cameron (Tories plan new attack on windfarms, 2 April) reflects a party that is not seeking a sensible energy policy for Britain. Instead it is clear that the Conservative party has adopted a strategy of chasing after Ukip, seeking to be more extreme. It seems that the fanatical opposition to windfarms from some on the right might soon prompt David “hug a husky” Cameron to be pictured instead taking an axe to a wind turbine, because the floated policy suggests that the Tories want to see existing turbines pulled down.
Britain trails nearly all the European Union in providing renewable energy – we can boast of being ahead only of those global giants Malta and Luxembourg – meanwhile, states such as the US and China are surging ahead with renewables. The refusal to provide a secure, supportive investment environment for renewables in the UK risks losing opportunities for jobs and businesses.
Natalie Bennett
Leader, Green party
• The septennial report of the IPPC adds further weight, if any was needed, to the assessment of risks posed by climate change, not only globally but to the UK economy, environment and society, not in some distant era but in the near future with potentially damaging effects on future generations. The first obligation on politicians of whatever hue is the protection of their citizens. In reality, whatever consensus existed in the UK has effectively dissipated and decisive action seems as far away as ever. We have the European elections pending and the general election in 12 months . Who would bet that the global climate and the coming storm will register on the electoral radar? To continue to dissemble and prevaricate in the face of risks to national security and wellbeing of this magnitude would surely be a criminal abrogation of political responsibility.
I call on government, together with all the parties, to initiate, facilitate and fund a sustained national debate on the risks and options, conducted in regional venues and across the web, between business, civil society and the scientific community between now and May 2015.
Neil Blackshaw
Little Easton, Essex
• Is it too much to hope that the catastrophic effects predicted for climate change later this century will feature in party manifestos next year? Or will this generation of political leaders go down in what remains of human history as those who lacked the courage and honesty to face the world’s greatest crisis?
Rev Neil Richardson
Ludlow, Shropshire
• One thing missing from the climate change debate is any suggestion that we might address world population growth. Surely it must be obvious that this crisis would be easier to cope with if population was stable or declining. But no one mentions this. Why?
Roger Plenty
Stroud, Gloucestershire

Tony Benn always tried to argue a case through reason rather than endlessly repeated slogans. His approach to political discourse was rooted deeply in his sense of history, as in the campaign against the banning of Peter Wright’s controversial book Spycatcher. At a protest event at Speakers’ Corner in ‘Hyde Park, London, in August 1987 we each took it in turns to read aloud some of the more explosive extracts from the book in defiance of government injunctions preventing publication of any part of it, with its extraordinary revelations about alleged illegality by the intelligence services.
Tony’s presence probably deterred the police, who could be seen nervously consulting with their superiors on their walkie-talkies over whether to arrest us. In a fine piece of oratory he inveighed against state censorship, invoking article one of the bill of rights of 1689. He said he was speaking out as a citizen, as an MP, as a privy counsellor and “as a member of the committee of privileges of the House of Commons to warn that we cannot, and should not accept this restriction on our liberty”.

Independent:
Your editorial of 2 April is absolutely right to say that “science is not opinion” and to identify the climate change deniers as coming from the political right.
The reason the BBC cannot find experts in climate change to argue against the phenomenon is that no scientist worthy of the name would do so. What we are seeing is a new variation on the science-versus-religion debate: the god of the new dogma is the free-market.
The deniers are nearly always very comfortably off, or supported by billionaires such as the Koch brothers. In their arguments they are wrong about almost every detail except the truth which really haunts them. It is that their free-market model, based on unfettered pillaging of our planet’s resources, has to end if climate change is to be checked.
If not, we are headed for the greatest extinction of species (including our own) since the Permian era. However, like all religious fanatics, the deniers would no doubt consider that a small price to pay to protect the sanctity of their dogma.
Steve Edwards, Wivelsfield Green, East Sussex
Kate O’Mara’s theatre rescue
We at the Kings Theatre in Southsea are deeply saddened at the death of Kate O’Mara (Obituary, 1 April). Kate spent much of her youth at the Kings, which was built by her great grandfather in 1907 and later run by her actor/manager grandparents.
She loved theatre generally, and the Kings in particular. She performed here many times. We particularly remember her outstanding performances in The Taming of the Shrew and An Ideal Husband.
When the theatre was in its direst need – in danger of being converted into a theme pub or, worse, demolished – Kate became a supporter of Akter (Action for Kings Theatre Restoration) and, later, a patron of the rescued and rejuvenated theatre.
I know Kate was delighted that her beloved theatre is going from strength to strength. We will miss her passion and enthusiasm.
Paddy Drew, Southsea, Hampshire
Seven a day? Who can afford it?
We hear that if we eat seven portions of  fruit and veg a day we will live longer. Well, I’m afraid that all but the wealthy are going to die before their time.
The government recommendation of five a day was bad enough, and the poorer in our society could not have managed that. Has anyone who makes these recommendations ever thought where the money is going to come from? Anyone who actually goes shopping will realise that five a day for a family of four for seven days will cost more than their budget for an entire week’s groceries. We are now seeing fruit sold at prices per item instead of per weight.
They should think before making silly recommendations that are beyond so many people’s reach.
Dave Croucher, Doncaster
Public health doctors appear to have been taken in by the report regarding the benefits of eating 10 portions of fruit and vegetables a day.
Only a moment’s reflection is needed to realise that those eating larger amounts of fresh fruit and veg are likely to be people who understand the benefit of a healthy lifestyle and can afford to pay for it. So they are probably, also, doing the other things that are part of a healthy lifestyle, such as taking exercise, not smoking, and drinking alcohol in moderation; in addition, they are likely to have the knowledge to seek medical advice for early intervention for any health problems.
By increasing the quantity of fresh fruit and veg consumed from one portion a day to seven or more, you may improve your health and therefore reduce your risk of dying, but until all the other factors have been excluded you cannot know by how much. It’s misleading to suggest that we only have to change our diet to reduce our risk of dying by  42 per cent.
Michael Charvonia, Southgate, Middlesex
Two of the top 20 charities, receiving £100m-plus, are Cancer UK and the British Heart Foundation. I assume people hope these research charities will find the answer to these endemic ills. Yet how upset and angry people get when told we are eating junk and that eating healthily may well help us avoid suffering these diseases.
I suppose the real answer is that people want to go on eating a high meat, sugar, fat, salt, alcohol, soda-pop and refined-grain diet and do as little exercise as possible. They give to these medical charities in the hope they will come up with a pill, potion or procedure that allows them not to change their unhealthy lifestyle.
Sara Starkey, Tonbridge, Kent
Squash is not just for toffs
Squash may be “too brutal” for Roger Federer, but Lalit Bhadresha (letter, 26 March) makes a good case for bringing this sport into the Olympics. Sadly, here in Britain squash has the reputation of being a game for toffs and is little played by teenagers in the state education system.
But squash is easy to learn, can be played all year round, develops agility as well as stamina, and unlike contact sports can be enjoyed throughout our working lives and beyond. It would be relatively inexpensive to incorporate a couple of squash courts whenever a new school is built, and this would be a very cost-effective way of developing physical fitness in young people.
David Hewitt, London N1
Childless marriage is still marriage
Commenting on gay marriage, Kevin O’Donnell (letter, 31 March) defines marriage as the potential for children. That is a dangerous path. We struggled with infertility for several years. If it had been proved that one of us was infertile and therefore lacked the potential to have children, would we have been less married or not married by this definition? Infertility is a big enough cross to carry without adding this idea to it.
Brian Dalton, Sheffield
England’s share of humiliation
I think the performance of the cricket team this winter has finally sent Stephen Brenkley over the edge (2 April). Waitrose may or may not regret sponsoring the England cricket team, but they won’t be bothered about the share price as they are part of the employee-owned John Lewis Partnership.
Rob Edwards, Harrogate, North Yorkshire
Every student’s education benefits us all
I am shocked that you should defend tuition fees (editorial, 1 April).
Who, among those who support tuition fees, would like to live in a society without education – a society without architects, engineers or doctors? Who can imagine what such a society would be like?
There would be much less informed discourse, more superstition, no scientific medical care or ways of fighting disease, no safely designed buildings and none of the fruits of technological progress that make the life we know possible. Who wants to step into a lift built by an unqualified engineer?
It would be a return to the jungle. We all need education, whether we take it personally or not. When we visit a doctor, switch on a light, flush a toilet, take a ship, a plane or any vehicle we are benefiting from education.
Everybody who takes an education is benefiting us all and we should all be grateful; we all need educated people. It is those who do not take an education who should be penalised.
What sense is there in making education obligatory until a certain age and then obliging people to pay to continue?
The goal of education should be simple – to nurture everyone according to their ability. The better we do that the better our society will be. Education is the best and most important investment we can make.
Dennis Leachman, Reading
You ask “How can it possibly be fair for those without a university degree to stump up for the income-boosting education of those who do?” (editorial, 1 April). That is entirely reasonable.
But should you not also ask “How can it possibly be fair for those graduates who repay their debt to society by doing comparatively low-paid work in nursing, teaching or social work to stump up for the income-boosting education of highly-paid graduates in banking or hedge fund management?”
The answer to both questions is the same. The fair way to pay for higher education is to use the income tax system to ensure that the more a graduate is paid, the more they pay towards the HE costs of all graduates, while non-graduates are left with nothing to pay towards HE costs at all.
What is blatantly unfair is to charge all graduates the same £9,000 per year, regardless of how much financial benefit they gain from their graduate status.
David Rendel, (Higher education spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, 2003-2005), Upper Bucklebury, West Berkshire

Times:
Sat-nav is marvellous when it works, but when it stops we have to fall back on old tech
Sir, Maps are not just a means of getting from A to B; they are a source of interest and pleasure (report, Mar 31; letters, Apr 1 & 2). Perusing a map, one can discover lanes and byways, remote villages, churches, monuments and much more. We live in a county with very many little lanes, and our map-reading friends arrive on time while our sat-nav friends get lost.
Joan Westall
Newton Ferrers, Devon
Sir, It’s not just roadworks which are not recognised by sat-nav. En route to a meeting in Burton on Trent last week I was held up by a lorry fire on the A38 near Sutton Coldfield. As the diversion signs were deficient, I switched on the sat-nav.
How I wished afterwards that I had stopped for just a few minutes to consult the map. The satnav did not know where the accident was, nor even that one may not turn right across a major dual carriageway. By contrast, the map showed a simple detour.
Sat-navs certainly have their place, but the humble map, though several years out of date, is still a worthwhile travelling companion.
Howard Lamb
Wargrave, Berks
Sir, I am curious how Bernard Kingston (letter, Apr 1) with his memorised road map could outwit the sat-navs of his fellow guests travelling through “numerous” roadworks to a central London location. This would require memorising a broad swathe of the road map along the route. Some months ago I was travelling north on the A34 from Winchester to Oxford only to be confronted by a sign on the approach to the M4 warning me that the A34 was closed north of the M4. The resultant diversion was over 30 miles long and I was more than glad not to stop to consult maps but let the sat-nav take over.
Roger Porter
Whaddon, Bucks
Sir, I can assure Bernard Kingston that endeavouring to read an inverted A-Z by the feeble interior car light when trying to navigate in the pouring rain to a house-warming party did not promote any euphoric feelings of spatial awareness in my breast.
Passing the same garage for the second time I was about to abandon the whole expedition when I remembered the much maligned
sat-nav in the boot. Typing in the post code I was immediately greeting by an encouraging dulcet female voice suggesting that I “perform a U-turn, when possible” and was then seamlessly directed to the front door of the location, where I arrived neither hot nor bothered.
Kay Bagon
Radlett, Herts
Sir, Mr Kingston drove to a social engagement in “central London”. Where the hell did he park?
Graham Steel
Dover, Kent
Sir, My recent experiences in the narrow streets of Willesden Green, North London, suggest that throwing away one’s A-Z might be premature. In one week I twice met gigantic lorries advised by their
sat-navs to head for a particular road in NW2 which isn’t wide enough to swing a cat, let alone manoeuvre a juggernaut.
Both drivers very much appreciated my offer to guide them to the other Chandos Road, which is in NW10.
Hefty Employment Tribunal fees have wiped out 80 per cent of claims — good news for unscrupulous employers
Sir, The Government’s own figures showed that its introduction of Employment Tribunal fees of between £390 and £1,200 in July 2013 have wiped out 80 per cent of claims. Most of the claims that have gone were brought by employees alone and without lawyers.
The shop assistant whose boss didn’t pay him the minimum wage, the pregnant woman underpaid for maternity leave, the factory worker denied proper holiday pay, the transport worker sacked for raising a safety concern, the abused migrant worker — they are just not bringing their claims. The effect on women has been to reduce sex discrimination claims by 77 per cent and the effect on other minority groups such as the disabled has been almost as severe.
Should business rejoice at the lower costs in not fighting claims? Not the many good employers I work for. The cowboys are now waking up to a new Victorian landscape where they can strip employees of statutory rights and discriminate, hire and fire at will safe in the knowledge that justice has been locked up behind a pay wall unaffordable to four out of five members of their staff.
I call on the Government to review the effect of fees urgently. The facts now show that tribunal fees are bad for business, bad for hard-working families and have destroyed access to employment justice in England, Wales and Scotland.
Caspar Glyn, QC
Chair, The Industrial Law Society
The National Childbirth Trust rejects the accusation that it is oldfashioned or locked into outdated ways
Sir, Your report “Inside the Bump Class” (Apr 1) gives an outdated view of NCT — we have changed a great deal since the 1950s. We aim to help all parents to be informed about their choices, and we offer information to cover all eventualities that expectant and new parents face: caesarean sections, other interventions and pain relief, as well as straightforward births and home births.
And because not all parents can afford antenatal classes, we provide courses at a discounted rate and many free classes commissioned by the NHS.
Belinda Phipps
NCT
Rebels don’t have big causes like the rebels of the past — but each generation finds something to get heated about
Sir, “Today’s rebels have been left without a cause”, says Hugo Rifkind (Opinion, Apr 1). This was echoed not only by Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953) but Jimmy Porter in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956), when he observed: “People of our generation aren’t able to die for good causes any longer. We had all that done for us, in the Thirties and Forties . . . There aren’t any good brave causes left.”
However, it does seem that each new generation finds itself a cause — even if it’s only climate change.
m. g. sherlock
Colwyn Bay, North Wales
The energy market shambles stems from weak regulation by bodies who put suppliers’ interests ahead of customers’ needs
Sir, The shambles in the energy market stems mainly from weak regulation but also from a succession of inadequate and badly run consumer bodies. Energywatch never found direction and Consumer Focus had too broad a remit to even begin to understand the energy market. They were out of their depth even on some basic issues.
Ofgem has lacked firm leadership since the tenure of Sir James McKinnon in the 1990s and instead of steering the industry in the right direction it consulted and consulted, and nothing got done.
In my own area of interest I am appalled that Ofgem has not stood up for consumers on billing accuracy. Smart meters will cost consumers £12 billion but they will not address any of the billing errors in gas. This is not a minor issue that can be ignored as some gas users could be paying 10 per cent more for the same level of usage.
So what should be done until the Competition and Markets Authority completes it investigation?
Appoint Richard Lloyd of Which? to guide Ofgem on consumer issues. It would be a culture shock, but it is badly needed. Set up a consumer body solely for energy users with staff who are committed to consumers and also understand the market.
Ray Cope
(former director, Gas Consumers Council), Langford, Beds
Telegraph:

State of the history of art will change Civilisation
History of art, as a discipline, has changed. This will be reflected in the new version of Civilisation.

Kenneth Clark presented ‘Civilisation’ in 1969, covering 1,000 years of art and philosophy  Photo: BBC
6:58AM BST 02 Apr 2014
37 Comments
SIR – Those of us who enjoyed Kenneth Clark’s style and learnt so much from his assured presentation of Civilisation 40 years ago, must realise that a revolution has taken place in the teaching and scope of the history of art.
No longer is a linear account of the history of (mainly) Western European art a sufficient account. The place of the art connoisseur – of which Clark, who studied with Bernard Berenson, was such an informed exponent – has been discredited and effectively disregarded by the art establishment; since the Seventies, the “new art history” has triumphed.
Additionally, with the growth of university places in the subject, the old order of discourse within art history has become almost taboo. Thus, the use of terms Clark would have been familiar with, such as style, attribution, beauty, genius and quality, has been replaced by less subjective methodology – ideology, class, and feminist and Marxist readings – to the extent that a new vocabulary is inherently a part of the discipline.
The choice of a suitably informed presenter for the new series is, indeed, daunting. Clark was exactly the right man for his time. I hope that the new programme “for the digital age” will prove as informative and memorable. One thing is clear: it will be quite different.
Hugh McIlveen
Wigginton, Oxfordshire

SIR – A remake of Civilisation calls for Lord Hall, director-general of the BBC, to remind the producers of the tremendous impact Neil MacGregor made with A History of the World in 100 Objects – and all we heard was his voice.
David Blake
Bexley, Kent

SIR – The Campaign to Protect Rural England welcomes the findings of the Farrell Review. It is only through intelligent, proactive planning that our housing problems can be solved. We know that more, and affordable, homes are needed but they must be well located, well designed and built to excellent environmental standards.
An important finding of the review was that our current planning system has become too reactive and reliant on development control rather than forward planning. This echoes the findings of the CPRE’s recent report, which found that the current planning system is undermining local democracy and handing power to major developers.
The balance of power should be restored, with local government and communities having more say in what is built, how it is designed and where it is located.
John Rowley
Planning Officer, Campaign to Protect Rural England
London SE1
Related Articles
The Cinderella Law could undermine the family and parental authority
02 Apr 2014
State of the history of art will change Civilisation
02 Apr 2014
SIR – On the edge of the London Green Belt, there are well-advanced plans by The Jockey Club to build 1,500 homes and a number of commercial units on their Kempton Park estate.
Neighbouring communities face not only the power and wealth of The Jockey Club and their multifarious planning consultants, but also the legal powers of the local council, which sees such a development as the solution to the cap on council tax and rapidly decreasing income flows from central government.
The response of Nick Boles, the planning minister, to this is to raise his hands defensively and say that it is up to local councils to decide whether to build on Green Belt land or not.
Alan Doyle
Sunbury, Middlesex
Climate change report
SIR – The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that no one on the planet will be untouched by the damaging effects of global warming in coming decades.
I wonder if these effects will be as damaging as the policies of governments in response to previous IPCC reports.
Simon Malcolm
Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire
SIR – The “climatic reality” is that world temperatures are not presently increasing.
IPCC members, whose jobs or status depend on climate change, forecast what might happen rather than extrapolate what is happening, or rather not happening.
Michael Tyce
Waterstock, Oxfordshire
Dillan or Dullan?
SIR – Dylan Thomas, whom I saw through a painful tooth crisis in Iowa, responded to “Dillon”. That’s what John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Ruthven Todd and others who knew him shortly before his death in New York, also called him.
Keith Botsford
London SW18
Fool team
SIR – I note that the £90 England World Cup replica shirts “contain innovative performance technologies”.
Is this an April Fool? If not, perhaps the England cricket team could get some.
James McBroom
Pangbourne, Berkshire
Reforming the Lords
SIR – At a time when the opinion of all MEPs is to be assessed, during the European Parliament elections next month, and a critically important decision is to be made by the Scottish electorate over the 307-year union with England, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs are bent on “completing unfinished business” by, once again, attacking the constitution of the House of Lords.
Whereas Tony Blair initiated his premiership with a guaranteed “easy win” and seemingly popular Act to remove the majority of hereditary peers, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg are wasting parliamentary time and public funds if they feel that House of Lords reform is a priority in the mind of the public.
Lord Clifford of Chudleigh
London SW1
Judging the police
SIR – Boris Johnson writes: “Beneath the hullabaloo the police are doing an outstanding job.”
Late last Wednesday night, an officer left my house after my wife reported a burglary. Early on Thursday morning, she received an email from the police saying: “It has been concluded at this time unfortunately there is insufficient information to proceed, and that the specific investigation into your crime will now be closed.” Neither a door knocked nor a neighbour questioned, and 12 hours later: case closed. Surely there should be a tiny bit of a hullabaloo.
Chris Boffey
London N8
SIR – Political correctness, health and safety and increasing regulation have altered the manner in which police officers go about their duties. They have become more inclined to self-protection, which can isolate them from their community.
I remember when the local police got involved in youth club or school activities and had sports teams that competed with other community teams.
Ron Starkey
Kendal, Cumberland
Distinguishing traits
SIR – Can anyone explain why such a high proportion of Members of Parliament, themselves a tiny proportion of the British population, turn out to be stupid, incompetent, criminal or unfit to hold public office?
Jeremy Nicholas
Great Bardfield, Essex
If we double our fruit and veg, what will we get?
SIR – You report that consuming 10 portions of fruit and vegetables per day will allow us to live longer. How can that be proven? How does one know if one has lived longer?
Dr E S Garbett
Sheffield, South Yorkshire
SIR – Faced with 10 portions of fruit and vegetables every day, I’m not at all sure that I would want to live any longer.
Martyn Pitt
Hardwicke, Gloucestershire
SIR – There will be precious little time left to do any work if I have to double the time I devote to eating my meals after switching to a 10-portions-a-day fruit and vegetable regime.
Ron Kirby
Dorchester
SIR – Eat 10 portions, live longer, and end up being neglected or mistreated in an old people’s care home.
Keith Moore
Yoxford, Suffolk

SIR – To legislate on the “emotional, social and behavioural well-being” of children is to introduce the worst kind of nannying. Parental cruelty to children is covered by existing legislation.
While all children deserve love, who is to decide how much love is sufficient? The needs of different children vary hugely and some become hard to handle after puberty, if not before. An excess of affection can sometimes be the root of children’s problems and therefore precisely what is not needed.
Well-meaning legislation, brought in at the behest of pressure groups, is often flawed. Parents must be allowed to bring up their children as they think best. While there will be victims in every society, this kind of well-intentioned law may not reach them and it may have the unintended consequence of further undermining the family and parental authority.
Gregory Shenkman
London W8
SIR – Compelling parents to provide emotional input to their children represents not only the height of naivety but also typifies the current trend to manipulate us socially via legislation.
How can an Act of Parliament force a second-rate parent to love his or her child?
Peter Mahaffey
Cardington, Bedfordshire
SIR – The Government is considering making emotional cruelty to children a criminal offence, and yet the same Government is encouraging young mothers to go out to work while penalising those who stay at home.
Peter Seccombe
Bodenham, Herefordshire
SIR – Many children or teenagers go through a stage in which parents appear to be the enemy. What vindictive fun some would have with the Cinderella Law.
We still read of dreadful cases of uncared-for children dying unnecessarily, despite the services in place. Time and money should be spent on securing what is already in place.
Joy Watkins
London SW11
SIR – Legislation to criminalise the parental neglect of children’s “intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development” could, in the hands of liberal totalitarians and case-hungry lawyers, provide a “politically correct” instrument to outlaw religious education, gender differentiation, unfashionable discipline, sexual restraint and even patriotism.
David Ashton
Sheringham, Norfolk
SIR – If children will be able to sue their parents when dissatisfied with their upbringing, will parents have equal rights to sue offspring who have not lived up to their expectations?
Dennis Peirson
Ventnor, Isle of Wight
Irish Times:

Sir, – Averil Power highlights some of the problems that attend increasing women’s representation in the Dáil (Opinion and Analysis, April 2nd). It is very unusual for a member of a political party to write an article for the media criticising that party’s action or lack of action. So congratulations to her for her honesty.
She should realise, however, that the recent introduction of the condition that political parties have a minimum quota of women candidates in the next general election, before they qualify for full public funding, has not only focused the debate but it has also started a bitter struggle.
Now, when there is a chance that the more than 50 per cent of the electorate that are women might get more of their kind on the ballot paper the insiders and the incumbents will fight tooth and nail to undermine that effort. As a practising woman politician Ms Power is in a better position than most to see this.
Getting women onto the ballot paper, difficult and all as it is, is only the first step. Getting them elected is not going to be easy. Ms Power is wrong when she says that women candidates have the same chance as men. That was true for the 2011 election, when the average woman candidate polled as well as the average man. But that was the first time this was the case and the result was influenced by the fact that a large number of male independents stood in that contest and got very low votes. In previous elections women candidates attracted fewer votes than men.
Increasing the number of women in the Dáil is not going to be easy and the effort is by no means guaranteed to succeed. Yours, etc,
ANTHONY LEAVY,
Shielmartin Drive,
Sutton,
Dublin 13
Sir , – Averil Power’s contention that Countess Markievicz would be horrified that the party she helped establish hasn’t a single female TD may well be true. However, I think the countess might feel a greater sense of horror at the devastation left in wake of 15 years of Fianna Fáil-led government. I am not sure what would motivate any woman with a memory of the last 15 years to stand for Fianna Fáil – regardless of the supports they may put in place to encourage our participation. Yours, etc,
SANDRA ADAMS,
Parkvale,
Baldoyle,
Dublin 13

Sir, – I have been living in Dublin since 2005 and think it is a wonderful city. Concerning its governance though, I could and still cannot not grasp the low level of decision-making power that elected politicians can exercise vis-a-vis unelected officials at the helm of local government. Dublin is a metropolitan region that is the economic engine for the country. Geographically, it has outgrown its administrative boundaries and people’s concept of the city is not defined by signposts demarcating the city limits. Dublin does compete with other European regions for business. Reassessing the responsibility for the governance of the metropolitan region should not be left in the hands of a small group of politicians in Fingal, who do not seem to see the wider implications of their decision. The development of a democratic governance structure for a city region like Dublin should not be held to ransom by the outcome of the Fingal vote. Maybe the process that allowed a predominantly rural area to determine the future of the city should be revisited. The call on the Minister responsible, Phil Hogan, to reassess the boundaries of the city seems appropriate. Yours, etc,
MATTHIAS BORSCHEID,
Buckingham Street Lower,
Dublin 1
Sir, – The people of Dublin have been denied the opportunity to participate in important decision-making by the rejection by Fingal councillors of the proposed plebiscite on a directly elected major for Dublin. I hope the people of Fingal will send a clear message to these councillors in May and give these so-called public representatives a lesson in democracy. What a missed opportunity for an international capital city! Yours, etc,
DAVID MOORE,
Carrs Mill,
Donabate,
Co Dublin

Sir, – Jacky Jones is right to raise the important issue of the lack of individual care plans for people using mental health services (“Second Opinion”, April 2nd). Individualised, person-centred, recovery-orientated plans are a basic requirement of a good quality mental health service.
In 2013, Mental Health Reform worked with our member organisations to define five components of a recovery-focused mental health service: hope, listening, partnership, choice and social inclusion. Working in partnership with individuals who use mental health services and, where appropriate, their family supporters, in a hopeful process of listening and engagement is vital if services are to be effective in supporting a person’s recovery.
In simple terms, people recover better when they are given hope, involved in decisions about their own treatment, offered a range of therapeutic options, and are supported to live a full live in the community.
While we were disappointed that the HSE’s Operational Plan for mental health services for 2014 did not commit to ensuring that every mental health service user would have an individual care/recovery plan, there is now an opportunity for the National Director of Mental Health to drive such an improvement across the country. The implementation of this basic reform could have wide-reaching effects in the system and would benefit everyone who seeks support from the HSE’s mental health services. Yours, etc,
SHARI McDAID,
Director,
Mental Health Reform,
Coleraine Street,
Dublin 7
Sir, – Jacky Jones misses the real point in her criticism of mental health services not providing a care plan for every individual. As a social worker in a multidisciplinary mental health team, I, like others, work with patients with a variety of needs, from the most complex, such as severe and enduring mental disorders, with dual diagnosis of addiction and intellectual disabilities and with limited family support to deal with significant life stressors, to less complex cases where patients can be managed by one worker or be relatively quickly referred back to their GP.
Providing a quality, efficient and effective service entails focusing in on those with the greatest needs, having transparent, screening processes in place to ensure meaningful care plans with a responsible key worker to co-ordinate the plan rather than a superficial one size fits all care plan, merely to tick the box. Yours, etc,
FRANK BROWNE,
Ballyroan Park,
Templeogue,
Sir, — It is not often that, where a controversy arises such as the recent one concerning Trinity’s change of logo, an elegant and simple solution should lie so close to hand.
Why not replace the Bible, not with a blank book but with an image of the Book of Kells (which is of course housed in Trinity)? Those who wish to see the Bible retained could find in the Book of Kells the iconic referencing they would prefer; while those opposed to the retention of the Bible would surely be reconciled to an image of what is, after all, a major Irish cultural achievement, and, more to the point, a striking reminder of a longstanding Irish tradition of learning and scholarship.
Thus the Book of Kells would prove equally acceptable to both parties: the saints and the scholars, the former doubtless less numerous than they were of old but both still, happily, so vocal in our insular home. Yours, etc.,
BRIAN COSGROVE,
Cornelscourt Hill,
Foxrock,
Dublin 18
Sir, – President Michael D Higgins was right to argue (Opinion & Analysis, April 2nd) that “we now have a generational opportunity to ask probing questions about the type of society we wish to build together, and the type of public world we wish to share with one another and with future generations”.
His ethics initiative, aiming to place citizens at the centre of the debate about the future of our society is both topical, timely and welcome. For the development model Ireland chose during the Celtic Tiger era has been shown to be fundamentally flawed – yet to date no alternative vision for a fair and sustainable future for our country has emerged.
Our recent history has shown that Ireland’s problems cannot be solved through a “laissez-faire” approach to public policy, and it has also highlighted the fact that our future is intrinsically linked to decisions (or non-decisions, as the case may be) of the wider international community. But we have yet to develop a plan on how to manage the challenges arising from this new awareness.
The President’s call for a conversation about our values as a nation could not be more timely. Our citizens feel less empowered than ever before, and our public goods have been damaged by greed, breach of trust and by global forces of enormous strength. It is not a good time in which to be rudderless.
Realising this, our colleagues at the United Nations have spent much of the last two years asking every country to undertake discussions about national values and national priorities. It has asked citizens, companies and governments to come up with visions of “the world we want”, to help set the agenda for the global community in the coming decades.
On the back of global UN summits of the past decade, the member countries of the UN – including Ireland – have decided to develop a set of global goals to address the world’s most pressing issues in the coming 15 years, goals that will set the framework for national and international decisions on education, equality, democracy, jobs and the environment and which could end up becoming a sort of second-level constitution for our country.
If we seize the opportunity that the President is offering us to rethink who we are and what our values as a nation are, and ought to be, then we will be all the stronger for it, and all the better able to cope with the challenges associated with being a small country in such an interdependent and volatile world. Yours, etc,
HANS ZOMER,
Director,
Dóchas,
Baggot Court,
Dublin 2

Sir, – I strongly disagree with Frank Byrne’s views (Letters, April 1st) on the practice of women applying their makeup on public transport.
The application of makeup is an intimate and private moment for women in which they construct their daily mask. The public application of makeup is fascinating, and very modern. To watch a woman apply makeup is profoundly erotic (in the post-Freudian sense).
To suffer these small darts of Eros at a time of day when one is moving into the profoundly mundane space of most white collar work is a privilege. Yours, etc,
LEON SHARKEY,
Ryebridge Lawns,
Kilcock
Sir, – I once witnessed a middle-aged lady cut her male partner’s hair on the upper deck of a bus I was travelling on. The episode was punctuated by squeals of delight from the stylist and some loud resistance from her man. Yours, etc,
JOHN O’BYRNE,
Mount Argus Court,
Harold’s Cross ,
Dublin 6W

Sir, – Regarding Hendy Joyce’s suggestion (Letters, April 1st) that summer time augments the hours of daylight (refuted the day before by Kevin Devitte) and the suggestion that Ireland might change to be on a par with Spain and other European countries, he might be surprised to know that there is a movement to return Spain to GMT, the time zone the country geographically falls under and from which it switched during the early days of the Franco dictatorship as a sign of subservience to Hitler’s Germany.
This return is being urged as part of a return to a more Anglo-Saxon timetable, which would help Spaniards get sufficient sleep (they sleep an hour less than most Europeans) and eliminate the huge lunch gap in the middle of the day (few have the luxury of working close enough to home for a siesta). Opposition is coming from the Canary Islands, already on GMT, because it might eliminate the mention they get on the radio every hour. It seems the grass is always greener on the other side of the time zone. Yours, etc,
DAVID O’BRIEN,
Calle Dormitaleria,
Pamplona,
Sir, – The fact that the Taoiseach appointed a justice minister who did not have the powers of time-travelling, clairvoyance and omnipresence seems to disturb Fintan O’Toole, but every cloud has a silver lining and at least the current crisis has enable him to find his faith again. Meanwhile, the only way Mr Shatter will be able to satisfy the perfect is to gallop through Dublin on Shergar, playing O’Carolan’s harp and wearing the Irish crown jewels. Yours, etc,
EUGENE TANNAM,
Monalea Park,
Firhouse,
Dublin 24
Sir, – Marie C O’Byrne’s potted history of Crimea makes it seem entirely logical for the region to be part of the Russian Federation and not Ukraine, and she’s probably right. The problem is, however, not what the people of Crimea want but the fact that the region was effectively annexed by Russia without any diplomatic avenues being explored. This is what makes a lot of countries generally, and Russia’s neighbours in particular, very nervous. Yours, etc,
NORMAN DAVIES,
Belton Terrace,
Bray,
Co Wicklow
Sir, – With European sanctions showing no signs of encouraging Russia to leave Crimea I think stronger action may now be needed. Can I suggest that the threat of a permanent exclusion from the Eurovision Song Contest might help get things moving? Yours, etc,
MARK LEADEN,
College Park Close,
Ballinteer,
Dublin 16

Sir, – Perhaps it is worth reminding Jim Stack, Mary Stewart and others bemoaning the lack of acknowledgement of the views of so-called “family values” voters that their views were, for decades, fully acknowledged and acted upon by successive governments, to the detriment of other excluded groups and individuals. Little concern was recorded at that time by the “family values” populace over the failure to include or acknowledge those who did not conform to an Ireland of conservative Catholicism and patriarchal norms. They cannot expect a huge degree of sympath now that the shoe is (inaccurately) perceived to be on the other foot. Yours, etc,
EDWARD COLLINS,
Niall Street,
Stoneybatter,
Dublin 7

Irish Independent:
The GAA decision to give certain championship matches to Sky is a slap in the face to the real GAA supporter.
Also in this section
Coming back from the mother of all mistakes
Taxpayers left to foot the bill yet again
Pylons will mutilate our beautiful countryside
The real supporters are the people who travel and pay to attend regularly at their club and county games when at all possible.
They will not be like elected officials of county boards, provincial or other councils who seldom have to put their hands in their pockets to attend.
Even when they are stuck, they will always get a few from part of a golden circle of sponsored tickets.
The same could be asked of the full-time paid officials of the GAA, how many games do they actually pay into?
It is very easy to scoff at the cost this Sky deal will burden the real supporter with, if one attends these games free or with sponsored tickets. There are many people who will only be seen attending games when they do not have to pay to attend.
While I agree with the efforts to generate a wider exposure to our games worldwide, I am not blind to how this also results in junkets for our paid officials.
When asked on the news programme on TV whether the topic should have been brought before the GAA annual congress for approval, the general secretary appeared to me to think those who made the decision were a higher authority.
I would have no great problem with the deal if another channel was allowed cover the game(s) on a free-to-view delayed showing.
I wonder did this thought enter the minds of those negotiating the deal – but then again, why would it?
They will hardly be affected by it.
TONY FAGAN
BELLEFIELD ROAD, ENNISCORTHY, CO WEXFORD

STRUGGLING SUPPORTERS
Croke Park is debt-free. GAA fans are struggling enough as it is – just because a certain number of the population have Sky membership, it does not mean they all have Sky Sports.
MARY COYLE
KILL, CO KILDARE

TIME TO LANCE THE BOIL
The absence of a timely apology has taken out one player and the flames are licking the posteriors of a few more.
Time to lance the boil in this debacle and come clean. Each time the heat threatens Alan Shatter, a grave-faced Enda Kenny informs us of another debacle.
The Gardai, now the Prison Service, and previously GSOC have been dragged into an unholy mess. To each, Mr Shatter has ordered inquiry after inquiry. The problem is this, though: he is the problem.
The Attorney General, the Secretary General of Justice and the head of prisons need to consider their positions. Information on their desks ought to reach the minister in a timely fashion. That this failed to happen is the minister’s fault. He seems to have a poor grip on his minions. So let him lead by example and step down. Then let the trio do what they must do and follow suit.
Ireland’s legal and moral authority is at stake here, not the careers of a handful of highly paid public servants. Mr Kenny needs to lance this boil, otherwise he might be engulfed too.
JOHN CUFFE
MEATH

SPARKING AIR RAGE
Considering the fact that Ryanair carries so many British passengers and has around 15 bases in the UK and Northern Ireland, one would imagine Michael O’Leary would not make such an offensive comment about their queen.
Has Ryanair made enough money and doesn’t need the UK for revenue?
B FITZPATRICK
CASTLEKNOCK, DUBLIN

JOIN THE PEACE WALK
April 2014 is a very special time for the Irish people, but particularly the people of Clontarf, as it is the celebration of the 1,000th anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf.
One of the events in Clontarf is an Ecumenical Camino Peace Walk. The various Christian churches are supporting this peace walk.
The walk will be held on Sunday, April 13, Palm Sunday, starting at 2.30pm at the corner of the Howth Road and Clontarf Road. The route will move to St Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church, then to the Methodist Church on the Clontarf Road, then St John’s Church of Ireland on Seafield Road, on to St John’s Catholic Church, Clontarf Road, and finish at St Gabriel’s Catholic Church, Dollymount.
Clontarf passports will be issued and stamped at each church and a certificate given to those who complete the walk. Those who cannot make the full walk are welcome to make a partial walk or call to a church.
On behalf of the organisers and the people of Clontarf, we say: “All are welcome in this place.”
BRYAN HOEY
CLONTARF, DUBLIN 3

PENALTY POINTS
Louise McBride wrote on March 30: “If you have four penalty points, you could pay between 20 and 25pc more for your insurance than someone who has none, and many insurers will refuse to pay out if you haven’t been upfront with them, according to Conor Faughnan, director of consumer affairs with AA Ireland.”
Mr Faughnan has written in the past about the enforcement of incorrect low speed limits, which leads to many of the penalty points issued in Ireland and results in a 25pc increase in insurance premiums.
In the US, penalty points are not issued for speeding offences unless the driver is stopped by a police officer as it is often not possible to identify the driver.
There are more penalty points issued in Ireland for speeding than the combined number of penalty points for all other motoring offences and this has done little to eliminate road traffic accidents.
FRANK CULLINANE
GLASNEVIN PARK, DUBLIN 11

SINKING SHIP
A short while ago, Leo Varadkar seemingly put his neck on the line and praised the whistleblowers. This was the right thing to do and he received plaudits. I even went to the bother of wasting my time and penned some praise for him.
The reason I say I wasted my time is because he has since come out to bat in defence for Mr Shatter. He accused the opposition of playing “old politics” and pointed to the former garda commissioner not informing the minister about the tapes. He completely ignored the fact that the Attorney General had been informed.
Meanwhile, the Justice Minister resembled Captain Smith of Titanic fame: big on reputation yet in charge of a sinking ship.
DERMOT RYAN
ATTYMON, ATHENRY, CO GALWAY

LOGO LOGIC
Trinity College has reduced its logo colours to two: blue and white. This choice totally ignores the sensitivities of feminist groups who no doubt will eventually register objections over the choice of the prominent blue background (for boys); and anti-racist groups who will certainly not be happy with the white, or indeed with the total absence of black.
To cap it all, anti-Israel activists will have to be be reminded when they pass by the college on one of their protest marches that the blue-and-white flag contains the colours of the Israeli flag. How could the college have spent over €100,000 on this rebranding exercise?
IVOR SHORTS
HERMITAGE CLOSE,
RATHFARNHAM, DUBLIN 16
Irish Independent

4 April2014 Under the Weather

I go all the way around the park listening to the Navy Lark. Our heroes are in trouble, again.They have to transport a diplomatPriceless

Mary under the weather

Scrabbletoday, I win , Perhaps Marywill win tomorrow.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Nigel Farage‘s task was relatively easy (Clegg tactics fail as Farage romps home in EU debate, 3 April). Brusque, good-humoured bigotry supported by bluster will always seem to beat thoughtful well-informed analysis. And Nick Clegg did not seem able to think on his feet. There is a difference in kind between “law” and “regulation”. The EU has contributed to 7% of our laws but to over 50% of our regulations. These regulations, worked on by the small committees which Ukip MEPs spurn, have resulted in, for example: cleaner air, cleaner beaches and rivers, the banning of harmful food additives, smoke-free workplaces, improved child and animal welfare, cross border policing, some control over human trafficking, support for democracy and human rights – and much more. And most strikingly we have had peace in what for centuries had been a war-torn Europe. In spite of the “knock out” which Ukip supporters have claimed for Clegg, I shall be changing my allegiance from Labour to the Lib Dems.
John Saunders
Oxford

Independent:

What is all this about winning or losing the debate between Nigel Farage and Nick Clegg? Either you agreed with the one or the other. I doubt if many changed their minds: neither deployed any new arguments. Clegg used logic, Farage emotion.

The use of this debate was twofold. It exposed the arguments, and the “exit poll” gave an idea of how people would vote if there were a referendum today.

The good news for the “ins” like myself is that only about a sixth of the population needs to be convinced. The problem is how the ins are going to speak to the feelings of those who are not convinced by logic.

Venetia Caine, Glastonbury, Somerset

Save at the very end, nobody mentioned the word “war” in the Farage-Clegg debate on the EU. Both Farage and Clegg are too young to have experienced war in Europe.

For over 500 years nations in post-medieval Europe waged war against one another. In the last century two world wars shattered Europe. My mother had her eldest brother killed in the First World War (Ypres) and her youngest brother killed in the Second (Crete). I was born in 1938 and my father, having survived Dunkirk, was absent on active service from 1940 to 1945, so that I did not recognise him when he returned home.

My mother, sister and I slept in the cellar of our house in south-east London for the duration of the war. A good job too because the house opposite us was bombed flat in 1944 by a V2 rocket.

A united Europe (whatever its faults) is far preferable to antagonistic separate nations, and the Ukip isolation policy is simply a false dream based on outdated 19th-century notions.

David Ashton, Shipbourne, Kent

Listening to the televised debate on Wednesday evening, I realised why Nick Clegg has difficulty with a 70-year-old like me who grew up in Hackney in the 1950s. There the local population lived contentedly enough in a monocultural society in a London Cockney setting reflected by the Broadway Market round the corner, a series of cinemas in Mare Street and a straightforward English way of life.

Mr Clegg made great play of how he wants us to live in the present rather than the past. The problem is that the elements he cited were all foisted on us. We never asked for mass immigration. We never asked for multiculturalism. We never asked for diversity. We never asked for political union with 27 other countries of Europe. Mr Clegg necessarily begins from the weakest psychological stance in expecting people to accept situations which were forced on them. That is why his views carried little weight with me.

Edward Thomas, Eastbourne, East Sussex

Cinderella law: will social workers cope?

Frank Furedi (“The Cinderella law: emotional correctness gone mad”, 2 April) points out that every mother or father is  at risk of being labelled an abuser under the proposed “Cinderella law”.

The Government has proposed this new law just when the NSPCC reports that the threshold for intervening in a child’s life is actually being raised because of record reporting of child abuse. But a huge amount of this reporting is already needless. Department for Education figures for 2012-2013 show that, in England, there were 145,700 needless referrals to children’s social services in one year. Child protection is about a child “suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm”. When so many children are needlessly reported, this does indicate that people already overreact.

So why does the Government want to broaden the definition of child abuse even further, thus creating more cases for an overloaded system? Sixteen children known to Birmingham social services died in a five-year period. A report severely criticised Birmingham social services over the poor quality of referrals, leading to a surge in demand that could not be met.

Detecting child abuse in the community is akin to finding a needle in a haystack for overstretched social workers. So why make the haystack even bigger by creating more cases that will need assessment?

Tristram C Llewellyn Jones, Ramsey, Isle of Man

Consistent, loving care is critical in building the human brain, so it certainly is time that our child-protection laws reflect the long-term mental and physical damage caused by the emotional neglect and abuse of children. The announcement that the Government intends to make the emotional abuse of children a criminal offence is an important step.

Understanding the critical importance of the emotional well-being of children is vital to the well-being of society. There is a raft of evidence to show that when infants receive warm, responsive, consistent, attuned, loving care their brains develop well. They are then able to grow into adults with the capacity for empathy and the facility to become good, caring parents themselves.

Lydia Keyte, Chair, What About The Children? Newbold on Stour, Warwickshire

Frank Furedi claims our Sutton Trust report “Baby Bonds” is driven by “an authoritarian impulse whose main consequence is to diminish parental authority”. In fact, the report is driven by an egalitarian impulse, whose intended consequence is for public policy to better support parents, precisely in order to generate, as Furedi puts it, “more opportunities for children, and indeed parents, to realise their potential.”

Furedi offers no evidence to counter our empirical finding – from a review of over 100 academic studies – that a secure emotional relationship with a parent can have an important influence on children’s life chances, particularly for the most disadvantaged.

Sophie Moullin, Princeton University, Professor Jane Waldfogel, Columbia University, Dr Liz Washbrook, Bristol University

Nasty Party kicks out A-level student

What a PR disaster the removal of the 19-year-old student Yashika Bhageerathi has proved to be! It shows Theresa May in her true colours as a member of the “Nasty Party” who, having failed to meet her targets for immigration, attempts to keep her numbers up by picking on a young, vulnerable girl who came here to avoid abuse. The removal of her alone, without her mother, and a failed attempt to remove her on Mothering Sunday, only added to the disaster.

The Home Office showed a complete lack of common sense and compassion in this case. What difference would it have made if Yashika had been allowed a further six weeks here so she could take her A-levels and return home with a qualification? Instead Britain is once again portrayed as an uncaring nation instead of a just and caring society.

The only people who deserve credit in this sad situation are the head, staff and pupils of the Oasis Academy Hadley in Enfield – they may have failed but they are heroes in my book.

Ken Smith, Hinderclay, Suffolk

Why no auction for Royal Mail?

You conclude (editorial, 2 April) that “Mr Cable was still right to be cautious” over the privatisation of the Royal Mail, on the grounds that privatisations cannot be guaranteed to be successful, and that “the effects of hindsight and ‘froth’ are impossible to judge”.

Maybe so, but it is hard to understand why the Department for Business did not, apparently, even consider the use of a properly designed sealed-bid auction, instead of the conventional book-building exercise. Nor, apparently, did the National Audit Office consider this as  an option.

The Treasury uses such auctions to sell government bonds, Google was floated using one, so why not for the Post Office? At least then everyone would have had a chance at getting some shares, and the selling price would have been more likely to settle at the market clearing price, providing that the auction process was properly designed.

David Harvey, Tynemouth, Tyne & Wear

Abuse of women becomes fashion

Oh dear, here we go again. The editor of Italian Vogue, Franca Sozzani, thinks she is campaigning in some way against the abuse of women by actually showing nicely arranged “fashion” images of pretend victims (The Big Read, 3 April).

This happens again and again in film and media. You are not reflecting the horrors of society, you idiots, you are simply joining in and adding  to them.

Sue Nicholas, Cranleigh, Surrey

The battle of Richard’s bones

If there is doubt (“Car park bones disputed”, 28 March) as to whether the Leicester Greyfriars burial is indeed that of Richard III, or of a contemporary similarly slain in battle, perhaps they should be honourably interred as the Unknown Warrior of the Wars of the Roses.

Peter Forster, London N4

Times:

Sir, You report that the Commons Science and Technology Committee, chaired by Andrew Miller, wishes to censor those who question their position on climate change (“Crackdown ordered on climate-change sceptics”, Apr 2). No one can rationally argue that the climate does not change, it always has. What does require uninhibited debate is whether human activity significantly influences the global climate and, assuming that it does, the efficacy of measures proposed to reduce that influence and the manner in which such measures would be globally enforced.

Rob Harris

Farndon, Cheshire

Sir, Scientific theories can be corrected, often at no greater cost than wounded pride. Should our economic competitiveness and future living standards be ruined by unnecessary green policies, the damage will prove much more difficult to correct.

Mr Miller should welcome the critics for attempting to hold the science to account and for raising public interest in the subject, rather than trying to gag them. Where huge decisions are to be made, it is important that rigorous public debate takes place.

Mark Franklin

Bromyard, Herefordshire

Sir, Your report is a timely reminder that climate change is not wholly man-made and that this should be reflected in climate related policies.

Indeed, the IPCC has stated that up to half of the steep rise in global temperature that occurred in the second half of the last century was due to natural causes. Accordingly, it would seem sensible to reallocate some of the funds earmarked for carbon reduction such as subsidising renewable energy, to fund adaptation to the effects of climate change, especially as the UK emits only 1.5 per cent of global carbon. This rebalancing of expenditure would include upgrading of flood defences, including the Thames barrier. Such a change in climate related policy makes economic sense and would surely be welcomed by the majority of tax payers.

James Snook

Bowdon, Cheshire

Sir, I read with some concern the proposal that BBC editors should seek clearance to give air time to climate change sceptics. This subject is most difficult to understand, and we can only do so by the most rigorous application of the scientific method.

This must involve vigorous questioning of all research by those who may discern an alternative explanation. Indeed, such scrutiny can sometimes lead to new penetrating insights. While the sceptic camp does seem to contain its share of the loony Right, there are also honourable men and women who should not be censored.

H. J. Wyatt

Harrow, Middx

Sir, In seeking to gag climate change sceptics, the chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Committee is inviting ridicule.

Since when have arguments been won by stifling debate? To attack the BBC for airing Lord Lawson’s view is crass. The BBC is a routine proselytiser for the “warmists” and largely ignores those who question its orthodoxy. Perhaps Mr Miller has difficulty explaining why global temperatures have not shifted in the past 16 years while CO2 levels have rocketed, and why near-record levels of ice persist in the Antarctic.

Let’s have answers, not gags.

Peter Pallot

London, W6

Published at 12:01AM, April 4 2014

Telegraph:

SIR – “The erosion of childhood” is becoming a theme of concern to citizens across the political spectrum.

SIR – In convicting a gambling addict for stealing some £13,000 worth of luggage from trains in the Devon area (report, March 29), the judge commented that the layout of luggage storage may have facilitated the crimes.

SIR – Evan Davis’s Mind the Gap series suggests to me, a retired architect, that Britain needs a North East-West City.

Irish Times:

Sir, – The Government’s white paper on Universal Health Insurance (UHI), published this week is fundamentally flawed.

It will place an immediate financial burden on families, and the only consultation process open to the public is restricted to deliberating on what this “competing insurers” model will look like. Meanwhile, there is no consultation of any kind taking place on any other options, such as those recommended in Dr Jane Pillinger’s 2012 report The Future of Healthcare in Ireland .

That report recommended that the competing insurers model, as proposed by the Minister, should not be adopted before all the options have been evaluated in terms of quality, equity, access to services and medium and long term value for money. The report was ignored by the Minister.

Families will be required by law to have health insurance, but there is a real risk that this will be an impossible financial burden from the very start, particularly for the growing number of people without health insurance who don’t qualify for a medical card.

This group will be required to purchase health insurance for every member of their family. While the Dutch insurance model provided the Minister with his initial inspiration for this UHI scheme, it should be noted that children are actually insured for free under the Dutch model.

The question of cost remains, but it appears that no evaluation of any other funding model has been undertaken. We have been trying to get the message across to the Minister that other options need to be considered, such as the “single-payer” social insurance model used in France, Germany and Nordic countries.

Apart from a cursory late briefing on the day of publication, where questions were not invited from trade unions or patient groups, there has been no engagement with the Minister on these issues.

The experience in other jurisdictions which have similar models of competing insurers, has been a continuing rise in the price of compulsory insurance, coupled with increasing restrictions on the health services covered. They have also experienced rising readmission rates as more people experience complications after they’ve been discharged. This can be attributed to the financial incentives to discharge patients early.

The Minister’s estimate of €900 per individual seems almost optimistic, but if this model is established, the costs are likely to continue to rise. The Minister has also boasted that the scheme will ensure no additional cost burden to the State, which will mean that the only means of raising extra revenue will be through individual insurance premiums.

Finally, if we really want to get the measure of where this scheme is going, it is telling that the €100 charge for emergency departments will remain in place. Yours, etc,

LOUISE O’DONNELL,

National secretary,

Health & Welfare division

IMPACT,

Nerney’s Court,

Dublin 1

Sir, – At present everyone in the State is entitled to free treatment in a public hospital paid for by our taxes.

Under the new proposal, it seems, everyone will be entitled to free treatment in a public hospital but we must pay for private health insurance as well as paying our taxes to fund it. The difference will be that there will be no option for some to go to private hospitals as happens at present, so the whole population will use the public system, which is unable to cope with the numbers currently using it. Sounds like a lose-lose situation to me. Yours, etc,

AVRIL HEDDERMAN,

Priory Grove,

Stillorgan,

Co Dublin

Sir, – Brian McDevitt (Letters, April 2nd) is using out of date and inaccurate figures in his comments on GP incomes. As a general practitioner, I get on average €85.80 per year for a medical card patient under the age of 70.

For this sum, I provide medical cover to my patients for 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. This is before tax, and before paying staff, premises, equipment and computer costs and what is required to ensure out of hours cover etc.

For years my private patients have been subsidising my medical card practice and sustaining the standard of practice that we are trying to provide. This situation has been exacerbated by the 35 per cent cut in medical card fees unilaterally imposed by the Government in the last three years.

The recently appointed professor of general practice in UCC, who has come from the United Kingdom, has been quoted as describing the GP service in this country as “gold dust”. Under current Government proposals it may well become just dust. Yours, etc,

DR EAMONN FALLER,

Crescent Medical Centre,

The Crescent,

Galway

Sir, – Brian McDevitt’s letter reflects the success of the Health Service Executive and the Department of Health in convincing the general public that global payments to a GP practice reflect the remuneration of the doctors involved.

By this logic, the situation is indeed even worse than Mr McDevitt imagines it to be since I can reveal that a certain Dr J Reilly received €13 billion in payments last year, which does seem excessive.

In Dr Reilly’s defence it should be said that this money is used to fund the health service. On a micro level the payments are the global payments to practices which fund nurses, secretaries, heat, light and medical supplies among other things. As these fees have been cut successively in recent years, the private fees that Mr McDevitt refers to are increasingly used to support the provision of services to medical card patients. Although the State has the responsibility to provide services to this group, it does not appear to be willing to adequately fund it. Yours, etc,

SÉAMUS McMENAMIN,

Family Doctor,

Baile Átha Luimnigh,

An Uaimh,

Co Na Mhí

Sir, – Your Irish language columnist Caoimhe Ní Laighin misleadingly states in her article(“Cinniúint na Catalóine”, April 2nd) that there are “77,000 cainteoir ag an nGaeilge”. This is not correct. The number of Irish speakers who claim to use Irish daily “outside the educational system only” should not be equated with the total number of Irish speakers, as your columnist has done. Many Irish speakers living outside Irish-speaking communities do not easily get opportunities on a daily basis to use Irish but they are still Irish-speakers.

In my opinion a better measure of the number of active Irish-speakers is the number of people who claim in census returns to use the language at least weekly outside education. This figure, according to the 2011 census is 188,000 for the 26 counties.

The 2011 census taken in Northern Ireland showed that there were 64,847 people who claimed to be able to understand, read, write and speak Irish. Unfortunately we don’t have figures for daily and weekly users but I would suggest a figure of approximately 16,000 would not be an exaggeration, giving a figure of a little more than 200,000 for the number of people who use Irish on a regular basis within the island of Ireland.

DONNCHA

Ó hÉALLAITHE,

Gaeltaighde,

Indreabhán,

Co na Gaillimhe

Sir, – In response to Brenda Morgan’s argument (Letters, April 1st) about computers and their negative effects on the learning process, it has to be stated that digital literacy is an integral part of the Irish curriculum, supporting children’s learning in a positive way.

Piaget’s constructivist theory would indicate that computers support children’s learning in design and construction of projects and contribute to the cognitive development of the child. The teacher facilitates this through the correct use of such ICT tools such as laptops, iPads and interactive whiteboards.

Such technology supports inclusion, from the less able to the more able child, thus ensuring that every student actively participates in the learning process. As educators, we have a responsibility to ensure children have the skills and knowledge necessary to be at the cutting edge of the digital economy we live in.

Young learners are fast becoming fluent in computer coding as they are educated in becoming the innovators of tomorrow. As an educator, I strongly believe that a balanced approach counteracts overdependence on screens. Oral expression and writing remain a vital part of this well of rich learning experiences that are nurtured within the curriculum. — Yours, etc,

AINGEAL Ní MHURCHÚ

CREAGH,

Baltimore,

Co Cork

Sir, – Recently cosmologists have detected ripples that they claim were triggered by the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang, which occurred approximately 13.7 billion years ago. (Actually the Big Bang was a soundless phenomenon. It was more silent than the keys tapping this computer.) Most scientists agree that 13.7 billion years ago space-time was created and that prior to that there was a void.

In contradiction to the “beginning” theory, I hold that the multiverse, which contains countless universes, has always existed. Most cosmologists claim that in it new, similar and dissimilar universes to ours are constantly evolving and disintegrating.

Void is indestructible and unchangeable. Despite the claim by the religious that “God is all powerful”, he would be incapable of destroying void. (God is habitually referred to as he and hardly ever as she, they or it.) The religious also assert that “the creator of all things” is eternal and that there was only “null and void” before he created the universe, in effect before he created the Big Bang. If he is eternal and the universe had a beginning, the question presents itself: before creation how did he occupy himself? Since he was existing in a void he could not do anything, because there was nothing to do. He could not think, because there was nothing to think about. He could not see, because there was nothing to see. He could not hear as there was no medium for transmitting sound. The religious will dismiss this with a “mysteries which we cannot understand” response.

Of course the real mystery, which it seems we are destined never to find answers to, is the mystery of life. There appears to be a mental block preventing us from resolving it. Yet while we cannot make sense of life, if there was no life it would not make sense either. Yours, etc,

FRANK COLUMB,

Carriglea Drive,

Firhouse,

Sir, – It was with increasing frustration that I read the contribution of President Higgins (“Time for citizens to forge a better future for our country”, April 2nd).

In vain I looked for a reference to the farmers, fishermen and foresters who harness our natural resources. Where was mention of the doctors, nurses and educators who nurture our human resources? I saw no recognition either of the scientists, the engineers and the entrepreneurs who discover and develop the resources we will use tomorrow.

While I commend the President’s call to rethink the ethics and philosophy of tomorrow’s Ireland I am disappointed that he has failed to recognise what is being achieved by these citizens today. Without physics, chemistry and biology, along with the technology to make the sciences concrete, the President would be left discussing and philosophising in the dark shadows of Plato’s cave. Yours, etc,

EDWARD FLAHAVAN,

Fews,

Kilmacthomas,

Co Waterford

Sir, – The President’s article in yesterday’s Irish Times prompts a question: why are the views of philosophers, theologians and sociologists on our society not given the same prominence as those of economists? Yours, etc,

DAVID NELSON,

Growtown,

Dunshaughlin,

Co Meath

Sir, – Munster coach Rob Penney’s rant against refereeing standards was an indication of the problems faced by professional rugby in this area but not, I suggest, in the way he meant it.

Yes, I think referees are inconsistent and, in some cases, even sub-standard. However one of the reasons that this state of affairs is allowed to continue is the partisan nature of rugby. Mr Penney was not complaining about poor decisions made by the referee but only about those which adversely affected his team.

In this respect he is the same as all participants in rugby, whether players, management or supporters. Consequently, every decision made by a referee in a rugby match, whether correct or incorrect, will have the support of half the people and anger the other half.

Mr Penney and his counterparts are in the best position to influence any attempts to improve refereeing standards, but until they start looking at this area of the game impartially they will, correctly, be seen merely as moaning because they lost the game. Yours, etc,

DAVE ROBBIE,

Seafield Crescent,

Booterstown,

Sir, – In rebranding itself, Trinity College Dublin has announced that it will update what it calls its “logo”. But the logo is actually a grant of arms, recognised in 1901 by the Ulster Kings of Arms (now the Chief Herald).

Has anyone at the college actually contacted the Chief Herald’s Office (attached to the National Library) to seek permission to change the coat of arms? Seems a bit of an oversight if not! Yours, etc,

STEVEN C SMYRL

FIGRS, MAPGI,

Sydenham Terrace,

Rathgar,

Dublin 6

Sir, – Your correspondent Denis Duff from Greystones (April 1st) suggests that Ireland needs a nuclear power station at Moneypoint.

But with the prevailing Atlantic winds, the west coast is the worst option for such an installation. It would surely make much more sense to put it on the east coast to disperse the whatever radiation might be leaked after the almost inevitable accident or leak or attack or “minor incident”.

Somewhere around Greystones perhaps, with the sea in front and reasonably empty mountains behind would be ideal, with the waste stored nearby. Yours, etc,

FRANK NEENAN,

Tullow Road,

Carlow

Sir, – A propos Sylvia Thompson’s piece on the pursuit of happiness (Life Science, April 3rd), might I suggest that there is much we can learn from philosophers on that topic.

Having reached something of a crisis in his own life, John Stuart Mill tells us in his Autobiography that the key to finding happiness is to realise that it is a mistake to seek it directly.

To achieve happiness we should rather immerse ourselves in a life that is packed with a diverse range of activities from which we derive satisfaction.

Reflecting on such a life will reveal to us that it is a happy one.

Yours etc

HARRY McCAULEY,

Maynooth Park,

Maynooth

Co Kildare

Sir, – Will the GAA be celebrating its bicentennial with hurling having become a major international sport? Yours, etc,

JOSEPH MACKEY,

Glasson,

Athlone,

Co Westmeath

Irish Independent:

* The elation of the Irish electorate in March 2011 quickly turned to deflation and angst.

Also in this section

Sky deal is a slap in the face for GAA fans

Coming back from the mother of all mistakes

Taxpayers left to foot the bill yet again

Three years on, the words of Pat Rabbitte ring in their ears about pledges to get elected; the electorate feels totally “shattered”, no doubt leading innumerable people to think, either, “I will never vote again” or “I will spoil my vote at the local and EU elections”.

The latter is a wasted vote; not even looked at by candidates.

The ancient Chinese proverb “Revenge is a dish best served cold” provides every dissatisfied elector with the best tool to teach the Tweedledum and Tweedledee a lesson they will never forget.

Bertie’s “oul pencil” used properly on the ballot paper at the May elections will empower you.

The number of candidates on the ballot paper in your constituency is the number of votes you have; grasp this golden opportunity to number every box on the ballot paper, and reserve, with relish, the last four numbers in the order of your choice for the four main parties.

If even 10pc of a constituency did this it would send alarm bells off.

Recall, in the Meath East by-election, how Fine Gael crowed it had a massive win; when in fact more than 50pc of the electorate did not vote.

Put lead in your pencil in May and do your duty by casting your vote. Be what Kenny and Gilmore and their nodding acolytes are not: “The indomitable Irishry” invoked by W B Yeats!

DECLAN FOLEY

BERWICK, AUSTRALIA

DA WHISTLEBLOWER CODE

* Coming soon to a cinema near you. A sort of Irish ‘Da Vinci Code’ spine-chiller. Based on the best-selling novel by Dan Murphy: ‘Da Irish Whistleblower Code.’

It all begins on a busy street near Government Buildings, and a strange, mad monk with long, blond hair is seen rushing into a clandestine meeting beneath the bowels of the building.

Intrigued, Professor Shatterproof follows this mysterious intruder, and discovers a terrible secret, as he observes a coven of hooded men at a strange filling cabinet on top of an altar.

Waiting till they had left, after they had finished whistling a strange chant, he discovers a thrown-away piece of paper on the floor, with encoded names and a map of a maze of underground tunnels.

And so begins a race against time to save the Government from collapse.

Shatterproof has to find the meanings behind the symbols that are dotted around the city. Twists and turns are everywhere. Denial, subterfuge, obfuscation. It’s an epic tale of cover-up.

Who is the whistleblower? What information does that person have? What happens to the whistleblowers, and keepers of the strange secret? All will be revealed in due time.

ANTHONY WOODS

ENNIS, CO CLARE

IRELAND’S RETURN

* So, Stoke City footballer Stephen Ireland is being considered for a return to the Irish International soccer team. Reports suggest assistant Ireland team manager Roy Keane has expressed his approval at a possible return.

On the basis of talent, ability and form, Stephen Ireland would be a most welcome addition to most international football teams, but on the basis of loyalty, honour, moral integrity and values becoming of one who is chosen to represent their national football team, he falls short.

I do not expect Roy Keane to share this view.

TOM COOPER

TEMPLEOGUE, DUBLIN 6W

WISE WORDS

* When things are said to you,

No matter what time of day it is,

No matter how old you are,

No matter where you are,

No matter how long ago it was,

No matter how drunk someone is,

No matter if you know the person or not – it hurts.

And it sticks.

By Elayna Keller, from her first-hand account of being a target of bullies.

We need say no more, only read her wonderful words.

Elayna, of course, won the NNI Press Pass Competition.

BRIAN MCDEVITT

GLENTIES, CO DONEGAL

OUT OF TOUCH

* I am an award II Gaelic Coach and have been training under-age groups for 14 years.

I recently had a preseason session for the coaches and had a question-and-answer session with some of the kids.

I asked were they watching the Dublin-Kerry match a few weeks ago and then realised that it was only on Setanta, now Sky sport.

I cannot believe how out of touch the GAA hierarchy is with the grassroots.

Let them do what they want with Sky but ensure all games are shared between RTE, TV3 and TG4.

KEVIN HEALY

ADDRESS WITH EDITOR

HEALTHCARE CONCERNS

* It is good to see Dr Reilly has outlined his new system.

It is to be hoped that the system will be introduced within five years as foreseen and that time will not be wasted in searching for the perfect system.

Better to start and adapt as necessary rather than procrastinate and delay.

But one initial word of warning. Dr Reilly has estimated that the 40pc who hold medical cards will not be liable to pay any premium and that a further 30pc will have their payments heavily subsidised.

The remaining 30pc can hardly be recognised as universal.

JOHN F JORDAN

KILLINEY, CO DUBLIN

REALITIES OF ARTHRITIS

* Arthritis is a debilitating disability, which affects around 915,000 people.

It is widely believed arthritis is an illness that accompanies old age but in Ireland alone around 1,100 children suffer from arthritis.

People’s perception of arthritis is often associated with pain; while this may be true, it fails to represent an accurate depiction of the daily struggle suffers endure.

Pain is merely a component, which contributes to a larger picture. Unless one suffers with arthritis, they cannot truly comprehend the disability accurately.

Arthritis Ireland organises various events for teenagers who have arthritis. The JA road-trip is a prime example.

The road-trip allows teenagers to discuss their illness and discover different pain-management techniques.

Arthritis Ireland also organises a number of activates and this gives teenagers an opportunity to try things they thought they never could do as a result of arthritis.

Arthritis Ireland runs frequent workshops to demonstrate new ways of dealing with pain.

It also helps people to cope with the problems they may encounter as a result of having arthritis.

Thank you for the time it took to read my piece.

DANNY DE VAAL

AGE 15 ADDRESS WITH EDITOR

ON THE RIGHT TRACK

* “Walking (minus) the line”?

Is the threat of a cut to train services a case of ‘fright at the end of the tunnel’?

TOM GILSENAN

BEAUMONT, D9

5 April2014 Back in hospital

I go all the way around the park listening to the Navy Lark. Our heroes are in trouble, again.They have to test a new navigational aidPriceless

Mary back in hospital

No Scrabbletoday, Perhaps Marywill win tomorrow.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Michael Meacher claims (Letters, 2 April) that our proposals “kick away” free NHS care at the point of service. Quite the opposite: they reinforce this principle. As the Guardian reported on Monday, Solving the NHS Care and Cash Crisis proposes various hypothecated health taxes to tackle the £30bn black hole in the NHS budget. Introducing dedicated health taxes is not a madcap, rightwing idea – the move was actively considered by a previous Labour shadow cabinet. Our proposals would include a £10 a month payment from all non-exempted adults, collected with the council tax, to support individualised health MOTs and continuing personal support for healthy living. People may not like paying more taxes for an effective NHS, but we would argue that Britain has little choice, precisely so we can preserve the principle of free at the point of use and clinical need.
Norman Warner House of Lords
Jack O’Sullivan Oxford

• Every NHS doctor, every day, sees a disproportionate number of patients with illness caused by poverty and the associates of poverty – smoking, obesity, alcohol, drug use, domestic violence. The NHS should be predominantly paid for by those whose privilege is to need it least. Then it will be there for all of us when we need it. This is how tax works.
Dr Helen Holt
Consultant physician, Bournemouth

• Polly Toynbee illustrates this government’s aversion to progressive taxation, regardless of falling revenues and the resulting dereliction of public services. I believe the fairest way would be for pensioners, like me – the people who would benefit most – to pay national insurance. This could also be part of the answer to the problem of social care, which should be incorporated into the NHS.
Trevor Lashley

Health warnings on air pollution should not be seen as isolated incidents (Editorial, 3 April). In recent years we have seen rates of major respiratory illnesses increase and in London alone an extra 4,000 premature deaths occur each year as a result of poor air quality. The European commission recently launched legal action against the UK for failing to meet mandatory air pollution targets. If we want to avoid dramatic government interventions like banning half of all cars on the road in major cities – which Paris has enacted – we need to adopt a much more proactive approach. Helping people to take simple, practical steps to rethink their travel plans can have a dramatic impact on air pollution.

In partnership with Barts NHS health trust, we are working to improve local air quality, through the development of cleaner air zones to benefit patients and incentives for suppliers and visiting vehicles to switch their engines off and operate cleaner vehicles. These sorts of initiatives are not just necessary for the environment, they will also help all of us to live longer, healthier lives.
Caroline Watson
Partner, Global Action Plan

• It’s easy to play the blame game when it comes to air pollution, but we are much less adept at coming up with answers. Air pollution is one of the most complex challenges we face – it doesn’t respect international or political boundaries. Much of it comes from the way we live our lives, but, above all, it’s usually invisible. So in some ways we should be grateful to the clouds of Saharan dust for reminding us of the importance of the air that we breathe, which most of us take for granted. The media coverage given to the smog is almost unprecedented, but what a tragedy it would be if this dispersed as soon as the dust stopped falling on our cars. I hope instead that it acts as a wake-up call for us all, especially our political leaders, and that healthy air is seen as essential a human right as clean drinking water and enough food for all.
Ruth Chambers
London

• The latest pollution crisis offers a compromise over the global warming debate: take all such measures to reduce CO₂ ,N₂O emissions that may affect long-term global warming as will also reduce immediate threats to health from pollution. It may be that action on the second will fulfil all the criteria for the first.
DBC Reed
Northampton

• The reduction in pollution following the 1956 Clean Air Act failed to match the positive impact resulting from the switch from toxic “town gas” to North Sea Gas just over a decade later, when “at national level in England and Wales, infant mortality rates fell rapidly from the early 1970s and into the 1980s” (Health Stat Q 2008 Winter;(40):18-29). A similar reduction in infant death rates following a switch to natural gas occurred in Turkey, as reported in January 2013 by Resul Cesur, Erdal Tekin and Aydogan Ulker.
Michael Ryan
Shrewsbury

• The current risks to health identified with the addition of airborne dust to existing pollution levels illustrates only too well the unforeseen consequences of the interventions made by London councils to limit the speed of vehicles to below 30mph. Speed humps, alternating pinch points, chicanes, additional roundabouts and zigzag parking ensure that vehicles have to be driven in lower gear, with frequent stops and starts thus increasing harmful exhaust. Diesel particulates are particularly dangerous and a 30% increase in diesel vehicles over recent years has ensured a rise in pollution, even before the addition of cloud dust.

The supposed safety suggested by these measures are more than offset by the increased health risks for all the population and especially for young undeveloped lungs frequently blasted by exhaust fumes in their outward facing buggies.
Chloe Baveystock
London

• It’s not just Tories in Westminster who fail to understand the pollution crisis (Report, 4 April). Here in Uttlesford our local council is about to approve a development plan that guarantees traffic gridlock in our town. Air quality levels in Saffron Walden already breach EU limits. Perhaps we should all stay indoors for the foreseeable future?
Richard Gilyead
Saffron Walden, Essex

• Lovely photo of the Angel of the North in the smog (3 April). Shame that, as your map shows, we had very low levels of pollution that day. We have had lots of mist – commonly known up here as a sea fret.
Sally Watson
Newcastle upon Tyne

Independent:

Times:

Telegraph:

SIR – Mary Riddell is right: British justice is indeed under threat.

SIR – Now Nick Clegg has made it clear that there is no justification for Britain to remain part of this corrupt, anti-democratic organisation, perhaps David Cameron could get on with the referendum before the country consigns him to history.

Irish Times:

Sir, – The Government will shortly publish a strategy designed to reactivate the construction sector through easing perceived obstacles to development. Such a move is welcome; there is significant capacity to boost construction to a sustainable level and in the process create jobs and build much needed infrastructure, in particular homes. According to the latest Housing Agency report, we need 80,000 new homes by the end of 2018, half in Dublin.

Many aspects of the construction strategy have been well flagged, including provisions to relax density requirements in urban areas to enable developers to build fewer, larger houses on sites instead of apartments, in order, we are told, to meet demand for family homes.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny, in referring to the construction strategy in the 2014 Programme for Government, says that the plan “will be based on enterprise and high standards, not speculation – we are never going back to the culture that nearly destroyed our country”. One aspect of our culture which has indeed damaged our country is urban sprawl. According to Dublin City Council’s study with DIT and UCD on Demographic Trends in Dublin 2012, “we have an American-type urban and regional settlement pattern, based on low density housing and high car dependency. The 2011 Census confirms that a pattern of population dispersal has continued even during the recession. This presents challenges with regard to provision of infrastructure; provision of social services; complex commuting patterns and accessibility; energy costs.” I am concerned that in the context of the need for new housing development, many voices are clamouring for us to make precisely the mistakes we made in the past through continuing to promote urban sprawl.

The topic is emotive, as evidenced by the reaction to recent comments by the head of the Department of Finance. A broad-ranging talk on construction and property issues – from the need to provide public housing to people who can no longer afford mortgage payments to the professionalisation of apartment block management was reduced in media reports to a reference to three-bedroom semi-detached houses.

It is possible to develop attractive family homes without resorting to the popular but unfortunately unsustainable two-storey house. The problem is that we have failed to convince people of the benefits of higher densities or the positive aspects of apartment living. To do this we need to broaden the discussion to include qualitative issues – not only in relation to the design, construction, management and maintenance of the apartments themselves but to consideration of the neighbourhood as a whole.

Developing homes and neighbourhoods in a sustainable way will pay dividends on many levels, including fairness (more people able to live closer to jobs, amenities and services) and health: the design of buildings and public spaces in cities and towns can lead to positive changes in our lifestyle and ultimately to greater levels of physical activity, which combat the root causes of obesity.

A Government strategy to re-energise the construction sector is welcome – but only if it doesn’t inadvertently perpetuate urban sprawl. Yours, etc,

ALI GREHAN,

Dublin City Architect,

Civic Offices,

Wood Quay,

Dublin 8

Sir, – The Housing Agency’s report projecting housing need over the next five years presents a significant opportunity to break with the mistakes of the past and ensure a considered, evidence-based approach to planning. However it also provokes pressure for a return to laissez faire, developer-led planning that must be resisted.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the modern Irish planning system, which sought “to make provision, in the interests of the common good, for the proper planning and development of cities, towns and other areas”. The National Planning Conference in Limerick this month marks this anniversary and will ask if 50 years on we have learned to avoid a knee-jerk reaction in the face of the need for new homes.

Serviced urban land remains a scarce resource that needs effective management. To construct places where people want to live, work and build communities, we must think long-term. Large volumes of low-density housing development produced at minimal cost to developers and maximum price to the consumer contributed to the problems of the property boom and often made “places” unsustainable as provision of services to low-density, remote developments became financially impracticable. This legacy must never be repeated.

As Ministers Hogan and O’Sullivan’s foreword to Local Area Plans – Guidelines for Planning Authorities (June 2013) states, we must focus on “settlements and place, rather than just development …We need to plan for communities, not for profit”.

The Housing Agency report lays down a challenge, not just for professional planners, but for all disciplines engaged in place-making. How do we ensure that good quality, affordable, efficient, well-designed houses are built where they should be and that real place-making remains at the forefront of the planning and housing agenda?

The Department has produced a range of guidelines designed to inform planning authorities, An Bord Pleanála, developers and the general public. Today we have a more comprehensive suite of guidance than ever before which demonstrates the aspiration at national level to deliver quality places. Rather than complaining about densities and the planning system we simply must implement these and get on with building high-quality, sustainable places. The days of parachute planning and place-making must be at an end. Yours, etc,

MARY CROWLEY MIPI,

President,

Irish Planning Institute,

Great Strand Street,

Dublin 1

Sir, – I refer to recent statements by Leo Varadkar in relation to the funding of Irish Rail. Mr Varadkar justifies his assertion that rail is inefficient on the basis of the relative numbers carried, compared to Dublin Bus or Luas. This is a shortsighted and simplistic analysis, which ignores the fact that the average rail journey is many multiples of the average Dublin Bus or Luas journey and is thus of more social and economic import.

The economic worth of the railway shouldn’t be casually dismissed – ask the people of Donegal how that region has fared since the destruction of rail infrastructure in the North West. Nor would I be particularly confident that bus-based solutions have the ability to address the transport needs of the Dublin area given that the usage of Dublin Bus services has declined sharply, from 149 million journeys in 2003/4 to 115 million in 2012. Indeed Dublin Bus carries substantially fewer passengers than in the much smaller Dublin of the 1960s while rail usage (excluding Luas) has increased by a factor of four. Indeed significant sections of the rail system are heavily congested, resulting in serious service degradation, particularly along the Dublin/Belfast corridor. Yours, etc,

ANTHONY GRAY ,

Wheaton Hall,

Drogheda,

Co Louth

Sir, – Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar is warning of possible closures on our railway network. However, on the European election campaign, his party colleague Jim Higgins MEP is still supporting the notion that the Western Rail Corridor (WRC) should be extended further. Mr Higgins is well aware that European TEN-T transport policy has made the Western Rail Corridor a non runner for European funding and there is going to be no Dublin money for this scheme.

Mairead McGuinness MEP is backing growing support in the West for the WRC to be converted to a greenway to protect the route until such time as a railway might become possible. Lorraine Higgins, Labour Party MEP candidate, and Luke Ming Flanagan, independent MEP candidate, also support the idea of a greenway.

Galway, Mayo and Sligo county councils, all with Fine Gael majorities, are against this policy, which would provide a huge boost to tourism for relatively little capital outlay. The councils seem to share the view of the three sitting Western MEPs, Jim Higgins, Marian Harkin and Pat the Cope Gallagher, that we apparently still have the money to open old rural railway lines in the West of Ireland and run them at a huge loss. It’s irresponsible politics.

Were the Minister to make it clear to our MEPs and councils that not only are some of our existing rail lines under threat but that there is no chance of more loss-making lines being reopened then perhaps they might throw their support behind a project that has a realistic chance of happening and which would bring jobs to the West. Yours, etc,

BRENDAN QUINN,

Sligo Mayo

Greenway Campaign,

Enniscrone,

Co Sligo

Sir, – Why are the views of philosophers, theologians and sociologists on our society mostly ignored, David Nelson asks (Letters, April 4th). Silly question, easy answer: there is no money in philosophy, theology or sociology. And if there is no money in philosophy, theology or sociology, they’re not worth anything, are they? That’s what kids in Ireland mostly learn, isn’t it? Ignore this message: it was written by a philosopher. In the context of the free market economy, it’s worthless. Yours, etc,

DR GERARD P MONTAGUE,

Zaumberg,

Immenstadt,

Allgäu,

Germany

Sir, – Amid the events commemorating the 100th anniversary of the founding of Cumann na mBan and its role in the struggle for independence, it should not be forgotten that members of that organisation were subsequently committed to the overthrow of the independent Irish state. One of its core activities in the first decade of the Irish Free State was the attempted undermining of the criminal justice system through persistent and co-ordinated jury intimidation.

Many examples of the menacing circulars sent to jurors’ homes and posted in public places survive in the National Archives, National Library and the Dublin Diocesan Archives. This campaign supplemented the activities of those who were willing to attack jurors, such as the men who shot John White in Terenure in 1929. He had been foreman of the jury which had convicted the Republican Con Healy of shooting at members of An Garda Síochána. Indeed, Cumann na mBan referred to the fate of Mr White in one of its leaflets as a warning to other jurors. Yours, etc,

MARK COEN,

Durham Law School,

Stockton Road,

Durham,

United Kingdom

Sir, – Edward Collins (Letters, April 3rd) is under a misapprehension. I did not write in to moan, or to look for sympathy, but to draw attention to the simple fact that up to half of the State’s voters are being ignored by the political system and by the media.

Mr Collins portrays us as diehard conservatives, impotently angry at the loss of our former power and glory. In fact, Mary Stewart has been campaigning tirelessly for years against the death penalty, as well as against abortion, and I was a lifelong supporter of the Labour Party until it adopted pro-abortion policies.

Personally, if it were not for the issue of abortion, I would not bother to write these letters at all. Does anyone seriously think that a Catholic like me would write to The Irish Times expecting “sympathy” for my position?

I was merely pointing out to your readers, and hopefully to politicians, that while there may be consensus in the media about various issues, large numbers of us have different views, and will vote accordingly. I feel that I need to do this because the media, for the most part, are not doing it for me.

Yours, etc,

JIM STACK,

Lismore,

Co Waterford

Sir, – The Government’s white paper on Universal Health Insurance (UHI), published this week is fundamentally flawed.

It will place an immediate financial burden on families, and the only consultation process open to the public is restricted to deliberating on what this “competing insurers” model will look like. Meanwhile, there is no consultation of any kind taking place on any other options, such as those recommended in Dr Jane Pillinger’s 2012 report The Future of Healthcare in Ireland .

That report recommended that the competing insurers model, as proposed by the Minister, should not be adopted before all the options have been evaluated in terms of quality, equity, access to services and medium and long term value for money. The report was ignored by the Minister.

Families will be required by law to have health insurance, but there is a real risk that this will be an impossible financial burden from the very start, particularly for the growing number of people without health insurance who don’t qualify for a medical card.

This group will be required to purchase health insurance for every member of their family. While the Dutch insurance model provided the Minister with his initial inspiration for this UHI scheme, it should be noted that children are actually insured for free under the Dutch model.

The question of cost remains, but it appears that no evaluation of any other funding model has been undertaken. We have been trying to get the message across to the Minister that other options need to be considered, such as the “single-payer” social insurance model used in France, Germany and Nordic countries.

Apart from a cursory late briefing on the day of publication, where questions were not invited from trade unions or patient groups, there has been no engagement with the Minister on these issues.

The experience in other jurisdictions which have similar models of competing insurers, has been a continuing rise in the price of compulsory insurance, coupled with increasing restrictions on the health services covered. They have also experienced rising readmission rates as more people experience complications after they’ve been discharged. This can be attributed to the financial incentives to discharge patients early.

The Minister’s estimate of €900 per individual seems almost optimistic, but if this model is established, the costs are likely to continue to rise. The Minister has also boasted that the scheme will ensure no additional cost burden to the State, which will mean that the only means of raising extra revenue will be through individual insurance premiums.

Finally, if we really want to get the measure of where this scheme is going, it is telling that the €100 charge for emergency departments will remain in place. Yours, etc,

LOUISE O’DONNELL,

National secretary,

Health & Welfare division

IMPACT,

Sir, – Brian McDevitt (Letters, April 2nd) is using out of date and inaccurate figures in his comments on GP incomes. As a general practitioner, I get on average €85.80 per year for a medical card patient under the age of 70.

For this sum, I provide medical cover to my patients for 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. This is before tax, and before paying staff, premises, equipment and computer costs and what is required to ensure out of hours cover etc.

For years my private patients have been subsidising my medical card practice and sustaining the standard of practice that we are trying to provide. This situation has been exacerbated by the 35 per cent cut in medical card fees unilaterally imposed by the Government in the last three years.

The recently appointed professor of general practice in UCC, who has come from the United Kingdom, has been quoted as describing the GP service in this country as “gold dust”. Under current Government proposals it may well become just dust. Yours, etc,

DR EAMONN FALLER,

Crescent Medical Centre,

The Crescent,

Galway

Sir, – Brian McDevitt’s letter reflects the success of the Health Service Executive and the Department of Health in convincing the general public that global payments to a GP practice reflect the remuneration of the doctors involved.

By this logic, the situation is indeed even worse than Mr McDevitt imagines it to be since I can reveal that a certain Dr J Reilly received €13 billion in payments last year, which does seem excessive.

In Dr Reilly’s defence it should be said that this money is used to fund the health service. On a micro level the payments are the global payments to practices which fund nurses, secretaries, heat, light and medical supplies among other things. As these fees have been cut successively in recent years, the private fees that Mr McDevitt refers to are increasingly used to support the provision of services to medical card patients. Although the State has the responsibility to provide services to this group, it does not appear to be willing to adequately fund it. Yours, etc,

SÉAMUS McMENAMIN,

Family Doctor,

Baile Átha Luimnigh,

An Uaimh,

Co Na Mhí

Sir, – Your Irish language columnist Caoimhe Ní Laighin misleadingly states in her article(“Cinniúint na Catalóine”, April 2nd) that there are “77,000 cainteoir ag an nGaeilge”. This is not correct. The number of Irish speakers who claim to use Irish daily “outside the educational system only” should not be equated with the total number of Irish speakers, as your columnist has done. Many Irish speakers living outside Irish-speaking communities do not easily get opportunities on a daily basis to use Irish but they are still Irish-speakers.

In my opinion a better measure of the number of active Irish-speakers is the number of people who claim in census returns to use the language at least weekly outside education. This figure, according to the 2011 census is 188,000 for the 26 counties.

The 2011 census taken in Northern Ireland showed that there were 64,847 people who claimed to be able to understand, read, write and speak Irish. Unfortunately we don’t have figures for daily and weekly users but I would suggest a figure of approximately 16,000 would not be an exaggeration, giving a figure of a little more than 200,000 for the number of people who use Irish on a regular basis within the island of Ireland.

DONNCHA

Ó hÉALLAITHE,

Gaeltaighde,

Indreabhán,

Co na Gaillimhe

Irish Independent:

Published 05 April 2014 02:30 AM

* Leaving my local supermarket some days ago I stopped to put some change on the table for the Kidney Association, a fantastic organisation that has done some great work over the years.

Also in this section

Put lead in your pencil and use your vote

Sky deal is a slap in the face for GAA fans

Coming back from the mother of all mistakes

I never pass its table as, many years ago, a friend of mine who was on the waiting list finally got his new kidney and I saw first-hand what a difference it made to his life.

Unfortunately he has since passed, but it left a lasting impression on my life. I now always carry my organ donor card in my wallet. But, as we all know, we often leave our wallet and driver’s licence behind, which delays any decision regarding organ donation or discussions with next-of-kin.

Investigating the matter further, I discovered that carrying an organ donor card merely indicates your intention to be an donor but does not give permission. Your next-of-kin still need to be contacted first which, understandably for the hospital, can be a very difficult conversation considering the trauma the family is experiencing.

With this in mind, I contacted my local hospital to ask if they had a list of donors which I could add my name too, “unfortunately not” was the reply – no such list exists.

Would it not make more sense to have a list of donors, where you could sign up and complete all the necessary legal forms with the consent of your next-of-kin?

Your name and medical details could be stored on computer, to be accessed only in the event of death, which removes the need to contact grief-stricken families.

Given the power of computers and with time-critical decisions required, it would also mean that your details could be immediately matched to somebody on the waiting list. If there were no suitable matches in Ireland your medical details could be instantly matched to somebody in Europe.

None of this is rocket science and, in this age of computers, carrying a small card that is easily lost or misplaced is obsolete.

I’m sure a properly constructed list, which could run in tandem with donor cards, would lead to more organs becoming available, dealt with in the fastest possible time and with a lot less stress on the donor’s family.

EUGENE MCGUINNESS

CO KILKENNY

PRESIDENTIAL PRECEDENT

* President Michael D Higgins has launched a national debate about values.

Perhaps President Higgins could lead from the front on issues he refers to, such as justice and equality, by reducing his salary to a reasonable level.

Real leadership would be for the President to publicly declare what he accepts as a reasonable salary and pension.

SEAMUS CULLEN

SEACREST, KNOCKNACARRA, CO GALWAY

COURAGE TO RISE AGAIN

* With regard to Brian McDevitt’s letter (Irish Independent, April 4), on NNI Press Pass winner Elayna Keller’s work on bullying, here are some great words of inspiration from Stan Rogers‘s ‘The Mary Ellen Carter’.

“And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow. With smiling b****rds lying to you everywhere you go. Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain. And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.”

The great Liam Clancy‘s version is a source of great solace to those who listen to it. Try it.

MARK ROTHWELL,

CASTLECOMER, CO KILKENNY

A FAMINE OF OUR IDEALS

* I don’t feel particularly sorry for TDs involved in scandals. But as we leave all decency behind, the Irish world becomes less and less like the ideal we aimed for in our founding values. Partially, it is the politicians’ greed and indifference that has created this “me fein” attitude.

It was bizarre for me to find anti-Semitism in Australia and the unfounded nature of it, hatred for no reason. Hatred passed on.

Now, there is a certain amount of crying wolf in depicting criticism of Israel’s actions as anti-Semitic. Israel is often regarded as doing the wrong thing. But, as many Israelis acknowledge, they are now protesting with the Palestinians for peace in their mutual homes.

But who are we to be sending Nazi imagery to any Irish person? Is this the country we want? Where we make light of genocide? Us, who survived a famine brought upon us by the notion that we too were “unwanted” and, therefore, also disposable.

You may not like Justice Minister Alan Shatter. You may think he does a bad job. But this? Come on people, we are better than this.

PAULINE BLEACH

WOLLI CREEK, AUSTRALIA

STATE’S LISTENING EAR

* Now that it has been established that recordings of conversations took place in several garda stations and the prison service – most of them illegally – it begs the question as to how many others were also surreptitiously eavesdropped on?

In true GUBU-esque fashion, it would appear, in hindsight, the shenanigans of Sean Doherty and his cronies were boy scout-esque in comparison.

LIAM POWER

SAN PAWL IL-BAHAR, MALTA.

OVER-70S CARD SCANDAL

* The HSE is currently reviewing the medical card entitlements of thousands of over-70s following Finance Minister Michael Noonan’s appalling changes to the income thresholds in Budget 2014 and, in particular, the income thresholds that apply to couples.

The following statistics will demonstrate the unequal and scandalous treatment of couples in this age bracket.

* The single threshold was reduced by €5,200 per annum.

* The threshold for couples was reduced by a staggering €15,600 per annum – that’s €7,800 each.

* The new annual threshold for a single person is €26,000.

* The new annual threshold for a couple is €46,800 – this works out at €23,400 each.

It is extraordinary that no threshold applies to the new GP Visit Card for children under six. So millionaires with children under six will be entitled to it. What a joke.

JOSEPH NAUGHTON

CORBALLY, CO LIMERICK

LOSING TRAIN OF THOUGHT

* I refer to recent statements by Transport Minister Leo Varadkar in relation to the funding of Irish Rail.

Mr Varadkar justifies his assertion that rail is inefficient on the basis of the relative numbers carried compared to Dublin Bus or Luas.

This is a very blinkered, short-sighted and simplistic analysis. It ignores the fact that the average rail journey is many multiples of the average Dublin Bus or Luas journey and is thus of more social and economic importance.

The economic worth of the railway to places like Galway, Killarney or Westport shouldn’t be casually dismissed – ask the people of Donegal how that region has fared since the destruction of rail infrastructure in the north-west.

While Irish Rail may well need to make further savings, it also needs to grow the business and aggressively exploit the substantial improvements in railway infrastructure.

I wouldn’t be particularly confident that bus-based solutions have the ability to address the transport needs of the Dublin area given that the usage of Dublin Bus services has declined sharply from 149 million journeys in 2003/4 to 115 million in 2012.

Indeed, significant sections of the rail system are heavily congested, especially in the Dublin area, resulting in serious service degradation, particularly along the Dublin/Belfast corridor.

ANTHONY GRAY

WHEATON HALL, DROGHEDA, CO LOUTH

Irish Independent

6April2014 hospital visit

I go all the way around the park listening to the Men from the Ministry: Accidental

Devolution for Birmingham Priceless

Mary back in hospital visit her play Scrabble

Scrabbletoday, Mary wins Perhaps Iwill win tomorrow.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Independent:

Times:

GPs flooded by patients – and we’re struggling

CAMILLA CAVENDISH needs to spend a day shadowing me to see life from this side of the fence. I have been a GP for 30 years in the same practice and have seen huge changes in the way we operate (“Dr Useless says he’s busy. Fine, I’ll be off to the pharmacist then”, Comment, last week). I did not vote for the 2004 contract, which heralded the inability to close our list, which has nearly doubled over the past five years as disaffected patients from other practices and eastern European land workers flood in. We are unable to attract new doctors so we struggle on — with 35 to 40 patients awaiting the emergency doctor on a Monday morning. This is not medicine but crowd control.
Dr Clive Warren Boston, Lincolnshire

Investment needed
We are grateful to Camilla Cavendish (“Dr Useless says he’s busy. Fine, I’ll be off to the pharmacist then”, Comment, last week) for pointing out the huge asset of the pharmacist in the community and pleased that she found her local pharmacist to be so good.

However, different but complementary services and expertise are already offered by general practitioners and pharmacists to patients in surgeries and pharmacies every day.

Care is becoming more complex with the challenges of an ageing population, more patients presenting with multiple and complex conditions and more patients with mental health problems.

GPs are working record hours in surgery and making up to 60 patient contacts a day. Pharmacists dispense about 1bn prescriptions a year alongside the provision of an increasing range of NHS services.

Treatments are being carried out in general practice that 10 years ago would have been immediately referred to a hospital physician and pharmacists are already carrying out medication reviews, supporting people with long-term conditions to stay well and preventing illness through stop smoking services.

Both our professions would like to see a shift in resources that allows investment in primary care and services that promote wellness, preventing costly and unwanted hospital admissions.

This includes increasing the number of GPs who could provide more appointments and longer appointments for patients. A modest rise of only 1% per year would ease the pressures on other parts of the health service, ensuring that patients get access to their general practice when they need it.

We would like to see the NHS make better use of pharmacists’ skills by enabling patients to share their electronic health record with pharmacists and rewarding pharmacists for the quality of the care delivered, as well as better patient outcomes. The NHS will get the most from medicines when pharmacists are better utilised throughout the health system.

Ultimately, the answer to increasing demand, with scarce resources, when patients rightly expect high-quality care will come from collaborative, not competitive, working between GPs and pharmacists.

Enabling pharmacists and GPs to share the care of our population will only come about if patients and their carers see the benefits of such an arrangement and confidence develops that this provides better, safer care.

Dr Maureen Baker, Chair Royal College of General Practitioners,

Dr David Branford, Chair, English Pharmacy Board, Royal Pharmaceutical Society

Barriers to diagnosis
Not for the first time, GPs are left to shoulder the blame for more failures within the NHS. While I acknowledge that my GP colleagues do need to take some degree of responsibility, a difficult task is made more so by current referral channels.

The two-week-wait system has made no difference to rates of early cancer diagnosis. It only works well where the diagnosis is obvious anyway, such as with breast or skin.

Delays are increased by the barriers put up to GP access to diagnostics such as ultrasound, endoscopy and MRI. GPs can increase rates of early cancer diagnosis but must have the tools to be able to do so.
Dr Peter Holloway GP and Clinical Commissioning Group, Mendlesham, Suffol

Too few radiologists
We share the aspiration of Harpal Kumar (“GPs must end culture of delays”, Focus, last week) to achieve diagnosis of cancer at an earlier and therefore more treatable stage. However, we have reservations about his proposed strategy of carrying out diagnostic tests on more people.

The demand for imaging tests has already far outstripped the ability of NHS radiology departments to cope. With around half the number of radiologists per head of population that other western European nations enjoy, we simply do not have the capacity to interpret significantly larger numbers of scans.

We support the national screening programmes for breast and bowel cancers, which can best be detected by imaging. Earlier diagnosis of other cancers will most reliably be achieved by targeting imaging to people with specific symptom complexes and risk factors. We have been producing guidelines for doctors on the appropriate use of imaging for more than 20 years and we are keen to work with Cancer Research UK, healthcare leaders, Macmillan Cancer Support and other stakeholders to ensure that imaging strategies are designed to promote earlier diagnosis.

If this involves an increase in the number of people undergoing tests, significant further investment in radiologists and radiology services will be required.
Giles Maskell President  Royal College of Radiologists

Smear test delays
In 2003 the age to enter the NHS cervical screening programme was raised from 20 to 25 years as evidence showed that screening in the lower age group had little impact on rates of invasive cancer. Cellular changes related to HPV infection are common in younger women, but largely self-resolve.

If a woman of any age presents to a GP with cervical cancer symptoms, she must be urgently referred to a gynaecologist. A smear test at that stage would introduce further delays, even if the public thinks otherwise.
Dr Sally Wood Ludlow, Shropshire

Mum’s raw deal on pay

I COULD not agree more about women being penalised for part-time working (“Wise up, bosses, and make this mother’s day”, Eleanor Mills, last week). As an accountant I can get £35,000 to £40,000 pro rata working part-time; full-time work pays much more overall.

All of the mums I know are graduates but a very small percentage of them work — it is just not worth it. In Denmark both the mum and dad tend to work part-time. This seems a much more equitable solution.
Gill Crane Alton, Hampshire

Flexible friends
Employers continue to consider flexible working cases on an ad hoc basis. Thus many parents, especially women, are forced to leave work, taking vital skills with them. Family Lives believes that flexible working should be seen as a dynamic policy for all (men, women, old and young) to support staff to combine work, care and family life.
Anastasia de Waal Chairwoman, Family Lives

Dear dad, let’s talk

I felt very sad when I read the Mother’s Day article “Do you get on with your mum? My relationship is complex and messy” (Katie Glass, Magazine, last week), but it appears to have struck a chord with many.

My husband had a very difficult relationship with his dad, and eventually wrote a letter. The result was not an outpouring of anger or regret but a much better relationship — my husband was 59 and his dad 89. Took them a while, but it improved things.
Name and address withheld

NHS faces a weighty issue

As always, Rod Liddle has hit the nail firmly on the head with his take on obesity (“Chew on this insult, lardbucket. It’s for your own good”, Comment, last week). When I was an NHS consultant in Essex, I very politely advised a patient at my pain clinic that she could improve her back pain by losing weight. Her daughter, a hospital administrator, reported me to the authorities for being “disrespectful” to her mother.
Dr Charles Gauci, Gozo, Malta

Gluten-free isn’t a fad for coeliacs
I know Liddle is often tongue-in-cheek and that it is a fad to say you are wheat-intolerant. However, there are people, like my daughter and granddaughter, who have coeliac disease, which means they have to eat gluten-free. Going out for a meal is a nightmare, and imagine telling a child she cannot have an ice cream or chocolate sweets that contain gluten. Not life-threatening, but hard to live with.
Lesley Charnock, Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire

Intolerable string ban

BANNING steel-stringed instruments from prison would be a travesty and a truly cruel punishment for one prisoner I met when I worked in HMP Elmley, Kent (“High security, low voltage as prisons outlaw guitars”, News, last week). Elmley houses not only some of the country’s most dangerous men, but also Sarah Baker, a transgender life-sentenced prisoner, who has now served 26 years.

I knew little about Baker but soon discovered that she was full of remorse for her crimes.  I was left almost speechless by the sincerity of her words. More amazingly, I also heard  that she was a violinist and had been friends with the late, great virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin — had she not been in prison, some people felt that she could have been Britain’s greatest violinist. She used to practise for 14 hours a  day, starting with the “Kreutzer” sonata, and then Bach’s partitas for solo violin, followed by  two violin concertos. She would always end with Paganini’s caprices, which often annoyed her neighbours.

Meeting a transgender violin-playing life-sentenced prisoner was not only one of  the most surreal moments in my life, but also the greatest.
Name and address withheld

Melody maker
I do hope that staff in the 49 establishments to which Billy Bragg donated guitars inspected them to see if any files were enclosed.
Ray Watson, Beckenham, southeast London

Losing our cool

I FAIL to see how warming will improve Britain’s climate (“London a flashpoint for climate change”, News, last week). First, we shall start to lose our traditional crops and livestock. Working in summer will become intolerable and affect productivity.

Finally, the loss of the cool British seaside with its pleasantly tepid waters will be a disaster.There will be nowhere to hide from the beastly sun, while tropical fauna invade our beaches with their foul stings and noisome teeth. I don’t like it, sir.
Quentin Lotte, London SW6

Tax blowing in
Last week we were inundated with warnings about climate change, with reports from the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs — and then there were the Sahara sands polluting our air.

In my humble view, it was an orchestrated campaign to alarm us all into a state of acute responsibility — in itself a fine objective. So why do I keep wondering if we are being softened up for a raft of new rules, penalties and taxes?
Allan Falconer Nottingham

Points

Toff luck
In November 1995 I went for a job interview at Carlton Communications (“Toff at the top”, Editorial, March 23). The man who interviewed me was smooth and ambitious. His name was David Cameron. I later got the stock “no, thanks, but we’ll keep your details on file” letter. This surely makes me the only Old Etonian to whom the prime minister hasn’t offered a job.
Boris Starling, Dorset

Desert dreams
Your article “Desert gives up Lawrence’s hideout” (News, March 23) refers to the perfect preservation of a Lawrence guerrilla camp to the east of Aqaba, from which he planned his raids on the Hejaz railway. Many of those attacks took place in Saudi Arabia as the railway line from Damascus approached Medina. When working at the new industrial city of Yanbu on the Red Sea coast, close to where Lawrence stayed at times, I ventured east towards the railway. Finding track remains, I followed it north toward the Jordan border across perfect viaducts, and found well-preserved wrecks of trains (no rust in the desert). Your article and the associated interactive map online recalled happy times in the desert — a privilege.
Clive Peacock Kenilworth, Warwickshire

Germans do remember
Harry Mount says the Germans don’t remember the First World War (“Lying cold and alone: the war dead Germany struggles to remember”, News Review, March 23), but if he visits the cemetery in Cannock, Staffordshire, dedicated to German dead of both world wars, he will find Germans looking at all the graves and spending time in the moving memorial chapel. If we had a joint memorial service for the Great War, the Germans might take part, over here.
Jane Kelly, London W3

Prince of smiles
How I had to smile on reading Prince Andrew extolling the merits of failure, sitting in the palace with his “HRH” teacup (“Failure is good for you — and I should know”, News Review, last week).
Dudley Holley, Southend-on-Sea, Essex

Corrections and clarifications

We have been asked to clarify that if beaches do not pass the EU’s new bathing water directive, signs might have to be erected warning the public about water quality (“Kiss me quick before 45 top beaches close”, News, March 16). However, no beaches would actually close, and people would be free to choose to swim or not.

Complaints about inaccuracies in all sections of The Sunday Times, including online, should be addressed to editor@sunday-times.co.uk or The Editor, The Sunday Times, 3 Thomas More Square, London E98 1ST. In addition, the Press Complaints Commission (complaints@pcc.org.uk or 020 7831 0022) examines formal complaints about the editorial content of UK newspapers and magazines (and their websites)

Birthdays

Rory Bremner, impressionist, 53; Paul Daniels, magician, 76; Myleene Klass, presenter, 36; Ian Paisley, former first minister of Northern Ireland, 88; Anita Pallenberg, model, 70; André Previn, pianist and conductor, 85; Paul Rudd, actor, 45; Dilip Vengsarkar, cricketer, 58; James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, 86

Anniversaries

1896 first modern Olympic Games open in Athens; 1917 America declares war on Germany; 1924 first round-the-world flight takes off from Seattle (it takes 175 days); 1944 introduction of PAYE income tax in Britain; 1994 the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi die in a plane crash, sparking the Rwandan genocide

Telegraph:

SIR – Given that Nick Clegg has so dismally failed to put the case for our continued EU membership, and that opinion polls show that the Lib Dems may have no MEPs at all in a few weeks’ time, my question is: what is the policy of the Labour Party on the EU?

I have examined the Labour website. It tells me about Ed Miliband, the shadow cabinet, its MPs and candidates. How strange that it does not even mention the European elections on May 22.

Hugo Jenks
Bath, Somerset

Golden-tongued

SIR – Rear-Admiral Frank Golden valued his dual nationality. He told me that he cherished the memory of the astonishment on the faces of those greeting him when, on an official visit to the Republic of Ireland, he was piped aboard an Irish naval vessel and, in the uniform of a British admiral, answered his welcome in fluent Gaelic.

Christopher Macy
Lincoln

Post earliest of all

SIR – A wooden posting box in Lyme Regis (pictured) lays claim to being the oldest surviving in Britain (Letters, April 4).

It is still set in its original place on the wall of the Old Lyme Guest House, which was, from 1799 to 1853, the post office.

It has a vertical and a horizontal slot, reflecting changing government guidelines.

John Powell
Tavistock, Devon

Too fat to fit

SIR – Why have toothbrush handles become so bulbous that they no longer fit into the receptacles designed for them?

My white bathroom holder has “Toothbrush” in blue letters and four three-quarter-inch holes. The guest room container also sports an oval aperture for the toothpaste, from a pretty rose-covered range of bed linen and accessories sold by Marks & Spencer. No use now. What do I use instead?

Prudence Seddon
Stourton Caundle, Dorset

A better sort of earl

SIR – Two of the Earl of Rosslyn’s forebears would have been particularly delighted by his new appointment as master of the household to the Prince of Wales.

His great-grandfather, the 5th Earl, who gambled away the family fortune in six years and then devised a system to break the bank at Monte Carlo (but failed), was part of the Marlborough House set that fawned on the future Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales. He was tolerated because his sister, the Countess of Warwick, was for a time the Prince’s maitresse-en-titre (later she tried to use her love letters to blackmail the Royal family, but was forgiven).

The new senior courtier’s grandfather, who died in 1929 as Lord Loughborough before inheriting the earldom, tried but failed to win the friendship of the next Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII. “He was sacked from the RN College, Osborne, my first term there in the summer of 1907”, the latter recalled. He was much taken, however, with Lady Loughborough, as was his brother, the future George VI, her lover before his marriage.

In entering the service of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, the current Earl has made up for the failings of his predecessors.

Lord Lexden
London SW1

Bad call

SIR – Infuriated at receiving unwanted calls from abroad and from British firms that do not abide by the Telephone Preference Service, I too invested in the BT blocking telephone (Letters, April 4).

It was excellent until I realised that many doctors and hospitals withhold their numbers, and that I was missing vital calls. I had no alternative but to cancel the service.

James Shone
Southwell, Nottinghamshire

Becher’s trick

SIR – Peter Oborne (Comment, April 3) tells that Captain Becher’s party-trick was “leaping on to the mantelpiece from a standing start”.

I have seen it said elsewhere that C B Fry would do the same, but starting with his back to the fireplace.

Is either feat properly attested? Or is either actually much commoner than one supposes?

Lachlan Mackinnon
Ely, Cambridgeshire

Enjoy! We’ll see about that

SIR – The politest reply that I can suggest to a waiter’s “Enjoy” (Letters, April 4) is: “I’ll try”.

Helen Atkin

Lewes, East Sussex

SIR – A late friend of mine was known to respond to instructions by waiters to “Enjoy” by saying wearily: “Enjoy is a transitive verb and requires an object.”

That was usually the end of the matter.

Charles O’Connor
London SW7

SIR – A frequent response by a waiter to any request is “No problem.”

As the politically correct brigade has substituted the word challenge for problem, I say: “You mean no challenge.” Result: incomprehension.

Vincent Howard
Barton Stacey, Hampshire

SIR – Worse is a television interview ending with, “Thanks for your time,” and, “My pleasure.” It makes me cringe.

Malcolm Cross
Plungar, Leicestershire

SIR – Two grizzled New York comedy writers I worked with in Hollywood, on being exhorted to “Have a nice day” by a head waiter, snapped back in unison: “Don’t tell us what to do!”

Lord Grade of Yarmouth
London SW1

SIR – Which particular aspect of the Maria Miller scandalis the most infuriating?

Irish Times:

Irish Independent:

Madam – The garda commissioner makes his way up from the rank and file membership as opposed to some countries that operate a cadetship. The skills needed to perform in middle management are not necessarily adequate to fulfil the huge range of responsibilities as commissioner.

Also in this section

We must move from organ donor cards to a list

Put lead in your pencil and use your vote

Sky deal is a slap in the face for GAA fans

If future commissioners are to possess the capabilities to steer the force towards excellence, two criteria must apply. Firstly, there must be a sprinkling of candidates joining from time to time capable of surviving at the various levels and eventually taking on the giant expansion of skills required to perform as head of the force.

Secondly, the promotion system must be capable of identifying, selecting and promoting these members. sergeants, superintendents, chief superintendents and commissioners have a major say and a veto at every stage of promotion of subordinates. The chances of these fulfilling the second criteria are low. The statistical chance of both criteria existing is very remote.

Middle management have plenty to do without the need to be involved in assessing staff for promotion. It is likely that some excellent staff are blocked along the way by managers who are not up to the job themselves or just don’t understand the need for fair objective selection. Simply put, if your chief doesn’t like you, you are not going anywhere. If cadetship is not in the frame, the services of outside help to oversee promotion by continuous assessment, based on ability, will be vital. Nepotism, sporting prowess, and luck are poor alternatives to clarity of thought, training, leadership and skill. Three commissioners forced into involuntary retirement since 1978 prove the need for change.

Val Martin,

Cavan

BEHAN SOLD SHORT ON LITERACY LEGACY

Madam – Having long been familiar with the critical work of Anthony Cronin and his thoughts on the inordinately talented trio of Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, and Flann O’Brien, I must take issue with some of the points he raises in his interview with Willie Kealy, regarding the literary legacy of Brendan Behan (Sunday Independent, March 23, 2014).

Cronin states in relation to Behan: “… as if there’s a solid achievement to commemorate, which, alas, there isn’t. I wouldn’t think – aside from Borstal Boy, which I think is not even in print at the moment – that there’s not much to rest the reputation of the writer on”. I think Cronin sells Behan the writer very short in this assessment.

In fairness to him, Cronin at least mentions Borstal Boy, although he appears to undermine this mention by surmising that it’s not even in print at this point in time. Woe betide any writer who stakes his or her reputation on the exigencies of the publishing industry. The reputations of writers tend to go in and out of fashion, a point that Cronin himself noted some years ago in relation to the unfairly neglected Aidan Higgins. Borstal Boy itself ranks very highly in the realm of prison autobiography, bearing comparison with Jean Genet‘s The Miracle of the Rose and Our Lady of the Flowers. Indeed, Behan’s work surpasses Genet’s in its sympathy with the human condition and in his refusal to treat his characters as mere puppets and playthings.

Cronin also refers to The Hostage as “a totally different sort of entertainment”. This is a fair enough comment, but what about An Giall (the Irish-language play on which the inferior The Hostage is based and which is far more than an entertainment) and The Quare Fellow – both classics of modern Irish drama? And what about Behan’s fine poems in Irish and his masterpieces of short fiction, After the Wake and The Confirmation Suit? All in all, not an inconsiderable achievement on which to base a literary legacy.

Jim McCarthy,

Sandymount, Dublin 4

POLITICIANS SHOULD SO SOME REAL WORK

Madam – The headline to Eilis O’Hanlon’s article (Sunday Independent, March 30, 2014), – “For our seasoned politicians, ignorance isn’t merely bliss, it’s good business” – angered me. Yes, true, if it’s merely a game of French roulette among themselves, while forgetting they are in charge of running a country.

Good leadership was never so necessary in Ireland as now. Tens of thousands are unemployed, mortgage debt is a disaster and the population is burdened with new schemes and taxes.

Nevertheless, for the past few weeks nothing mattered in Dail Eireann – only problems with whistleblowers and phone tapping. Both are connected with inefficiency at the top and little to do with rank and file. As for ‘whistleblowers’ – they weren’t always known by that name! The only whistleblowers familiar to the general public would be those with the local hunts or refereeing matches. Culture changes – apparently it is now honourable and necessary to have a new professional whistleblowers’ outfit set up to combat wrong-doing in higher places. So be it!

Undoubtedly, the next time-waster in Government will be the local elections, when it would serve the country far better if they got their ‘ear to the ground’, started straightening the economy and created some jobs.

James Gleeson,

Thurles, Co Tipperary

A LITTLE CHARITY WOULDN’T GO AMISS

Madam – For many years, Emer O’Kelly has been one of your finest journalists, not least in respect of her consistent criticism of the Catholic Church’s dreadful behaviour with regard to clerical sex abuse. Many of the latter columns, indeed, were written long before it was fashionable to ask serious questions of the Catholic hierarchy. It was a huge disappointment, therefore, to read her column (Sunday Independent, March 30, 2014), regarding former TD Patrick Nulty. This is a relatively young politician whose career has been abruptly ended and whose misdeeds have been splashed all over the national media. He has also publicly admitted to having a drink problem.

This very public shame, however, was not enough for Ms Kelly, apparently. She doesn’t consider the adjective “inappropriate”, as used in the media, to be sufficient to describe Mr Nulty’s actions. She manages to describe his behaviour as “pathetic”, “inexcusable”, “sleazy”, “exploitative”, “sordid”, “distasteful” and “contemptible”. He is among the “sad, inadequate people” who “indulge in such behaviour”. His career is ruined, and “many people will say, deservedly so”, Ms Kelly among them, clearly.

When I had finished reading Ms Kelly’s column, the phrase “kicking someone when he’s down” sprang to mind.

While Ms Kelly is clearly no fan of the Catholic Church, a little Christianity would have not gone amiss in her column.

Jim Hickey,

Waterford

AMERICANISATION CATCHES ON FAST

Madam –I think Carole Molloy (Sunday Independent, March 30, 2014), is wrong when she suggests your reporters are ‘Americanised’ after spending their gap year in the States. More likely after having been there for a week’s holidays!

Patricia Keeley,

Dublin 6W

NO ‘SOUTHERN IRELAND’ IN ATLAS

Madam – In response to John McClung‘s letter taking offence at Northern Ireland being called “the North” (Sunday Independent, March 23, 2014), and John Brady’s letter in response (Sunday Independent, March 30, 2014), saying that “Ireland” is the name of this country, I was watching the Channel 4 Countdown where actress Maureen Lipman raved about her love of drinking a pint of Murphy’s in Beara in “Southern Ireland” which she repeated several times.

I checked my atlas, and googled it, but could not find “Southern Ireland” anywhere. Also Ireland is not one of the British Isles, the correct term is the British Isles and Ireland.

Pat Kelly,

Blackrock, Cork

TAKE DECISION ON

FLUORIDE MYSELF

Madam – Carol Hunt (Sunday Independent, March 30, 2014), wrote an article entitled ‘Brush up on mind control and methods to medicate’. She stated that the fluoridation of our water system is for our common good and any other opinion is “pure (bull)**it”. I beg to differ, and take extreme offence to her language. I do not want someone else deciding whether I should have fluoride added to my water for my own good. I can make that decision for myself.

Sharon McCarthy,

Tuam, Co Galway

SICK TO THE TEETH OF WATER DEBATE

Madam – It is with complete frustration that I write to you regarding an article by Declan Waugh and the fluoridation of water in Ireland.

He makes endless claims regarding the dangers of fluoride. I am appalled that a national paper is printing this. I hope this is the last we hear of Mr Declan Waugh and his campaign in your paper.

Anita Byrne,

Clonmel, Co Tipperary

WOMEN PASSED OVER FOR YEARS

Madam – The issue of the under-representation of women in the parliaments of what are supposed to be representative democracies is an interesting topic for debate as is highlighted by your two correspondents Robert Sullivan and Hugh Gibney (Sunday Independent, March 30, 2014).

The facts are that we are told that something like five per cent of TDs elected since independence were women and between 80 per cent and 90 per cent of the Dail at the moment are men. That can be accepted as a law of nature or it can be challenged by saying that it is inefficient to marginalise the interests, perspectives and talents of the majority of the population that are women in what is supposed to be a representative democracy.

The recent introduction of the condition that political parties have a minimum quota of women candidates in the next general election before they qualify for public funding has focused the debate.

What is proposed here is an increase in the number of women candidates, not, as stated by Robert Sullivan, ‘forcing us to vote for women’ and ‘sticking’ them into Leinster House. If the women on the ballot paper do not get elected that is the end of the matter.

Hugh Gibney raises the issue of ‘men of superior ability’ being ‘passed over’. The fact is that many more women of superior ability have been passed over throughout the years since independence because they did not even get as far as being considered by what Hugh Gibney himself calls ‘the relevant powers that be’.

A Leavy,

Sutton, Dublin 13

UKRAINE FACES JOB CATASTROPHE

Madam – Dan O’Brien’s article “No Place for Weakness in Face of Grave Danger” is, in my view, ill-informed. I am married to a lady from a former USSR state which is now a full EU member – Latvia.

Russia has no economic interest in taking over Ukraine. Latvia was promised much when it joined the EU. When Russia was forced out of Latvia employers disappeared, and so did jobs and salaries.

They were not replaced with EU or American companies. All State pensions guaranteed by Russia disappeared. The result was economic catastrophe and today I know Latvian shop workers who earn €250 a month. So all young people left and went to Ireland and the UK as their immigration working laws were more lenient than continental Europe.

Most jobs in Ukraine are from small to medium sized local companies. The Ukraine is being sold a pretty picture in much the same way as Latvia was. Their only benefit will be the ability for their younger generations to emigrate and send home some money to their elders.

Damian Moylan,

Longford

PRAGMATIC POLITICS NEEDED

Madam – My thanks to William Barrett (Letters, Sunday Independent, March 30, 2014) for his kind remarks. A seconding of his praise for your efforts towards encouraging a new politics.

As I write, the UN publishes its report on climate change for the benefit of those of us who experienced during the winter no mildly-moist intimations of the mortality of our planet’s doomed ecosphere. The legitimate demands of the Ukraine and the re-emergence of Tsarism have slipped us back into a new cold war, to the delight of the world’s military-industrial complex. We are being urged to solve our ‘energy security’ problems with questionable (but sectionally lucrative), quick-fix ‘solutions’ such as nuclear power and ‘cheap’ shale oil. The virus of endemic insoluble civil war spreads from the Middle East. The EU performs its snail’s-pace minuet towards serious economic, financial and institutional reforms. The success of which are all crucial to the viability of our socio-economic system (or ‘non-system’, if you prefer). But for which there is no political will, let alone zeal, among any of our European non-leaders. The wretched of the earth call out for pathetically small measures towards their subsistence and self-dependence but we cannot and – deliberately – will not hear them through the triple-glaze windows on our hearts.

Grotesquely and almost unbelievably, we can now calculate the day, the month and the year when all life on this planet will no longer be viable.

And yet in this tiny country, our ruling class is preoccupied with a sitcom about who, when, where did or did not get official communications – and process them according to standard or even commonsense procedure.

What is missing from our political equation is a pragmatic social democratic party, aware that the politics, the policies, the decisions, the actions, not ‘just’ of the future but of now, must be European and global.

They must earn the future by displaying a courage and creativity for which they have had too few role-models in the recent past.

Maurice O’Connell,

Tralee, Co Kerry

REDRESS THE DEBT

Madam – Six years after the Irish banking debt hard landing that destroyed the Irish economy, Sarah McCabe (Sunday Independent, March 30, 2014) has reported that Irish banks with recapitalised salaries and pensions for themselves, now require normal protocols in terms of debt collection for the doomed debt ratio products of 2005 to 2008. Normal debt collection protocols would apply to normal valued debt only.

From 2005 to 2008, Irish banks were selling unsustainable debt products, with the purpose of competing for aggressive profit growth.

In 2014, protocols include bonus claw back and redress for customers. Mortgage debt products that were doomed from day one will require special protocols to redress the devaluation of bank customers’ lives.

The correct protocol for Irish banks is to redress all 2005 to 2008 doomed debt ratio products before seeking an abolition of the cap on bankers’ pay.

Irish banks should be banned from declaring profitability before they redress all doomed debt ratio products of 2005 to 2008.

A long term customer- and Irish economy-friendly banking strategy is required to replace today’s aggressive profit growth strategy that ignores the Irish economy. Bank customers are the Irish economy.

Irish banks that cannot redress their doomed debt ratio products will fail the 2014 stress tests. The sustainable and honest financial reporting provided by a longer-term banking strategy is more likely to help a bank pass its stress test.

Honest financial reporting and doing the right thing for their customers may yet save Irish banks.

Mike Flannelly,

Galway

7April2014 another hospital visit

I go all the way around the park listening to the Men from the Ministry: rhurbard farmer revolts Priceless

Mary back in hospital visit her play Scrabble she wins but I get closer to winning

Scrabbletoday, Mary wins Perhaps Iwill win tomorrow.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Surely the solution to the “Shmita” question (Loose canon, 5 April) would be to do it by rotation farm by farm. Thus the whole country would lie fallow once every seven years as per Biblical injunction; just not all at the same time.
Jeremy Muldowney
Heworth, York

Independent:

Your editorial (4 April) on house building is welcome, but I think there is a core problem which is tragic and insoluble. Any party which succeeded in getting enough new housing built, in the right places, to dent prices would be committing political suicide.

Those who vote already own houses and would not take kindly to negative equity. Buy-to-let owners, looking for capital gains, would not like lower prices either.

There are those desperate for lower house prices. But they more often than not do not vote. The moment they become home owners and voters, they too will want house prices propped up.

Britain will never enjoy good-quality housing, affordable by nearly everyone.

Trevor Pateman, Brighton

I agree that “Britain’s building rate is pathetic”, but not that “a solution seems very far off”. Your leader and the speeches of the politicians omit the word “productivity”.

Office blocks use components made off-site on an industrial scale, assembled by crane. Houses are still being constructed brick-upon-brick, using methods unchanged from Roman times. These methods are very labour-intensive, and labour is costly. They are also very slow.

“Prefab” was a derogatory word after the Second World War, but variety can be introduced by using different colours and materials. Town houses using these methods in the early 1960s were built by Wates in Dulwich and Span in Blackheath, south London, usually grouped around a cul-de-sac where children could play.

Someone, such as the Prince of Wales, should offer a prize for the design of a good house, affordable and a pleasure to look at.

William Robert Haines, Shrewsbury

Your suggestion that more homes should be built may seem the obvious answer to the current shortage.

However we need to consider that Britain is a small island which can’t keep expanding to suit demand. There comes a time when we have to say no to more development of green spaces, no to more airports and infrastructure.

The problem is the population. It needs to be limited so that everyone can enjoy living here.

Martyn Pattie, Ongar, Essex

Your leading article of 4 April gives welcome emphasis to the gap between housing supply and demand.

Could someone in the construction industry please give an explanation of why this gap exists when we have capacity to build, healthy customer demand, ample unemployed people, low inflation and a government desperate to get the economy moving. What is the missing piece in the jigsaw? I would love to know.

Oh, and by the way, we are about to demolish four tower blocks in Glasgow which could accommodate four thousand people.

Rodney Freeman, Harkstead,  Suffolk

Why degrees don’t impress employers

In her letter of 2 April, Dr Maria Gee, senior lecturer in accounting at the University of Winchester, berates employers for only employing Russell Group graduates or those with 300+ Ucas points. As a retired lecturer in accounting, I can explain why this is the case.

The reality is that no more than 25 per cent of the population has academic ability, so with more than 40 per cent of the population going to university it should be obvious that many should not be there. What they should be doing is taking advantage of the many talents they have which are just as good as being able to cope with academic theory.

Now universities are under pressure to publish research and award good grades, and the only way they can do this is to dumb everything down. The result is that, outside top universities, a 2:1 degree is a worthless piece of paper. The real problem is that the difference between a top 2:1 (69 per cent but not rounded up to a first) and the bottom 2:1 (59 per cent rounded up) is vast. One student is intelligent, hard-working and highly employable, while the other has probably not learnt how to get out if bed in the morning. Yet they both have the same piece of paper

When universities go back to setting proper standards, then employers will again believe their degrees.

Malcolm Howard, Banstead, Surrey

Leveson charter for a free press

The events in Croydon described by Andy McSmith (“Long arm of the law leaves another journalist hacked off”, 2 April) have nothing to do with Hacked Off, Leveson or the Royal Charter.

In fact the Leveson/Charter system will increase the freedom of journalists to do their job. It reduces the scope for political meddling in self-regulation and frees the press from the “chilling” effect of bullying litigation by the wealthy. The only freedom it seeks to curb is the freedom of papers to mistreat the public without being accountable for it.

Sadly, the big newspaper companies are still  resisting this.

Brian Cathcart, Director, Hacked Off, London SW1

It is obvious that the Maria Miller furore is being stoked by the print media because she is involved in implementing Leveson. It is a blatant attempt by them to sabotage the process. Most worrying is that politicians know this but are still so intimidated by the press that they dare not say so.

Keith Brawn, Portchester, Hampshire

Israel’s right to east Jerusalem

Gordon Broadbent asks (letter, 1 April) why we are applying sanctions against Russia over Crimea but not against Israel for annexing East Jerusalem. The answer is simple: Jerusalem did not previously belong to any sovereign state.

Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish state of Judea for over 1,000 years until conquered by the Romans, who spitefully renamed their new colony Palestine. It stayed a colony under all successive conquerors until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The San Remo Conference of 1920 resolved to give the whole of Palestine back to the Jews and this was ratified by the League of Nations two years later. Britain was awarded the mandate over Palestine, specifically charged to make it into a Jewish homeland with close settlement.

Instead, Britain sheared off 83 per cent of the territory to create the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, and did everything possible to retain control of the remainder. When, in 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the remainder of Palestine, with Jerusalem “internationalised”, the Jews reluctantly accepted the small consolation of less than 10 per cent of the original Palestine, but the Arabs rejected the plan and five Arab states waged war on the one-day-old Jewish state. Transjordan illegally seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem, throwing out thousands of Jews who had lived there for generations. For the next 19 years, Jordan did not even allow Jews to visit their Holy Sites in Jerusalem  and Hebron.

In annexing East Jerusalem from a regime that had no legal claim over it, Israel was simply regaining its historic rights, in accordance with the League of Nations resolutions. Incidentally, many Arabs who live in East Jerusalem are very happy to be part of a democratic country with full civil rights, rather than being subjected to the tyranny and cronyism of surrounding Middle Eastern countries, or their own Fatah or Hamas.

Alan Halibard, Bet Shemesh, Israel

Gladys, a big name in Bolivia

Linda Grant (“Ask Horace, Cecil, Gertrude or Gladys if there is such a thing as a timeless name”, 5 April) might be reassured to know that linda is in constant use in Latin American Spanish and Portuguese as an adjective agreeing with a feminine noun meaning  “pleasant”, “lovely”.

She would also be interested to know that Gladys is a popular name in Bolivia. There is even a restaurant called Tía Gladys (Aunty Gladys) in one of the main thoroughfares of La Paz.

I would also like to remind Ms Grant that Prince Harry is officially Prince Henry of Wales, but it was announced soon after he was born that he would be known as  Prince Harry.

Rosemary Morlin, Oxford

The name Gertrude “effectively extinct”? (Report, 4 April) Not in this household. Number three dog is called Gertie, or by her full name of Gertrude when she has hidden my shoes again.

Jan Cook, South Nutfield, Surrey

Eat up your nice spinach curry

I was very disappointed in Rosie Millard’s column (2 April), in which she supports all the prejudices encouraged by the food companies to sell junk food to our children. In particular, her jibe about spinach curry was out of place. A curry of chick-peas and spinach (chana saag) is very tasty, readily available in most Indian restaurants and one of my favourites – and I’m anything but vegetarian. There is a recipe that adds tomatoes and that’s three of your daily portions of vegetables, or you could try aloo saag (spinach and potatoes).

John Day, Lyon

Times: