13 September 2014 Meg

I jog around the park I still have arthritis in my left knee, but I manage to get round the park. A sunny but cool day. Meg comes to do books

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast wt down gammon for tea and her back pain is still there.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Independent:

Times:

Would Scotland have voted for greater devolved powers had they been offered?

Sir, Jenni Russell (Opinion, Sept 11) says it was “not obvious” to No 10 that agreeing to Alex Salmond’s request for a devo-max option on the referendum ballot would help to save the Union. But to many people in Scotland at the time it was — blindingly — and the current scramble to belatedly offer devo-max proves that we were right.

It was also obvious that, four years into a cost-cutting Tory government, many in Scotland would have a strong desire to vote for change. Devo-max would have allowed people to vote for that change while also voting to keep the Union.

If No 10 had realised that the referendum was more about listening to the aspirations of the Scottish people rather than a political game to “diss the SNP”, we would not now be at risk of destroying Britain almost by accident.

Dr Bendor Grosvenor

Edinburgh

Sir, Philip Collins (Sept 12) derides Britishness. There are many like me who define themselves as “British”. I could hardly be anything else; my DNA is 85 per cent Celt, 10 per cent Viking, 5 per cent Anglo-Saxon. My forebears were Scots Irish before the Scots decamped to Britain, then Scots in Scotland, then Scots Irish as they moved to Ireland. From there my great-grandfather moved to Wales and then Lancashire, where I was born. I now live in Yorkshire. All these places have a part of my heart. Am I just a mongrel or British; I choose the latter.

Sir, The article by Philip Collins reminded me of my mother’s position. She left Prague just before the Nazis arrived and studied in Paris. Coming to London on holiday a week before war was declared, she wanted to return to Paris but was, mercifully, prevented from doing so.

She married an Englishman and, applying for a job at a bank, gave her nationality as English. The comment was: “You may be British, but you will never be English.”

Trisha Ray

Maidenhead, Berks

Sir, What has happened to democracy? There has been the sudden pledge by all three main parties for extensive extra powers for Scotland (“Money Talks”, leader, Sept 12), but if the Scottish vote is “no” then Scotland remains part of the UK. In such circumstances, how do we know if the majority of UK voters do indeed want such powers to be devolved? Those proposals were not in the main parties’ manifestos, so surely a UK-wide referendum should be called.

Peter Cave

London W1

Sir, Peter Forrest (letter, Sept 12) is correct to mention the Darién scheme and the bailing out of the bankrupt Scottish nobility. However, far from being an act of philanthropy it was a clever insurance payment that benefited England too.

Reference is made even now, misty-eyed, to the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France, an alliance in which Scotland often ended up on the losing side. By paying off the Scottish nobility and incorporating them into government, the English parliament greatly reduced the risk of yet another futile second front being opened up by some Jacobite hotheads encouraged by France. England could then wage war against France in Europe without having to look north for a threat from there. French encouragement to insurrection stopped only after the rising of 1745.

R Bain

Boturich, West Dunbartonshire

Sir, The abandonment of Westminster for Scotland amid problems in the Middle East by our leaders is not without precedent. At Whitsun in 1306, Edward I knighted 267 men, including his ill-fated heir, and held the famous lavish Feast of the Swans before setting out to sort out Scotland. “Longshanks”, standing 6ft 6in tall at the end of the hall, vowed over two swans on a golden platter to avenge the recent injuries done by Robert the Bruce, after which he swore to head off to the Holy Land to “fight the infidel”.

He never made it — it was his swansong.

His Hon Judge Simon Brown, QC

Stevington, Beds

Sir, As we are spending a solid amount of time at my school covering Henry VIII’s wars against Scotland to control it in the 16th century, it fills me with frustration that the English are literally just letting Scotland decide if they want to leave. It’s all very modern and progressive of course, but how can it be so casually decided in a vote without us even fighting for the United Kingdom, which we only managed to achieve a few centuries ago with a massive amount of effort.

Rachel Korn (age 17)

London NW4

Sir, The benefits to the UK of moving to Central European Time have been well documented: reduced carbon emissions through people leaving lights and heating off in the evening, fewer road accidents, and a boost to tourism with the longer summer evenings. If Scotland does vote “yes”, the case for the remainder of the UK to move to a different time zone (Janice Turner, Sept 11) would be very strong indeed.

Tim Palmer

Peasemore, Berks

Sir, In the event of a “yes” vote the protective shield over the UK that has been so successfully maintained by UK security services (primarily MI5, MI6 and GCHQ) since 7/7 would be withdrawn from Scotland. MI5 officers would leave the Scottish counter terrorist hubs, taking with them their equipment, expertise and access to the vast reservoir of intelligence held on their databases.

Chris Hobbs

(Retired Metropolitan Police officer)

London W7

Sir, The split in the attitude of academics to independence (Sept 11) is not altogether surprising. Academics from science, maths and engineering disciplines (“no” voters) are more likely to apply evidence-based reasoning and rational thinking to their deliberations rather than the emotive, irrational instincts of their arts and humanities colleagues (“yes” voters).

Dr George Philliskirk

Burton on Trent, Staffs

Sir, If the Scottish sciences are voting “no” and the arts “yes”, where does this leave the philosophers?

4

Telegraph:

SIR – The tragic incident of the helicopter crashing into a crane in Vauxhall last year was an accident waiting to happen. For too long, our national and local planning authorities have acted independently of each other, allowing developers to have a field day building high-rise buildings, wind turbines and other obstructions to aviation.

The First Minister’s aspirations for defending an independent Scotland are ill-considered

7:00AM BST 12 Sep 2014

Comments

Irish Times:

Sir, – Lloyds and RBS have weighed into the Scottish independence debate with their threats to move their headquarters to London if the referendum is passed. Certainly this is precisely the sort of move “hard-headed” No voters would have feared and will likely increase their turnout. But will it also swell the ranks of the undecided voters voting Yes because they resent being dictated to by the banks? It will be a sad day for Scotland – and for democracy everywhere – if it turns out the banks had the final say on Scottish independence.

These banks deserve to be entirely wrong-footed by the rest of the UK leaving the EU following Scottish independence and losing their access to EU markets as a result. No doubt that would have them scurrying back to Scotland proclaiming they are Scottish after all.

What price democracy? – Yours, etc,

FRANK SCHNITTGER,

Red Lane,

Blessington,

Co Wicklow.

Sir, – British prime minister David Cameron identifies himself with the United Kingdom (Front Page, September 11th) in terms of “I care more about my country than I care about my party”. Hogwash! He is an Englishman by geography, race and culture. The UK is an historical legal construct of which he is the head of government, but it is loose talk and spurious affiliation to refer to it as “my country”! – Yours, etc,

OLIVER McGRANE,

Marley Avenue,

Rathfarnham,

Dublin 16.

Sir, – The Irish Times used the word “toff” to describe Scottish aristocracy (“Scottish toffs begin to sweat as referendum counts down”, Front Page, September 12th). Toff is generally seen as a pejorative term to describe the upper classes. Unless The Irish Times feels it has been wronged by the Scottish aristocracy, I see no need for the derision. If your readers wanted judgemental reporting, they would stick to the redtops. Why not simply use the word “aristocracy ” and allow your readers to decide whether or not this is a bad thing? – Yours, etc,

CONOR MURPHY,

Athlumney Wood,

Johnstown,

Navan,

Co Meath.

Sir, – Mr Cameron, Mr Milliband, please. A little decorum. No need to panic. Take your lead from us. If you don’t get the result you want, have a second, third and, dare I say it, a fourth referendum until you get the desired result. Works very well over here! – Yours, etc,

MICHAEL ROONEY,

Hillcrest Court,

Knocknacarra,

Galway.

Sir, – J Anthony Gaughan (September 12th), commenting on the Scottish referendum, whereby Scotland can embrace or reject independence at the stroke of a pen, claims the securing of Irish independence was at a very high price – “the wasteful and tragic shedding of blood”.

In the general election of 1918 and the setting up of the first Dáil Éireann in 1919, in a wholly constitutional and parliamentary decision without a drop of blood spilled, the Irish Parliamentary Party was swept from power by an electorate that espoused separatism and emphatically rejected not just home rule but British rule also. This decision rendered British rule in Ireland unlawful. The subsequent “wasteful and tragic shedding of blood” which followed was a result of British rejection of the democratic demands of the Irish people. – Yours, etc,

TOM COOPER,

Templeville Road,

Templeogue,

Dublin 6W.

Sir, – If David Cameron can raise the saltire over 10 Downing Street (on whose authority I do not know), why cannot English nationalists raise the flag of England alongside the saltire in Edinburgh?

Obviously not without the explicit permission of Alex Salmond, battling valiantly against the Royal Bank of Scotland, Asda, Lord Prescott and his combined England/Scotland football team, heartbroken Dave Cameron (Eton), nice Boris Johnson (Eton), nice Nick Clegg (Westminster), the BBC, etc.

Even The Bruce might have been daunted. – Yours, etc,

Dr GERALD

MORGAN, FTCD

Trinity College,

Dublin 2.

Sir, – Being married to a good Scots lass, I have been following that country’s referendum debate with some interest for the last two years. The levels of dissimulation, disinformation and outright lying is something which only those of us old enough to remember Pravda can appreciate. However, the one chestnut which really should have been broken off the string by now is that hoary old one that Scotland ending the union would result in permanent Tory governments in Whitehall.

Quite apart from it not being Scotland’s problem, it’s simply claptrap. In the entire history of the party, only once, in 1964, was a Labour government dependent on Scottish MPs to make up the numbers, and that government lasted only 18 months in any event. Tony Blair won three general elections on the backs of purely English majorities, and no other Labour government has ever needed Scottish votes to take power.

There is, of course, another assumption underlying this supposition of permanent Tory majority – that a Labour government would somehow be different.

The Scots, I think, are increasingly falling out of love with that idea, which is possibly why Scottish membership of that party has fallen to an estimated 5,000 or so, compared to the SNP’s 25,000. I say “estimated” because the Labour Party in Scotland has repeatedly refused to reveal its membership numbers.

Perhaps it fears that by doing so, it would destroy that other myth that Scotland is somehow the property of the Labour Party. If so, it is wise. – Yours, etc,

DAVID SMITH,

Harmonstown Road,

Artane,

Dublin 5.

Sir, – If not now, when? – Yours, etc,

DAVID CURRAN,

Clybaun Heights,

Knocknacarra,

Galway.

Sir, – So Ian Paisley has passed away. A man who for most of his life never accepted no for an answer and was a born leader has been levelled in death.

He was an astute politician always, making sure to keep his supporters on board. He initially opposed the Belfast Agreement and led his party to become the biggest unionist party in Northern Ireland. However, his friendship with his “chuckle brother” Martin McGuinness alienated him from his supporters. He had to resign the leadership of the church he founded, the Free Presbyterian Church and his own party, the Democratic Unionist Party. While he epitomised intransigence for most of his life, he realised in the end that solutions can only be worked out by talking and compromise. – Yours, etc,

THOMAS RODDY,

Lower Salthill,

Galway.

Sir, – Less said the better about a dangerous demagogue whose frequent rants must undoubtedly have provoked much violence. Requiescat in pace might be enough said! – Yours, etc,

GEAROID KILGALLEN,

Crosthwaite Park South,

Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.

Sir, – Late in his career , like Adams and McGuinness, Paisley realised that tolerance, dialogue and discussion were indeed possible and desirable; their united participation in a powersharing government proves that almost their entire careers were abject failures. It is to be sincerely hoped that society in Ireland, north and south, will develop in such a way that another Paisley will not be possible or tolerated. – Yours, etc,

HUGH PIERCE,

Newtown Road,

Celbridge, Co Kildare.

Sir, – Fintan O’Toole (“Why Ireland never faced up to the issue of abortion”, Opinion & Analysis, August 26th) mentioned me and others involved in Plac (Pro Life Amendment Campaign) in unflattering terms.

If Catholic you are “sectarian” and if holding views on other issues, intolerant, in Fintan’s book. On a minor point, the Knights of St Columbanus played no part in Plac. Contrary to Fintan’s assertions, Plac was launched, not by the “head” of the Knights but by the late Cornelius O’Leary, professor of politics at Queen’s University, Belfast.

In the list of Plac supporters, Fintan omits its 12 patrons, six professors of obstetrics and gynaecology and six other obstetricians, including masters of maternity hospitals. In 1983, well over 1,000 GPs signed up support for the amendment. Indeed, it is beyond argument that the medical profession itself was the mainspring of the Plac campaign and also in defeating the amendment on the “substantive issue” in 1992.

The founding groups, whether Catholic or not, had national memberships which facilitated constituency organisation. It was estimated that over 17,000 dedicated people were engaged in leafleting and lobbying for the amendment in the last weeks of the campaign.

Despite Fintan’s assertions, I was never the éminence grise of the Plac campaign. To undermine the credibility of those involved, Fintan brought in other issues many of them peripheral and inaccurately described. The Dalkey School Project, the Rape Crisis Centre, etc, etc.

The case against the Irish Family Planning Association 40 years ago was taken by the State. Afterwards I was attacked in your pages by an Irish Times journalist, now deceased, who was also a founder director of the IFPA. I strongly defended my action in your paper at that time.

The Supreme Court misread the clear words of the Constitution in 1992. It allowed abortion for threatened suicide although no psychiatrist can predict suicide. There are also many studies showing that abortion itself can be a cause of suicide. The Finnish studies show that women having abortions are six or seven times more likely to commit suicide than women who give birth! – Yours, etc,

JOHN O’REILLY

C/O The Second

Look Project,

Merrion Square,

Dublin 2.

Sir, – While I agreed with much of Mary Feely’s comments on water charges (“Prospect of water charges leaving me high and dry”, Opinion & Analysis, September 10th), I am slightly bemused by her concluding remark that she is waiting to exact revenge at the next election. As the barrage of taxes grows each year, who exactly does a law-abiding taxpayer vote for to represent their interests? If not “the current lot”, it can hardly be “the last lot” nor indeed “the other lot”. I have spent the last five years wondering does any party now represent the approximately 1.5 million taxpayers on low or middle incomes; and I still see no satisfactory answer. Now if that is not the definition of a gap in the market, I must surely be missing something. – Yours, etc,

GERRY KELLY,

Orwell Gardens,

Rathgar,

Dublin 6.

Sir, – Water meters are being installed at a rate of two a minute (News, September 12th), but not, alas, two a penny. – Yours, etc,

IGGY McGOVERN,

Gledswood Avenue,

Clonskeagh,

Dublin 14.

Sir, – Brian Boyd (“How to make sure nobody steals your naked selfies”, September 5th) suggests that one way to avoid your pictures being leaked is to “stop taking naked photos of yourself”. While I understand the sentiment behind his remark, I disagree with including this as a method of self-protection. Surely if we shouldn’t take intimate photos of ourselves if we don’t want them to be widely distributed, then we should simply not own anything if we want to avoid being robbed? Curiously, I have never heard this suggested by home security experts. Placing the blame on the victim of the crime, the one who took the photos, meant for private viewing only, rather than on the perpetrator of the crime (because it is a crime), is certainly unfair and counterproductive. A better suggestion for improving internet security? Stop invading people’s privacy. – Yours, etc,

DOIREANN O’BRIEN,

Dartry Park,

Milltown,

Dublin 6.

Sir, – Fintan O’Toole (“Brendan Behan – playwright, novelist, terrorist”, Weekend, September 6th) refers to Brendan Behan, rather disparagingly, as a “child soldier” when he was involved in and imprisoned for taking part in an IRA bombing campaign in Britain in 1939. At that time, and for years afterwards, the majority of Irish boys had to leave school at 14. Jobs were few and far between and many had to emigrate to make a living.

I remember that during the 1950s young men wishing to join the FCA would falsely declare their age as 17, although they were only 14 or 15. Indeed, I knew one such who was a corporal by the time he was of the correct minimum age to join. These young men were not “child soldiers”. They knew what they were doing and were inspired by a desire to fight and, if necessary, die for their country. – Yours, etc,

BRIAN P Ó CINNÉIDE,

Essenwood Road,

Durban,

South Africa.

A chara, – Brendan Behan was nearly 17 years of age when he was arrested in Liverpool with his bomb-making equipment in December 1939. His self-authorised mission had elements of farce. The ill-advised bombing campaign had come to an end. Stephen Hayes had replaced Sean Russell as chief of staff of the IRA. The fact that Behan’s 77-year-old “granny” had received a three-year jail sentence in July 1939 for possession of explosives in Birmingham may well have impelled his solo run.

His trial judge lamented that he would have to sentence him to borstal detention because of his age – had he been two months older he would been eligible for a maximum of 14 years of penal servitude. Behan was lucky. He was even luckier to be assigned to a new-style borstal in Hollesley Bay under the enlightened governor, Cyril Joyce.

Fintan refers to Behan as “a child soldier” but he was far removed from the unfortunate children in, say, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. He was that same age as Sean Lemass in the GPO and a year younger than Kevin Barry.

The enlightened regime in Hollesley Bay owed everything to penal reform and nothing to an inspired plan to rehabilitate aspiring bombers. Behan was the only politically motivated inmate there. – Yours, etc,

PEADAR

Mac MAGHNAIS,

Bóthar Bhinn Éadair,

Baile Atha Cliath 5.

Sir, – Micheál Ó Fearghail (September 11th) is correct in his defence of the constitutional rights of parents to choose how their children are educated, including through home schooling. Unfortunately for his case, Article 42 goes on to declare that “The State shall . . . require in view of actual conditions that the children receive a certain minimum education”.

This is important because, separate from the rights of the parents, the child has the right to an education. – Yours, etc,

DAVID BEATTY,

Coolamber Park,

Knocklyon, Dublin 16.

Sir, – As a teenager travelling home with my father, he always stopped at Cross Guns Bridge, Dublin, and shouted out the passenger window to the paper seller, “Full box Herald”. On arriving home and finding the “box” not to be “full”, he’d throw a fit, knowing well he’d got the “early edition” instead of the “latest edition”. Fond memories. – Yours, etc,

RAY BARROR,

Hollywood,

Co Wicklow.

Sir, – While purchasing an Evening Press outside Clerys on a 1960s Christmas Eve, I remarked to the vendor that the newspaper was very thin. “Waddya want, mister?” he glared. “The Book of Kells?” – Yours, etc,

PADRAIG J O’CONNOR,

Lower Dodder Road,

Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.

Sir, – Three mentions of Sir Humphrey in your letter pages this week. Is this a record? – Yours, etc,

JEROME CURTIN,

Ashfield Road,

Ranelagh,

Dublin 6.

Irish Independent:

Dr Al Qutob (Letters, September 11) says that “Most of the pillars of Western civilization were built up in Muslim Spain” during the Middle Ages. This is nonsense. It is true that Al-Andalus, the Muslim region of Spain was, for a few centuries, more advanced than the rest of Europe, especially in science and medicine, but Arab civilization has been pretty much stagnant for the last 700 years. It is maudlin political correctness to say that Islam helped to shape Europe.

Europe‘s civilization was essentially formed by three things. Firstly, ancient Greece and Rome, which gave Europe its concepts of law, politics and government, architecture, literature and military organization. Secondly, Christianity, which gave Europe its sense of spirituality, collective worship, individual conscience, and the all-important idea of separation of Church and State, which is so sadly lacking in Islam. Thirdly, the Enlightenment and modern science, which has given Europe progress, development, individual liberty and social improvement.

Dr Al Qutob mentions Britain and Jordan today as fine examples of multicultural diversity. What he ignores is that Britain is in cultural chaos, consumed by identity crisis. As for Jordan – the last stable, fairly secular Arab country in the chaos of that wider region – the only reason its diverse communities aren’t killing each other is because the country is held together by the iron fist of secular autocracy.

Frank Giles, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4

Songs of praise

The arrival of our new Primate of All Ireland in-waiting has been a real coup for the credibility of the church. However, his remarkable likeness to the singing priest, Fr Ray Kelly, leads me to wonder whether there has been a serious clerical error.

I am convinced that Archbishop Eamon Martin and Father Ray Kelly are one and the same person. What clinched it for me was the realisation that the new archbishop was described as being musically gifted. His talent for music was reluctantly acknowledged by Rome, as Vatican authorities were warned that the new archbishop was likely to break into song at the most solemn liturgical moments.

The church should come clean, as the current understandable deception cannot be maintained. So far, Fr Kelly’s parishioners have been extraordinarily loyal to the church in pretending that their musically-gifted priest is still with them. A recording of his impromptu rendition of his adaptation of Leonard Cohen‘s Hallelujah is played regularly in his church so that passers-by assume he is still in post.

The philosopher Nietzsche’s had a longing for a God who could dance – he would surely see the appointment of a singing-and-dancing archbishop as the first step in the right direction.

Cardinal Brady was gracious in welcoming his “Londonderry heir”, immediately triggering a spontaneous rendition of Danny Boy from his successor; the congregation of Armagh cathedral raising the rafters as they joined in enthusiastically.

It is my earnest hope that all future appointments to senior posts in the church will require at least a modicum of singing and dancing talent. However, I see no need for them to go viral on YouTube, though clearly it would enhance their prospects of appointment, as is the case in Armagh.

The new archbishop is seen by Rome as a safe pair of feet, and so is not likely to be out of step.

Philip O’Neill, Oxford, England

What about another union?

Whether the Scottish people vote to become independent or to stay part of the UK, it will be interesting to see which political leader goes blue in the face afterwards. Should Scotland decide to go it alone and if Wales got bitten by the leaving bug, we could end up with England, on its own, being just 25 square kilometres bigger than Ireland.

We have more in common with the English than we might care to admit, so perhaps a sort of benign union could be contemplated. And England could bail us out from time to time, like when we were granted €9 billion by British Prime Minister David Cameron after our economy sank without trace.

Robert Sullivan, Bantry, Co Cork

State must tackle homelessness

News that there are now 150 homeless people on the streets of Dublin is disturbing.

Anyone walking the capital’s streets will have noticed the number of huddled figures in doorways are increasing. Gandhi said that we must not look upon a beggar as an obstacle to generosity.

The problem in Ireland is that the state has developed a myopia in the area of homelessness and therefore does not trouble itself to look at them at all.

With winter on the way and freezing nights in prospect, those of us fortunate enough to have somewhere warm and dry to rest our heads should not forget those who now lie in our lanes and alleys and shiver in cold and fear. Rising rents, unemployment, family breakdown, drink and drug-dependency can affect anyone. Most of us do not realise how fortunate we are. Because someone is down on their luck does not make them a non-person to be discarded by society.

It is time our government took the plight of our street citizens seriously.

The incredible work of people like Brother Kevin Crowley and Peter McVerry shows what can be achieved with a pure heart and clear thinking.

W Harpur, Dalkey, Co Dublin

Debt deal deserves praise

Colette Browne suggests that the proposed early repayment of Ireland’s loans from the IMF would “represent an another humiliation for Ireland at hands of the EU” (September 10). Amid exasperated references to “seismic shifts”, “snake oil” and “spin merchants”, Ms Browne suggests the proposed debt restructuring is a “failure” and that Irish politicians should not “collude in this charade”.

The article is a cynical attack on what is a pragmatic and sensible piece of policy-making by the Government. Two arguments in the article merit a specific rebuttal.

First, Ms Browne states that Ireland “shouldered 43 per cent of the net cost of the banking crisis across all 27 EU member states – €41bn out of €96.2bn”. The only citation we are given for this overall figure is a general reference to the Eurostat statistical agency. The figure of €96.2 billion is, in fact, significantly short of the overall EU bill.

The European Commission has found that between October 1, 2008 and October 1, 2013, the overall volume of aid used for capital support (recapitalization and asset relief measures) amounted to €591.9 billion. These figures are on the European Commission’s Competition website.

Second, Ms Browne asks “what legal or moral compulsion is on Ireland to honour in full debt incurred by Irish banks when there was no State involvement?”

The answer is that the Irish state was directly involved in the conduct of Irish banks in the years preceding the crisis.

The Irish state was responsible for the direct regulation of Irish banks and allowed the Irish banking sector to inflate beyond reasonable measures.

By allowing the Irish banks to continue in their practices, the Government effectively gave its imprimatur to their business model and thus bears a significant responsibility for the crash that followed.

Peter Malone, Mirabel Road, London

Irish Independent

14 September 2014 Quiet

I jog around the park I still have arthritis in my left knee, but I manage to get round the park. A sunny but cool day.

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast wt down duck for tea and her back pain is still there.

Obituary:

Sir Donald Sinden, the actor, who has died aged 90, was variously described as “orotund and declamatory”, “magnificently resonant” and “a complete ham”; his talents, admittedly, owed little to method acting, but made him one of the best and most recognisable comedy actors on the circuit.

In a career which spanned 50 years of film and theatre Sinden, to his lasting irritation, became best-known for his work in television, a medium he deplored. But his establishment English demeanour provided perfect casting for comedies exploiting cultural or class differences.

He became a household name when he starred with Elaine Stritch in the LWT sitcom Two’s Company (1975-79), in which he played the feisty American grande dame’s inept English butler. He later repeated his success in the Thames Television sitcom Never the Twain (1981-91), in which he played an upper-crust antique dealer forced into business with a downmarket rival (played by Windsor Davies).

His success on television meant that Sinden’s other achievements, in the film and theatre world, were often overlooked.

During the 1950s, he immersed himself in cinema work, appearing in more than 20 films, including The Cruel Sea (1953), in which he shared top-billing with Jack Hawkins, and Mogambo (1954), a huge safari epic in which Sinden received fourth billing after Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, as Kelly’s cuckolded gorilla-hunting husband.

When the British film industry stalled in the 1960s, Sinden’s film career stalled with it. By the end of that decade, however, he had secured a place for himself at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he gave critically acclaimed performances in leading roles including as the Duke of York in The Wars of the Roses (1963), opposite Peggy Ashcroft as Queen Margaret; Lord Foppington in The Relapse (1967); and as King Lear (for which he won the 1977 Evening Standard Award for Best Actor). In 1979 he played the title role in Othello, directed by Ronald Eyre, becoming the last “blacked-up” white actor to play the role for the RSC.

Sir Donald Sinden has died at his home aged 90

It was, perhaps, the role of Malvolio in Twelfth Night that showed Sinden at his best; yet it is the one that — paradoxically, given that the role is often regarded as a comedy part — he found most difficult to play. When he reread the play in preparation for the RSC production in 1969, he telephoned the director John Barton. “I’m afraid you may have to recast Malvolio,” he said, “I find him tragic.” Barton agreed, and in his exploration of the role, Sinden exposed a whole range of moods, from offended dignity to ebullience and madness. Of Malvolio’s final humiliation, Sinden later wrote: “There is no fight left in Malvolio… the degradation is too great… there is but one thing left for Malvolio — suicide.”

The theatre was always Sinden’s true home, and in the 1980s his passionate interest in its history led to the establishment of the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden. Another great passion was English church architecture, his encyclopedic knowledge of which led to both a television series, The English Country Church, in 1988, and a book on the subject. “My grandfather was an architect,” Sinden explained, “and it was he who told me always to look up. That’s where all the best things are in churches.”

By the 1980s Sinden was firmly established as a television celebrity, a position consolidated by the regular appearances of a Sinden puppet on ITV’s satirical Spitting Image. The puppet represented Sinden as a grotesque parody of “the actor’s actor” posturing theatrically and endlessly pleading for a knighthood.

Sinden was not amused by the caricature. “When have I ever suggested I wanted a knighthood?” he asked. “I don’t watch the programme because I don’t find it in the least funny.” He would accept a well-deserved knighthood in 1997.

Donald Sinden was born in Plymouth on October 9 1923. He suffered constantly from asthma as a child and as a result missed most of his schooling. “I not only did not pass an examination,” he recalled, “I never took one.” At 16 he became an apprentice joiner to a Hove firm which manufactured revolving doors. “I earned 6s 6d a week,” he said, “and enjoyed it enormously.”

Sinden claimed that he had no aspirations towards acting until he was 18. “My cousin Frank was called up for the RAF,” he remembered. “He asked me if I’d do his part in an amateur production at Brighton Little Theatre.” Donald was talent-spotted by Charles Smith, who organised the Mobile Entertainments Southern Area company (known as MESA), a local version of the wartime entertainments service Ensa. “Of course I thought he wanted me because I was miraculous,” Sinden remembered, “but I know now it was because it was wartime and he couldn’t get anyone else.”

Rejected by the Navy because of his poor health, Sinden joined Charles Smith’s company in 1941. “I stayed an actor because I was awfully interested in girls,” Sinden explained. “Actresses were a lot better looking than joiners.” After four years with MESA he spent six months in Leicester with a repertory company and two terms at the Webber Douglas School of Dramatic Art.

Donald Sinden joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon for the 1946-47 season. In October 1947 he made his West End debut as Aumerle in Richard II, and in 1948 joined the Bristol Old Vic. He left Bristol to appear as Arthur Townsend in The Heiress, an adaptation of Henry James’s Washington Square. Sinden had nine lines and appeared in all 644 performances of the show.

^{Donald Sinden in 1953 (REX)}

In 1952 he was noticed by the film director Charles Frend while playing the Brazilian Manuel Del Vega in Red Letter Day. “Charles Frend spotted me,” Sinden remembered. “He said he’d always wanted to meet a blue-eyed Brazilian.”

The following year Sinden joined the Rank Organisation and was offered the part of Lieutenant Lockhart in The Cruel Sea, for which he had to spend an uncomfortable 12 weeks filming at sea.

He recalled his time in Africa filming Mogambo as the least enjoyable of his career, largely because of its director, John Ford, whom Sinden described as “the most dislikable man I ever met”. He was particularly irritated by Ford’s peremptory direction techniques: “On one occasion he had Clark Gable backing towards a cliff. Ford kept shouting ‘Further back!’ and Gable just disappeared over the edge. We found him stuck in a tree 15ft below.”

After playing Tony Benskin, a womanising medical student in Doctor in the House (1954), Sinden began to find himself being typecast in comic roles. He played Benskin and characters like him for the next eight years.

When the British film industry began to falter in the early Sixties, Sinden’s film career ended. “It was a bad time for me,” he said. “I was 40, married with two children and no work at all.” His first attempts at a return to the theatre were unsuccessful. He was turned down after Peter Hall had made him audition for the RSC. Sinden later described Hall as a “pipsqueak”.

However, after their initial differences Sinden joined the company and appeared in The Wars of the Roses, an epic amalgam of the relevant Shakespeare history plays, put together by Hall and John Barton, which lasted more than 10 hours and won ecstatic reviews.

Sinden went on to make a name for himself as a comedian and farceur. He appeared as Robert Danvers in There’s a Girl in My Soup at the Aldwych in 1966, and won Best Actor awards for his appearances in the Ray Cooney farces Not Now, Darling (1967), Two into One (1984) and Out of Order (1990). In 1976 he was nominated for a Best Actor Tony Award for his performance on Broadway as Arthur Wicksteed in Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus.

^{Donald Sinden and his wife Diana in 1956}

In 1989 Sinden was offered the opportunity to play his long-time hero Oscar Wilde, whose work had always fascinated him, in John Gay’s one-man show Diversions and Delights. In 1942, at a poetry club reading, Sinden had met Lord Alfred Douglas and had been one of the few mourners at his funeral. Thirty years later, when Wilde’s London home was being demolished, Sinden bought the fireplace for his own house in Hampstead.

Sinden continued to perform well into his eighties. From 2001 to 2007 he played Sir Joseph Channing in BBC Television’s legal drama Judge John Deed (starring Martin Shaw and Jenny Seagrove), and he recently appeared in the Gideon Fell mysteries on Radio 4.

Donald Sinden published two volumes of autobiography, A Touch of the Memoirs (1982) and Laughter in the Second Act (1985).

He was appointed CBE in 1979.

In 1948 Sinden married the actress Diana Mahony, who died in 2004. They had two sons, of whom the elder, the actor Jeremy Sinden, died in 1996. His surviving son is the film director and theatre producer Marc Sinden.

Sir Donald Sinden, born October 9 1923, died September 11 2014

Guardian:

Your trenchant editorial calling for prison reform was timely. Unfortunately, the secretary of state for justice refused to acknowledge the problem or the solution when questioned in Parliament two days later. Contrary to the evidence, ministers claim that overcrowding and violence are not a problem; apparently deaths in prison fluctuate regardless, and they seem to think prisoners are getting education. I don’t know if they being deliberately disingenuous or are being poorly advised.

Independent:

As a Welsh woman, proud of my nationality and protective of the Welsh language and culture, I can sympathise with Scots thinking of voting Yes. We Welsh have also been led for years by Conservative governments that we didn’t vote for. However, like many of my compatriots, I am staunchly Labour and don’t feel that I could vote for any other party, and that includes Plaid Cymru. For me, nationalism and socialism are uneasy bedfellows, and bring to mind the dark shadow of one A Hitler.

The other worry I have about nationalism is illustrated by the scenario being played out in Eastern Europe – tribal fragmentation, based on the principle that one set of beliefs is superior to another’s. Nationalism has a feeling of “I’m alright, Jack” about it, “and sod the rest of you”. Socialism is to do with social justice, the strong helping the weak in society.

I hope with all my heart that Scotland will vote No – breaking up the Union will only add to the fragmentation and uncertainty we are seeing all over the world. We need to celebrate what we have in common, and respect each other’s differences.

Gill Figg

Swansea

Why do large parts of the British media keep talking about the possible break-up of “Britain” when they mean the United Kingdom? Britain is a geographical term meaning the island of Britain, comprising England, Scotland and Wales. Also, Rory Stewart MP (News, 7 September), reportedly spoke of: “A third of the land mass of the United Kingdom being removed for the first time in 400 years.” Isn’t Mr Stewart aware that 26 out of 32 counties in Ireland left the United Kingdom in the 1920s?

Brian Stowell

Douglas, Isle of Man

Last week’s headline “Scotland: the independence crisis” should have read, “Scotland: the independence opportunity”. The Scots have a chance to shake off the suffocating Westminster malaise, and strike out on a different course, away from a failed state.

Go for it Scotland. Open up those new opportunities.

Michael Williams

Tenby, Pembrokeshire

The real challenge facing Scotland will be to repair the damage done by this referendum in splitting a nation, and how it can be drawn together again in trusting unity, encouraged by some unique political honesty.

Dennis Forbes Grattan

Bucksburn, Aberdeen

Scotland is enjoying the greatest period of prosperity for many years, so why put it at risk for a leap into the dark? Remember: if Scots go independent they will no longer have any say in English politics, English finance, English membership of the EU; they will no longer be able to use pound sterling; they will face new border controls between England and Scotland, etc. It will be a very unstable situation for Scotland and what is left of the United Kingdom: England, Wales and Northern Island, still standing together but, overall, we will all be much weaker. Please, please, please, canny Scots, vote no and stay strong together.

Simon Icke

Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire

Scotland, like the rest of us, wishes to be released from the shackles of that cesspit of incompetence, egotism, arrogance, near criminality and greed, which is London. The solution is to keep the kingdom “united” but to shift the seat of government to Edinburgh for 25 years, then on to Belfast and then Cardiff, similarly. Birmingham or Manchester might be next. London could be included when it has learnt how to behave.

T J Montagnon

Uppingham, Rutland

Despite two million people marching against the war in Iraq, Westminster MPs still voted to illegally attack the country. This shows that Westminster does not reflect the views of its voters. Only by voting Yes can Scotland be truly free of undemocratic Westminster. It can also look forward to governing itself.

Mark Richards

Brighton

A note about last  week’s newspaper

Joan Smith’s comment piece last Sunday about Ashya King caused upset to his extended family. Ms Smith did not mean to suggest in any way that Ashya is not very seriously ill, but she does believe the King family were unwise to remove their son from the care of the NHS against the advice of doctors in Southampton. I regret that the piece has generated anger, and sought to present the case as responsibly as possible. The principle of freedom of expression is an important one, and Joan was entitled to voice an opinion on this difficult and  much-discussed case. We wish the King family well over the coming weeks, during Ashya’s treatment in Prague.

Lisa Markwell

Editor

Times:

Those who favour a ‘no’ vote in Thursday’s referendum say that a greater stress should be placed on the shared history of Scotland and the rest of Britain

Scotland’s ties to Britain should make us celebrate, not separate

I AM fed up with hearing Alex Salmond promise voters that separation will solve all Scotland’s ills, with no mention of who will pay the bills (“Yes leads in Scots poll shock” and “A yes vote will usher in a ‘banana republic of tax rises and turmoil’”, News, and “Only 11 days to save the Union”, Editorial, last week).

I’m sick too of him attributing every problem to the Tories and Westminster and the English, when his party has had control over much of Scotland’s affairs. But I also think Alistair Darling’s indisputable economic arguments for a “no” vote urgently need much more positive presentation.

Sure, paint the vivid picture of employers flitting south in the event of a “yes” vote. But simultaneously shout about the emotional high we all gain from Scotland being a leading nation within the UK. Heaven knows there’s a lot to be proud of. Why else are immigrants bypassing countless countries to queue at Calais? Why else are British institutions globally admired?

Scotland and its diaspora are intimately woven into the fabric of Britain, and we have only a few days left to convince the undecided that this is a cause for celebration and retention.
Graeme Crawford, Edinburgh

COLD FEET

I was born and bred in Scotland and am a director of a South African-Australian company that has just had to abandon plans to invest in a £50m project expected to have created 100 jobs in rural Scotland. Sadly the possibility of a “yes” vote persuaded our board not to invest. Our business cannot handle uncertainty, and two governments negotiating terms over a two-year period would raise too much risk for us, particularly over whether or not Scotland would continue using the pound.

We will now invest in a more stable environment. Naturally we are disappointed that the Scottish government hasn’t understood what businesses such as ours need.
David Fuller, Brisbane, Australia

SPLITTING HEADACHE

I have remained neutral on whether or not the Scots should support independence but am concerned that if the ballot is close, nearly half of those voting will not get their wish: that could cause harm to the social cohesion of a great country. I am also concerned that Westminster politicians could promise all sorts of inducements to encourage the Scots to vote to remain in the Union that could be at the expense of the rest of the UK.

If there is a narrow majority in favour of independence, then our negotiators must put the interests of England, Wales and Northern Ireland first, including the rejection of a currency union. Independence must mean exactly that.
Norman Porter, Crawley, West Sussex

PILING OFF THE POUNDS

It appears that Salmond will do or say anything to facilitate Scottish separation. However, he still demands that Scotland has the pound, which is run by the Bank of England. How on earth does he expect to run the Scottish economy when he will have to toe the English fiscal line?

To protect the pound, the Bank of England will have to place its considerable foot on the neck of Scotland, which may end up being independent by name but will face a hard time raising cash to survive, let alone grow.
Keith Skinkis Loftus, Manchester

LEADERS AT A LOSS

David Cameron spends his time threatening Russia and fighting terrorists in Iraq while occasionally pontificating about the stability of the UK, seemingly unaware that the political entity he leads is potentially about to partly disintegrate. The fight to maintain the UK has been largely left to politicians who — incredibly — have been unable to link convincingly Scottish patriotism with the concept of the Union. Scots who died defending Britain are hardly mentioned at all in this context.

The MPs in Westminster we have voted for and entrusted our country to — whatever their political persuasion — must make an extraordinary effort to maintain the UK they represent.
Dr Marek Dominiczak, Glasgow

NO WAY FORWARD

Voting “yes” means voting “no” to a British passport, British armed forces protection, the pound, Clydeside shipbuilding for British vessels and holidays in Europe without an expensive Schengen visa.

It really is a very big decision for those lucky enough to vote, and I hope they all — especially the 16-year-olds — use it responsibly and are not swayed by sentiment.
Jane O’Nions, Sevenoaks, Kent

EMPTY THREAT

It is claimed the switherers — or waverers — are likely to climb on the bandwagon for a “yes” vote for fear of reprisals by a threatening minority of nationalists. Neither opinion polls nor the vote itself could be affected by such fears: the ballot is secret for that very reason.

This pretence by the media that the threatening conduct is all from the nationalist side is embarrassing. Many will have heard all about the Labour MP Jim Murphy having an egg thrown at him but are unlikely to know that two “yes” supporters were beaten up by a crowd of “no” supporters.
David Clinton Jr, Hamilton, South Lanarkshire

BETTER OPTION

The problem the “no” campaign has is its inability to answer the obvious question: if Scotland is better together, then why isn’t it better together now? A far more effective tactic for it would be to admit that Scotland has been exploited.
David Telford, Fairlie, North Ayrshire

INDUSTRIAL DISASTER

Being a Scot born and raised within sight of the Culloden battlefield, I believe a “yes” vote would be another socialist disaster.

Through no fault of my own, but because of trade union actions, I lost three jobs. I watched in horror as the largely communist-inspired unions destroyed the shipbuilding, steel, coal and motor industries. A “yes” vote may generate initial celebrations, but when the sober truth and the cost is revealed, the party will be truly over.
Maurice Horsburgh, Palm Beach, Australia

BOTTOM OF THE PILE

While I hope there is a “no” vote, what bribes are our politicians offering the Scots for that vote? Many people in the neglected industrial areas in the rest of the UK and particularly in England will be wondering when it is our turn.
David Booth, Macclesfield, Cheshire

TIME STANDS STILL

Should the vote be “yes”, will Scotland establish its own time zone, thereby absolving the rest of the UK of the necessity to change the clocks twice a year?
John Farmborough, Rickinghall, Suffolk

HEAD MUST ROLL

If Scotland votes “yes”, Cameron and Ed Miliband are morally bound to resign on September 19. The former for recklessly risking the break-up of the UK, and the latter for failing to rally Labour’s faithful north of the border. A “yes” vote would be the result of Westminster’s arrogance, neglect and ineptitude, ruthlessly exploited by Salmond.
Dominic Shelmerdine, London SW3

HEARTS AND MINDS

The heart dictates tribal loyalties; the mind better understands economics.
Peter Lack, London N10

SALUTING KISSINGER’S SHUTTLE DIPLOMACY
AS THE biographer of Henry Kissinger (Kissinger’s Year: 1973), may I congratulate Toby Harnden on his insightful article (“We’ve made ourselves bystanders in the Middle East”, Focus, last week)? At the height of the Cold War, Kissinger scored on détente through the relationship he established with the bearish Russian leader Leonid Brezhnev. Now nobody in the West knows Vladimir Putin as well as Kissinger, and he is right to apportion blame to America and Nato for events in Ukraine.

We should have pursued a policy of collaboration, not confrontation — of détente, in fact. Successive regimes in Washington have shown far too little sensitivity towards the imperatives of Russia’s history. It is late but not too late. And we urgently need Russian support over the crisis in the Middle East.

One of your correspondents last week took Kissinger to task for his being soft on Israel. I remember well his remarking to me while I was researching my biography that as the first Jewish-American secretary of state he had many critics to deal with. But the two most severe were from Israel itself and the Jewish lobby inside Washington. Yet it is surely to his great credit that he was able, through his famous shuttle diplomacy, to lay the basis of the peace — whatever its imperfections — that has existed between Israel, Egypt and Syria these past four decades.
Sir Alistair Horne, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

Leaky EU borders behind tide of migrants to UK
THE comment by Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, that Britain is somehow responsible for the number of illegal immigrants attempting to get to the ferry terminal are almost laughable (“We’re not to blame for the siege of Calais”, Editorial, last week).

As UK/EU citizens we are subject to tedious passport and customs checks, albeit for “security purposes”, which we understand, but thousands are entering the EU every year seemingly without problems. It appears the external border checks on mainland Europe are as secure as a sieve.

You addressed very clearly the failures of the signatories to the Schengen agreement to control their borders. The police alone cannot be held responsible for restricting the trafficking gangs — the EU countries have to take effective action.

However, action by the EU would probably be as effective as a chocolate fireguard. The Eurocrats have more important issues to address such as banning high-powered vacuum cleaners. That’s cynical, perhaps, but it is an indication of why many people in Britain look at the EU with degrees of doubt.
Neil Davey, Ivybridge, Devon

CLOSING THE FLOODGATES
In your article “Calais police warn migrant dam is about to burst” (News, last week) you quoted the former home secretary Michael Howard as observing: “The principle that every EU member state has subscribed to is that refugees should apply for asylum in the first safe country they reach.”

Putting to one side the probability that many trying to board ferries are illegal immigrants, not genuine refugees, is it not the case that if France were to give asylum to those who qualified for it, they would then be free to relocate anywhere else in the EU — for example, here? And if so, wouldn’t that merely delay the inevitable?

And is it not the case that the only hope Britain has of avoiding being the destination of choice for the increasing army of people flooding into Europe from across the planet is to leave the EU and finally secure our borders?
David Milburn, Dereham, Norfolk

TRUMP CARD
Those at Calais have already travelled across Europe through several countries without stopping in any of them. Is this because, unlike most other European nations, we do not have identity cards, so once the migrants are here, it’s much easier to stay undetected?

I know some people have privacy concerns, but they’ve probably got at least one store card that holds personal information. An ID card could have embedded in it our national insurance and NHS numbers, which would show entitlement to benefits.
Jean Phillips, Cheltenham

Corrections and clarifications
The photograph of the Queen on the front page of the first edition last week was wrongly captioned as “The Queen and Prince Philip attend the Braemar Gathering yesterday”. This was corrected to the Queen and Prince Charles in subsequent editions. We apologise for the error.

The headline “Don’t write a will, all you’re likely to leave behind is confusion” in the Money section last week should have read: “If you don’t write a will, all you are likely to leave behind is confusion”.

The article “The state may threaten but a parent knows when a child is sick” (Comment, last week) stated that an emergency protection order makes a child a ward of court. This is incorrect and we apologise for the error.

In Phil Daniels’s review of the Jaguar E-type Lightweight in Driving last week, the scooter in the picture from Quadrophenia was wrongly captioned as a Lambretta. It was a Vespa.

Complaints about inaccuracies in all sections of The Sunday Times, including online, should be addressed to complaints@sunday-times.co.uk or Complaints, The Sunday Times, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF. In addition, from tomorrow, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) will examine formal complaints about the editorial content of UK newspapers and magazines. Click here for full details of how to lodge a complaint.

Birthdays
Amanda Barrie, actress, 79; Ben Cohen, rugby player, 36; Morten Harket, singer, 55; Walter Koenig, actor, 78; Andrew Lincoln, actor, 41; Bernard MacLaverty, novelist, 72; Steven Naismith, footballer, 28; Sam Neill, actor, 67; Renzo Piano, architect, 77; Martin Tyler, football commentator, 69; Ray Wilkins, footballer, 58

Anniversaries
1741 George Handel completes Messiah oratorio; 1752 Britain adopts Gregorian calendar, and, for one year only, September 14 comes straight after September 2; 1852 Duke of Wellington dies; 1901 US president William McKinley dies eight days after being shot; 1982 Princess Grace of Monaco dies; 1983 singer Amy Winehouse born.

Telegraph:

6:57AM BST 13 Sep 2014

Comments

Irish Times:

Irish Independent:

Madam — National Suicide Day reminds us of the  great distress of a suicide for both victim and those who loved and cherished him or her.

When I was a young man seventy years ago, one morning I was walking past a house and the man of the house came running distressed and in agony. He told me that his wife was lying on the floor of the scullery. Her throat was cut and the gas was on full.

I went in, turned off the gas,  and examined her to see was she alive. Sadly she was dead. So I phoned the police who did everything in their power to help him and were very kind and professional.

I went with him to the parish priest to make arrangements for the funeral. Sadly he said the church condemns suicide and your wife cannot be buried in a Catholic cemetery and have a Catholic service.

I was with the poor man at the time. They had no family. He was on his own they were private people. I had a great friend a  Protestant minister., with whom I differed a lot on politics and religion but that did not interfere with out friendship. Any time a Protestant  friend of mine died, I went to the service in the Protestant church, which, at the time was forbidden by the Catholic Church. Friendship to me was more important than politics or religious bigotry. When a person dies you pray for them in any church.

The minister said he would get in touch with the priest and if the Catholic Church did not provide the respect for the dead he would do it and arrange for  her burial. There is no such thing as a lost soul. God is too merciful for that to happen.

Soon afterwards, the priest got in touch with the grieving widower and  told him he would do the Mass and service and his wife could be buried in the catholic cemetery.

At present there is a lot of change some for the better. People now get cremated  and their ashes  scattered in the place they want. I look back on those years and think how every church was on the one road to  the eternal happiness but went against the teaching of God and His Holy Mother and Father by killing each other over what church they belonged to.  More people were killed over religion than for any other cause.

Hubert Doran

Artane, Dublin 5

Madam — It was heartening to read that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were “decisive” in guiding Ireland’s mission in the Golan Heights away from imminent death or capture by Islamist extremists (Jim Cusack and John Drennan article, Sunday Independent, September 7). It was far from the only recent rescue by the IDF.

As the Gaza conflict raged, it set up a border field hospital for wounded Gazan civilians. Warned by Hamas against seeking treatment there, few took advantage of it. A similar source of succour was set up in the Golan Heights for suffering Syrian civilians and Free Syrian rebel forces.

Perhaps such acts as those will open not a few eyes as to the true nature of the IDF and Israel, generally. Though threatened throughout its existence by forces similar to the ones that threatened that Irish contingent, Israel has managed to build a thriving liberal society.

Nonetheless, calumny upon baseless calumny continues to be reflexively directed at Israel. Reality, though, suggests that it should be a nation greatly to be emulated, not denigrated.

Richard D. Wilkins ,    

Syracuse, New York

Writers ‘are wrong’ about Israel/Gaza 

Madam — I am so disappointed in your becoming a cheerleader for the murderous, land grabbing Israelis. I am not anti-Jewish or anti-Zionist, but I am against the destruction of a people. As far as religion goes I don’t give a rattlin’ damn what wall people wail against. The people of Gaza are living in a virtual concentration camp. The indifference of you and some of your columnists to the plight of these poor people is appalling. You are on the wrong side on this one.

W.Dunphy,                                           

Carrick-on-Suir

Islam is unfair to women

Madam — International lawyer, Dr John Reynolds’s, (Letters, September 7) insistence that Eoghan Harris is wrong and that Gaza is still under Israeli occupation would be welcome news to the oppressed women of Gaza if only it were true.   Because the last time these women were free was when the Israelis did in fact govern Gaza.  As children  they were free to attend school and when they grew up they were free to teach school.

Then Hamas took charge of their future and introduced Sharia Law.  Anyone following the latest flare up between Hamas and Israel cannot have failed to notice the absence of female doctors and nurses at the hospitals and sites in Gaza where men, women and children were killed and injured.

This is Sharia Law in operation where women are not allowed to be anything other than vessels for carrying babies.  But try as I might I cannot find any reference to these wretched women in the missives of Dr John Reynolds.  Perhaps I missed it.

Eddie Naughton,

The Coombe

Dublin 8

No Sharia law in our schools

Madam — Having read Carol Hunt’s article ( Sunday Independent, September 7) and previously read the views of Dr. Ali Selim on our education system and how his community would like to see changes, might I say that we  in Ireland treasure our system whilst at the same time accepting that it may from time to time require reform.

However, there is one reform which we will not tolerate  or accept and that is the  degrading of our female students.   The fact that Sharia Law and the Muslin way of life still promotes favouritism towards male dominance might explain what is happening in the Islamic world today.

Dr Salim,  you are now residing in the West in a democracy . The Islamic community are entitled to open their own schools but they must abide by our state system and this  promotes the same  opportunities for our male and female students.

Adrian Burke,

Dundrum,

Dublin, 14

15 September 2014 Very Quiet

I jog around the park I still have arthritis in my left knee, but I manage to get round the park. A sunny but cool day.

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast wt up gammon for tea and her back pain is still there.

Obituary:

Guardian:

How laudable of the British nation to raise over £1m in a few hours for the Manchester dogs’ home that burned down (Report, 13 September). Where is the quick response to the 1,400 abused children in Rotherham, and elsewhere? A trust fund could have been set up for these young victims, which might have helped restore them to some kind of health, but more importantly regain some measure of faith in a so-called civilised society. I note that we have a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but only a National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Vera Koenig
Headcorn, Kent

• Peter West is right to say that recruitment to the board of Impress, the new independent press regulator, should be open and fair (Letters, 11 September). That is why candidates for the board will be assessed against transparent criteria, such as their experience at “a senior level in a public or professional capacity”. This includes the private and voluntary sectors. However, Mr West is wrong to describe this as a “public appointment”. Impress is an independent non-profit organisation, unconstrained by political or commercial interests. Its aim is to promote press freedom and ethical journalism by upholding the code of practice. This is an important and challenging role, and we expect the board to include suitably qualified members from diverse backgrounds.
Jonathan Heawood
The Impress Project

• None of the discussions of recent Anglo-Irish politics that have appeared following the death of Ian Paisley (Report, Opinion, Obituary, 13 September) acknowledge the contribution to the Good Friday agreement of Riverdance impresario Michael Flatley; he it was who came up with the crucial principle that they should keep their arms, but not use them.
Percival Turnbull
Barnard Castle, County Durham

• On the whole I like the paper’s new look, but I can’t cope with the Letters page on the left.
Sue Leyland
Hunmanby, North Yorkshire

Independent:

The best hope of the Islamic State (Isis) is that by broadcasting the brutal murder of hostages it will trigger a knee-jerk reaction in Western capitals to engage in military action against them.

Isis will then be able to bring substance to its claim that the West is engaging in a murderous anti-Muslim campaign, with its resultant propaganda acting as a recruiting sergeant to bring yet more disaffected young Muslims to its ranks. We won’t then have 500 UK nationals fighting in Isis – we will have 5,000.

Despite the natural urge to bring these cold-blooded killers to justice, we must avoid playing into their hands by giving them the response their provocations are seeking.

If Isis is to be defeated, it will only be by the Muslim states that border the territory Isis has seized. We should restrict ourselves to assisting these states in preventing the spread of a contagion of barbarity, but we should fall short of our own direct involvement, since this is exactly what Isis is playing for.

Alan Stedall

Birmingham

There are only two ways to get rid of an enemy. One is to kill him; the other is to turn him into a friend. Even sanctions are essentially a slow-motion version of the first, with the disadvantage of leaving survivors who will be more bitter, and so more dangerous than before. The Middle East is an impossible cauldron of hatreds. Do we really think those will vanish, even if – improbably – we achieve any military peace?

A noble example of an alternative, on a tiny scale, has been set in Israel by 40 intelligence servicemen who resigned en bloc, refusing to be used by their government as an aid to oppressing the Palestinians. Their government seems oblivious to the enduring hatred it is engendering for their children and for children’s children in every neighbouring country. And previous interference by powerful outsiders (usually out of selfish interest) has done nothing but harm.

The mindset all over that region seems always to win by confrontation, with no thought to the fires left smouldering under the ruins so generated.

Fighting fire with fire occasionally works – but only leaves a desert. Is that what we want?

Kenneth J Moss

Norwich

One individual who has seemed to be silent over recent weeks, as turmoil in the Middle East continues, is the Quartet peace envoy Tony Blair.

Perhaps his next role, given the announcement of the Pope’s forthcoming visit to a Muslim country, Turkey, should be his appointment as His Holiness’s envoy to the Islamic Caliphate, or  Isis, as residential Papal Nuncio.

It would be difficult to imagine a more appropriate posting.

Professor David Molyneux

Kingsley, Cheshire

If UK splits, blame Cameron not Salmond

I am Scottish, living with my family in Chippenham for the past 28 years, and am devastated at the prospect of the permanent break-up of the UK.

Readers may feel that this is the fault of Alex Salmond and his Scottish Nationalist Party. Not true. We have always known that the SNP wanted this. The responsibility for this will lie completely with Prime Minister Cameron.

What the majority of the people of Scotland wanted, and asked for, was a third choice to be added, a “middle road” – a Scotland with more devolved powers and responsibilities. But Cameron in his folly made a disastrous political misjudgement and refused.

Then, with a week to go, he jumps up and shouts: “You can have the middle road and the powers.” I sincerely hope it is not too late, but many Scots will take this last-minute change of mind as an insult, by a man who did not listen to what they had asked for at the beginning.

Bill Douglas

Chippenham, Wiltshire

In 1974 a taxman in Kilmarnock was transferred, compulsorily, to Stourbridge in the Black Country. Leaving home for work has been the lot of hundreds of thousands of Scots who, like me, are disenfranchised in this referendum. I am proud and passionate in my love of Scotland. The cemetery in Hurlford, Ayrshire, houses at least four generations of my family. I’m Scottish first but also comfortable calling myself British. I fear for  the future of my country and for the well-being of the  five million people who  live there.

Some points to ponder before voting:

What’s in it for me and my family?

Yes is a vote for Alex because he is basically saying: “Trust me, it’ll be all right on the night.”

Is Jo(e) Scottish Public being asked to pay too dearly for Alex’s place in history and does he really care about the cost?

Division will linger in Scotland, whatever the outcome, but if it’s Yes, will the other 60 million easily forgive the chaos caused and agree currency union?

Is it only me who sees Alex as Kaa in The Jungle Book, swaying and singing “Trust In Me” in an effort to mesmerise his prey?

Nigel Haydon

Stourbridge, West Midlands

A number of grocers have indicated that the cost of groceries in Scotland may rise as a result of the increased distribution costs across a large and relatively thinly populated country.

This would appear to imply that there is currently a cross-subsidy of delivery costs across England/Scotland.

I have not yet heard from these same grocers that a Yes vote would lead to a fall in grocery prices in England. Or could it be that the increased Scottish distribution costs may be quietly added to their bottom line?

Ray Noy

Wigan

I read your report “Young ones bored, bored, bored by ‘Big, Big Debate’” (12 September) and was highly unimpressed. I was at the debate, and your article does not accurately represent all the students who attended.

Being in my fifth year at school, I am acutely aware of my examinations coming up in May and very conscious of every school lesson I miss; as I’m sure are the other 8,000 students who attended. So it was no trivial day out for many of us; it was a sacrifice that we were willing to make in order to participate in a debate where we would have a chance to learn about Scotland’s choices for the future.

Your article portrayed the students as uninterested and immature and did not even mention the content of the debate or quote any of the extremely intelligent questions and comments put forward by the pupils.

Greta Penny Tobermann

Edinburgh

 Scotland’s enemy is not the UK, but centralisation by Whitehall. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, great cities such as Glasgow, Dundee, Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol ran their own transport, sewerage, gas, education and other services funded by locally determined taxation. Now we are one of the most centralised states in the OECD, with effectively no locally raised and decided expenditure.

There is a growing appetite for the restoration of genuine local decision-making, which can release a renewed dynamism and innovation in the UK. Cornwall, the North-east and North-west all deserve release from the stranglehold of Whitehall as much as Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Together we can do it – so don’t abandon us now, Scotland.

Neil Colvill

Norwich

The Royal Bank of Scotland, the Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Bank and John Lewis have all come out against independence for Scotland. These attempts to influence the vote undermine the democratic process; big business should not try to sway people’s votes.

Margaret McGowan

Edinburgh

Given Alex Salmond’s penchant for crying “foul”, he has presumably complained that Last Night of the Proms conductor Sakari Oramo’s wearing of a Union flag waistcoat was orchestrated by Westminster?

Peter Kemp

Marlow, Buckinghamshire

On Thursday will it be a matter of “Move Over, Darling”?

Andrew McLuskey

Stanwell, Surrey

Paisley fed hatred and division

I don’t recall thinking of Ian Paisley as charismatic, as he is now being described. Rather, his style was hectoring, confrontational and intransigent. It seems extraordinary that he is now being given only credit for his contribution to the peace process, while glossing over the fact that he worked tirelessly to feed the many years of hatred and divisiveness that required that peace process. Speaking no ill of the dead is a fine principle but does not serve history well.

Beryl Wall

London W4

Stop invading my musical privacy

Over recent years I have nurtured my iTunes music library. Now Apple has greatly disturbed this library by dumping a new and unwanted U2 album on to it. It is akin to Bono leaving one of his bibles in every hotel bedroom I decide to stay in.

This is a gross invasion of privacy by a band and company which seek to impose their selective tastes and beliefs on the public.

Keith Nolan

Caldragh, Co Leitrim, Ireland

Times:

4

Sir, In the event of a “yes” vote the protective shield over the UK that has been so successfully maintained by UK security services (primarily MI5, MI6 and GCHQ) since 7/7 would be withdrawn from Scotland. MI5 officers would leave the Scottish counter terrorist hubs, taking with them their equipment, expertise and access to the vast reservoir of intelligence held on their databases.

Chris Hobbs

(Retired Metropolitan Police officer)

London W7

Sir, The split in the attitude of academics to independence (Sept 11) is not altogether surprising. Academics from science, maths and engineering disciplines (“no” voters) are more likely to apply evidence-based reasoning and rational thinking to their deliberations rather than the emotive, irrational instincts of their arts and humanities colleagues (“yes” voters).

Dr George Philliskirk

Burton on Trent, Staffs

Sir, If the Scottish sciences are voting “no” and the arts “yes”, where does this leave the philosophers?

Telegraph:

6:58AM BST 14 Sep 2014

Comments

7:00AM BST 14 Sep 2014

Comments

Irish Times:

Sir, – The Government is examining the income tax rates and the universal social charge in advance of Budget 2015. However, to judge from the comments of Ireland’s all-too-cautious and unambitious Minister for Finance, the hinted changes (if any) appear too modest and uncourageous to make any difference to Ireland’s economy or to economic confidence. The effective marginal rate of income tax in Ireland (including 7 per cent for USC and 4 per cent for employee PRSI) is 52 per cent for individuals, and it is 55 per cent (thanks to an additional 3 per cent USC “levy“) if one has the audacity to be self-employed as a result of setting up his own business. These are rates of taxation that are unquestionably anti-enterprise and confiscatory. We should contrast these Irish rates with the 45 per cent top rate of income tax currently in place in Britain.

What needs to happen is that Ireland sees a budget, this October, which supports growth. Everything in the budget must support indigenous enterprise. To this end, the marginal rates of taxation must be reduced.

Cutting the top rates of tax (not merely changing the point at which people enter tax bands, but actually cutting the top rates) will encourage enterprise and employment because it will allow businesses to retain more of the money that they earn; this means that people can invest in their businesses by hiring more staff and purchasing new equipment, or create new businesses. It would also, crucially, help greatly to encourage talented people to remain in Ireland, instead of emigrating. Merely fiddling with the tax bands (which is a political cop-out, devoid of courage) would do little to change the true perception in Ireland, today, that we are living in a very high tax country, which is a cold house for indigenous enterprise. For the national finances to be balanced, Ireland needs a combination of public spending control and real economic growth. It is now time to work on growth by cutting the marginal rates of tax. – Yours, etc,

JOHN B REID,

Knapton Road,

Monkstown, Co Dublin.

Sir, – As Gideon Levy has outlined to Lara Marlowe, Israeli policy is counterproductive (“The Holocaust makes Israelis think that international law doesn’t apply to them”, September 11th).

I cannot see how there is going to be a two-state solution to the conflict. The total area of Gaza is merely 360 sq km and the West Bank 5,860 sq km. There are at present 564,000 Jewish Israeli settlers in the West Bank. A lasting peace would mean a shared Jerusalem, with both Israelis and Palestinians living there. However, it will not be possible politically to remove the 400,000 or so settlers in other parts of the West Bank.

So, where is the Palestinian state going to be? As there is no possibility of a Palestinian state, this continued fiction allows the Israelis to dominate the area and treat Palestinians as second-class citizens in their own home. Israeli policy is leading effectively to one country containing Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.

In this new state Jewish Israelis will dominate and the Palestinian population in the Gaza and West Bank areas will be treated as second-class citizens, much as non-whites were treated in apartheid-era South Africa.

This scenario poses real problems for the long-term future of Israel. – Yours, etc,

NICK ARMSTRONG,

Pine Copse Road,

Dundrum, Dublin 16.

Sir, – Lara Marlowe has spent the past week or so travelling around Gaza and Israel, miraculously discovering en route that the opinions she arrived with were even more correct than even she’d believed them to be. I realise that in these days of advocacy journalism the perception of reportage being the first draft of history seems to have been filed on the “quaint” spike, nonetheless it might occur to the editors at The Irish Times to encourage writers such as Lara Marlowe to ask a question every now and then. For the optics if nothing else. – Yours, etc,

MELVYN WILCOX,

Dundanion Road,

Ballintemple, Cork.

Sir, – Lara Marlowe’s article on Haaretz newspaper columnist Gideon Levy was a brilliant antidote to the recent utterings of the Israeli ambassador. A lone voice speaking the unpalatable truth of crimes committed by his own countrymen in Gaza. A real hero! – Yours, etc,

JUDY BURKE,

Burgatia,

Rosscarbery,

Co Cork.

Sir, – I was saddened but not surprised to read the optimistic statements from Irish politicians hinting at nice things in the forthcoming budget (“Burton says budget will bring austerity era to a close”, September 10th).

Joan Burton is thinking of a reform of the universal social charge, one of the main income streams of the State. It sounds as if Ms Burton’s idea of reform is a reduction of the charge for some, if not all, people. So even though the country has a debt of 136 per cent of GDP, is still spending more than it earns in tax each month and is completely dependent on the ECB keeping rates low to exist, politicians like Ms Burton are saying the end of the tunnel is here. How nice! How convenient after the recent local election results.

Isn’t it interesting to see how our resolute politicians change their tune when their political survival is at stake? It makes one almost wish the troika was still keeping our brave politicians under control. – Yours, etc,

LIAM COOKE,

Greencastle Avenue,

Coolock, Dublin 17.

Sir, – I had a rather surrealistic experience on returning from the Anti-Nato Conference on September 1st. As we landed, I noticed a military aircraft surrounded by military personal. On leaving, I asked the air hostess what a military aircraft was doing so close to a civilian aircraft. I pointed in the direction and she deliberately would not look. She kept on saying she didn’t see anything. I asked once more. She again insisted that she could see nothing. On landing I saw the aircraft very close and I approached a worker driving his buggy. He stopped. “Is that a US military plane with soldiers?” He said, “Yes, but we are not allowed to go anywhere near it.”

When I passed through the passport section I again said to the official, “There is a US military plane outside. What is it doing in a civilian airport?” He replied, “I can not see anything.”

So is our country now inflicted with such denial, and is our culture “see no evil, hear no evil speak no evil”? What is going on at Shannon Airport? – Yours, etc,

MARGARETTA D’ARCY,

St Bridget’s Place Lower.

Galway.

Sir, – In “An Irishman’s Diary” (September 2nd), Denis Fahey recounts many of the events which marked day one in neutral Ireland of the second World War. The violent thunderstorms that ruined the All-Ireland hurling final also led to not one but three breaches of our newly declared neutrality.

The bad weather forced down two RAF seaplanes off Skerries, in north Co Dublin, and a third in Dún Laoghaire harbour. Those walking the pier must have wondered if was this the start of a British invasion or had the taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, changed his mind and joined Britain in declaring war on Germany. Two weeks later, a large RAF flying boat made a forced landing at Ventry harbour on the west coast but was able to leave after a local mechanic fixed an engine fault. The three seaplanes that were forced down in September were also able to take off with some local help.

There had been hurried conversations between Army officers who had rushed to the scene at Skerries and headquarters in Dublin about whether to seize the aircraft and intern the crews who had violated our neutrality. It was decided not to annoy the British this time.

But the English Daily Telegraph was belatedly tipped off about the landings and in their account quoted a local military or naval officer as making the immortal comment “Who are we neutral against?” This quote went viral in the foreign press, much to the annoyance of the guardians of our neutrality.

An official inquiry reported that “no State official had behaved precisely in the manner alleged by the British newspaper”. In the case of the Skerries incursion “some social contact took place but no statement concerning Irish neutrality had been made; in the second case no conversation of a friendly character took place between our protection officers and the belligerent aviation officers.”

No mention is made of the Co Kerry mechanic who fixed the engine.

The internal report concluded that the British representative, Sir John Maffey, should be told that “unless the British authorities are prepared to close down on the publication of such highly impolitic (and false) newspaper stories, we will be absolutely compelled to intern the next British aircraft and crew that may fall into our hands.”

So don’t mess with a neutral! – Yours, etc,

JOE CARROLL,

Maretimo Gardens East,

Blackrock,

Sir, – Your review of Gemma Clark’s new book Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War about the wanton destruction of “big houses” by anti-treaty or sectarian criminal elements in 1921-22 (“The campaign of fire”, September 6th) brought to mind an official notice at Woodstock House, Co Kilkenny.

Woodstock had been occupied by the Black and Tans during the War of Independence, and subsequently by Free State forces. However, it was unoccupied on the night of July 2nd, 1922, when it and its contents were destroyed.

Today in public ownership, Woodstock Gardens are a nice place to visit, even if resources do not permit their maintenance or restoration to the extent merited. The shell of the big house remains. An official noticeboard by the car-park sets out its history.

But this notice omits who torched it, and implies that the “Tans” were somehow to blame. Albeit chronologically correct, it states coyly that, “The main house was burnt in 1922 after the building had been occupied by ‘Black and Tan’ troops.” – Yours, etc,

COLUM KENNY,

Herbert Terrace,

Sir, – A 75mg tablet of aspirin is a prescription drug in Ireland. It is not in the UK. It is used for a range of purposes such as thinning the blood and preventing heart disease and stroke. Recent research suggests it may also be helpful in warding off various cancers. Why it is on prescription here is a question a medical expert may answer but clearly such experts in the UK believe that it does not warrant being on their list. In Ireland, on prescription, it costs about €6.70 for a pack of 30. In Boots, in the UK, over the counter, a pack of 100 costs £1.50. – Yours, etc,

MICHAEL HALLIDAY,

Clonard Drive,

Dublin 16.

Sir, – Rather than pretend that the dog littering laws in Ireland are effective, when patently they are not, would it not be better to change the law so that dog walkers and owners are fined for not having a fouling bag when they take their dogs out? At the moment dog owners who fail to clean up after their animals face an on-the-spot fine of €150 but in practice this is extremely difficult to enforce. Whereas if there is no bag, then surely there is no excuse? – Yours, etc,

FRANK CLOHOSEY,

Bracken Court,

Donnybrook,

Douglas,

Cork.

Sir, – It used to be that “nobody is perfect in this world” but the magazines are trying to create the “perfect” image. They photoshop and airbrush the models and celebrities to make them look “perfect” and say it is natural to look that way.

This can make girls have extremely low self-esteem. In reality nobody is perfect. We are all different and wonderful in our own way. Young girls need to realise this. – Yours, etc,

DAISY HAWKSWORTH,

Rhode,

Tullamore,

Co Offaly.

Sir, – To set the record straight for Cllr Dermot Lacey (September 12th), it was in fact Noel Dempsey that went to government with the plan for emergency legislation to amend the 1996 Waste Management Act, in 2001. This amendment took the power out of the hands of elected representatives and placed it in the hands of local authority county managers (chief executives). – Yours, etc,

Cllr VICTOR BOYHAN,

County Hall,

Dún Laoghaire,

Co Dublin.

Irish Independent:

Dublin can be heaven with coffee at 11 and a stroll in Stephen’s Green There’s no need to hurry, there’s no need to worry you’re a king and the lady’s a Queen. Grafton Street’s a wonderland, there’s magic in the air . There are diamonds in the lady’s eyes and gold dust in her hair. And if you don’t believe me come and meet me there in Dublin on a sunny summer’s morning… Well sung by Noel Purcell in the good auld days, God be good to him.

I wasn’t in Grafton Street yesterday. However, I’m a proud Dub living in the idyllically set village of Kill, Co Kildare, a long while now and it has won many medals for Tidy Towns including this year.

However, I miss Dublin with its little winding streets and Thomas Street and Moore Street where the craic is great and people are so friendly.

I went to see Ant & Dec in the 3 Arena, known to me as the Point last night.

I travelled from Citywest Campus on the Luas and it was a joy to breeze into town with no traffic to annoy me, the driver on the Luas was so friendly and all the people in the Point were friendly too that I felt like a celebrity or a royal.

No, I wasn’t just an ordinary Joe Soap experiencing the great friendliness of Dublin and its people. I got chatting to people on the Luas and they were the salt of the earth,

I really think Dublin and its people get such bad press. They are the most friendly, courteous/helpful happy-go-lucky people in the country and deserve the highest award available to them. I’ll be travelling on the Luas much more often now to my beloved Dublin of poets, writers and artists.

It’s such a beautiful city it makes me melancholy at the thought of the great days I once had there.

Sure, the Luas is only a stone’s throw away and so easy to travel in and comfortable with a sideshow of wonderful happy commuters.

Ms Terry Healy

Kill Co Kildare

HOUR OF SCOTLAND

How deeply insulting to suggest that Scotland cannot survive as an independent entity.

The Republic of Ireland has satisfactorily done so with its own elected head of state for decades, so why can’t Scotland? As an Englishman, I find that Britain is ruled by an ambitious clique of Old Etonians with nothing in common with anyone in the land outside the ‘old boy school network’. How nice it would be if we English could have a referendum on the monarchy, and live at ease and on equal terms with our independent Scottish, Welsh, Irish, and even Cornish neighbours.

The bankers who claim Scotland will face financial dire straits if they opt for freedom are the same ones who brought Britain to its knees in 2008. Their avarice is what the Scots (and we English) need to be free of.

Dominic Shelmerdine

H17 Sloane Avenue Mansions

London SW3

I have heard it asked in the run-up to the Scottish referendum whether the people will vote with their heads or their hearts. Thus suggesting one could only vote Yes with one’s heart and not one’s head and vice-versa.

Should Scotland choose to vote Yes on Thursday, I believe they will do so with both the head and the heart.

Róisín Lawless,

Ráth Chairn,

Áth Buí, Co na Mí.

When Scotland finally decides, perhaps politicians Salmond and Sturgeon can relax … a fishing trip maybe ?

Tom Gilsenan

Beaumont D9

Congratulations to Robert Fisk on his article comparing present-day Ireland and what Scotland may look like if it votes for independence.

The only firm conclusion we can come to is that, whatever happens to the currency and the trains at the border, we will all continue to speak English.

A. Leavy

Sutton, Dublin 13

Like many I believe the Scots are far too canny to let their hearts rule their heads, so will vote No in the forthcoming referendum for independence.

However, should they vote Yes it will open a Pandora’s Box not only in these islands by boosting the cause of English nationalism / UKIP but also in the EU, such as Basque nationalism in Spain.

The advocacy of nationalism is like saying drink as much as you like but for God’s sake drive carefully.

As an unworthy disciple of Beethoven I’ve always hoped that his 9th Symphony with Schiller’s Ode to Joy would one day become the anthem of a United Nations of Europe if not all humanity Nationalism, a philosophy that a nation must yield a state, emerged only in the early 19th century but often has appalling consequences as in former Yugoslavia to mention but one example. Finally, Kim Jong-un the supreme leader of the Republic of North Korea is supporting the campaign of the SNP. Enough said already.

Tony Moriarty

Harold’s Cross, Dublin

GOODBYE TO ‘DR NO’

Ian Paisley, ‘Dr No’, has shaken off his mortal coil. We used to call him the ‘Old Thunderer’ – he certainly left us with a ‘right shower’. They were dark days and he was part of the darkness. In his later years, he saw the light and helped to bring his people onside in the peace process. It doesn’t get him off the hook in my book, for the legacy of bigotry and sectarianism he helped stir. Nonetheless, he grew with age and time, and that is more than can be said about many politicians . Like the rest of us he’ll be missed by many but not by all.

The fact that his party kicked him out because he formed a pivotal partnership with Martin McGuinness was depressing. The first time Big Ian showed genuine vision, his colleagues went into a blind rage and turned their backs on him. He was more than a player, he helped shape the political landscape of the North for better or for worse.

Like him or not you can’t say that about too many.

T. G. O’Brien

Dun Laoghaire Co Dublin

De mortuis nil nisi bonum; nothing only good about the dead. That is the case with most mortals. But Big Ian was larger than life. Now that he is gone, everyone seems to be rushing in to sit in judgment. We all know the facts. But what made him tick? To me he was a total enigma, a very big mixed bag, especially to himself. Requiescat in pace.

Sean McElgunn

Address with editor

While out walking at lunchtime I heard the news of the death or Mr Ian Paisley. I listened intensively to the RTE radio and I thought of how when writing about the death of famous politicians it is said that “Every one of our leaders was a giant among men.” I was born in 1963 and have a great memory. Ian Paisley was a very dangerous individual and was responsible for the fates of hundreds not by the deed itself but by his vitriolic demagoguery which as a young boy growing up in the North I had to listen to.

His words and actions led to the imprisonment of many hundreds of young Protestants who were swayed by the words and actions again of Paisley. I won’t miss him, but again another memory is of my late mother when writing to Paisley about a house for one of my sisters, when I asked her why she was doing that, she said: “Well, Paul, that other shower (ie, the SDLP) won’t do anything for us.”

Paul Doran

Clondalkin Dublin 22

Irish Independent

16 September 2014 Clinic

I jog around the park I still have arthritis in my left knee, but I manage to get round the park. A sunny but cool day. I take Mary to the clinic, blood transfusion on Monday and a new experimental anti-lymphoma drug.

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast wt up lamb for tea and her back pain is still there.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Independent:

Times:

4

Telegraph:

Only the Muslim states bordering territory seized by Isil can defeat the Jihadist terror group

6:59AM BST 15 Sep 2014

Comments

SIR – As a student, I remember being shocked by research showing that elections in Britain were decided, not by the most politically astute individuals, but by “floating” voters unaware of their responsibilities. Jean Blondel, in Voters, Parties, and Leaders, made the point that the factors which made a difference were transient and non-rational.

Irish Times:

A chara, – Despite having lived in Edinburgh for a number of years, being married to a Scotsman and a regular visitor there, I have no idea how the Scots should vote in Thursday’s referendum.

We in Ireland should not make the mistake of imposing our ideas of nationalism on Scotland. Many Scots see no contradiction in considering themselves both proudly Scottish and proudly British. Many in the older generation will vote No to independence not because they fear change but because they do not want to give up their British identity and the ties forged through two World Wars. But for many of the younger generation, being part of the UK merely means being ruled by English Conservatives in London, regardless of the fact that the Scots don’t tend to vote Tory.

If they vote Yes, despite the dire warnings of the political and corporate establishment, they will do so because they want to be masters of their own destiny. Those of us used to the limitations of parliamentary democracy might consider their aspirations to be a little naive but we can only admire their passion.

Whatever the outcome of Thursday’s historic vote, it will be the right decision for Scotland because it will be made by the Scottish people themselves. We wish them well. – Is mise,

KAY CHALMERS,

Douglas,

Cork.

Sir, – In its promotional information the Royal Bank of Scotland states that, “We put our customers’ needs first. We will listen and then help you find solutions that meet your needs. We are there whenever you need help. We will take personal responsibility when you need support from us. We are fair and honest.”

Strange then that it would announce a move to London should Scotland vote Yes.

It would seem that the help and support about which it boasts is to be extended to all countries except its own – the very one included in its title. – Yours, etc,

CHARLIE McGEEVER,

Derrycastle,

Ballina,

Co Tipperary.

Sir, – Once more, Diarmaid Ferriter gives a lead in an area of some importance (“Scottish referendum issues need response in Republic”, Opinion & Analysis, September 13th). – Yours, etc,

ANTHONY J JORDAN,

Gilford Road,

Dublin 4.

Sir, – I am not too sure that Diarmuid Ferriter is right when he advises that “a senior Irish politician … should respond to the issues the [Scottish] referendum raises”. As he said himself “context, perspective and reality” demonstrate that Scotland has a different history. Pontificating from us about what happened here in different times is, therefore, the last thing that is needed in a knife-edge referendum.

For example bragging that “the Free State achieved political stability and implemented an independent foreign policy”, while true, was highly conditional on neither Hitler or Stalin gaining the upper hand in Europe in the second World War. Our independence would not have lasted half an hour if either of those ruthless totalitarians had taken over Europe.

If that had happened, and their political descendants were still in power, there would be no EU of 28 democracies to which a free Scotland could apply for membership.

The different context, perspective and reality, therefore, indicate that we would be better advised to leave the Scots to decide their own future. – Yours, etc,

ANTHONY LEAVY,

Shielmartin Drive,

Sutton,

Dublin 13.

Sir, – Will the UK become the SK (split kingdom)? – Yours, etc,

DAPHNE GUTHRIE,

Kilmeena,

Westport,

Co Mayo.

Sir, – I have heard it asked in the run-up to the Scottish referendum whether Scotland’s people will vote with their heads or their hearts. Thus suggesting one could only vote Yes with one’s heart and not one’s head and vice versa.

Should Scotland choose to vote Yes on Thursday, I believe it will do so with both the head and the heart. – Yours, etc,

RÓISÍN LAWLESS,

Ráth Chairn,

Áth Buí­,

Co na Mí.

Sir, – All this talk about the Scottish independence vote going down to the wire is utter rubbish. Take no notice of the recent polls showing the Yes and No sides running neck and neck. Mark my words,this referendum is not too close to call; the Scots will vote overwhelmingly to remain part of the union. They may be brave but they ain’t stupid! – Yours, etc,

PAUL DELANEY,

Beacon Hill,

Dalkey,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – As a Scot married to an Irishman, living happily in Ireland these past 35 years, it surprises me to hear Irish citizens espousing the unionist position. It is an inexpressible pleasure to live here in a sovereign state, where citizens have the right to govern themselves.

Apart from the important issues of Scotland’s separate and distinct identity and culture, there has long been a democratic deficit. Scotland is currently ruled by a Conservative Westminster government, having elected only a single Conservative MP out of a possible 59.

Lack of autonomy infantilises a people. It is time for Scotland to leave home, and grow up. This will take courage. I wish Scotland good luck in finally taking charge of its own affairs. – Yours, etc,

PATRICIA STEWART,

Stable Lane,

Crofton Terrace,

Dún Laoghaire,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – Regardless of the outcome of this week’s Scottish Referendum, Scotland is on an irreversible path to independence. David Curran (September 13th) asks “if not now, when?” No time like the present, I suggest. As Macbeth says, “if it were done when ‘tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly”. – Yours, etc,

PJ McDERMOTT,

Sheeaune,

Westport, Co Mayo.

Sir, – The major flaw in Ian Paisley’s psyche, leading in turn to his deathly, divisive agenda, whatever his latter-day sainthood, is characteristic of all religious fundamentalists – a misguided, destructive belief in having an exclusive grip on the truth; that, absurdly, one has a divine mandate, heaven forbid!

History is ill-served if this dehumanising force is airbrushed by dint of political correctness or not speaking ill of the dead. – Yours, etc,

OWEN MORTON,

Station Road,

Sutton,

Dublin 13.

Sir, – There was absolutely nothing of the Nazarene in this man. It is only when he became first minister, ie achieving power, that he had his Damascus moment. Blessed are the true peacemakers – Gandhi, King, et al – for they walk with the angels. – Yours, etc,

DERRY O’BRIEN,

Fernwood,

Doughcloyne,

Cork.

Sir, – No, nay, never, no, nay, never no more. – Yours, etc,

KEVIN O’SULLIVAN,

Ballyraine Park

Letterkenny

Co Donegal.

Sir, – Fintan O’Toole (“Paisley: a firebrand who learned to compromise”, September 13th) has captured the essence of the man and all he embodied, including his change of heart when his lust for power overcame his religious convictions! Thank you, Fintan, for allowing me to read and move on. – Yours, etc,

PJ MADDEN,

Elderwood Road,

Palmerstown,

Dublin 20.

A chara, – I never knew that the Rev Dr Ian Paisley’s middle names were Richard Kyle, until your editorial of September 13th (“From firebrand to peacemaker”). The initials of his forenames lend themselves to an acronym that is rather apt for a man who got under the skins of so many. I’ll spell it out, lest I be accused of being obscure – IRK!

May the “big fella” rest in peace. – Is mise,

Rev PATRICK G BURKE,

Castlecomer,

Co Kilkenny.

Sir, – The widespread, though not universal, praise for Ian Paisley – his warmth, humour, ultimate willingness to compromise – from politicians of all hues gives the impression that they, ultimately, are more impressed by the persona and skills of one of their own than they are by the suffering, sometimes intentional, they have caused people at large.

They form a self-congratulatary, insulated clique more inclined to listen to one another than they are to the rest of us. – Yours, etc,

EOIN DILLON,

Ceannt Fort,

Mount Brown,

Dublin 8.

Sir, – Despite Ian Paisley’s political “conversion” during the last decade of his life, the fact remains that throughout the previous several decades of his involvement in front-line politics in Northern Ireland he was a zealous bigot.

His oratory continually encouraged violence and his actions always opposed political progress.

His “no surrender” philosophy helped to prolong the killings on this island and handicapped any efforts towards ending the political stalemate between the Catholic and Protestant communities.

It was Paisley who played an integral role in bringing down the Sunningdale Agreement (through the loyalist-led Workers’ Strike in 1974). It was Paisley who opposed Irish governments’ legitimate role in finding a solution to the Troubles (for instance, in his opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985). And it was Paisley who refused to wholeheartedly endorse the Good Friday agreement of 1998 (even though the peoples of both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland voted in favour of this agreement via a referendum on either side of the border).

Yes, during the last years of his life Paisley did agree to power-sharing with the once despised Sinn Féin/IRA, as he himself described Martin McGuinness and his motley crew. However, this does not absolve him from his past actions.

While he may never have had actual blood on his hands, his bigoted deeds and words will forever stain his legacy. – Yours, etc,

Dr STEPHEN KELLY,

Department of History

and Politics,

Liverpool Hope University,

Hope Park,

Liverpool.

Sir, – Will the pretending finally stop? Ian Paisley “the peacemaker, the statesman, the man of principle, the man who said yes, the big man”. Ian Paisley was bigoted, sectarian, ignorant, rude and very dangerous. When civil rights marchers asked for basic civil rights, the “great man” met them with a mob. His life was dedicated to intolerance, the stirring up of hatred, and his rights were the only rights that mattered.

Then when the winds of change finally came, his ego made him the peacemaker. A peacemaker does what is right for the greater good of all, not himself. John Hume is a peacemaker; Paisley was just a pathetic opportunist. – Yours, etc,

JOHN WALL,

Upper Dargle Road,

Bray,

Co Wicklow.

Sir, – On the passing of Ian Paisley I am reminded of the phrase, if the God you worship hates the same people you do, then maybe your God is of your own creation. – Yours, etc,

DERMOT O’ROURKE,

Westbury Drive,

Lucan,

Dublin 22.

Sir, – An important aspect of the current debate on direct provision that is being overlooked is the practice of placing suspected victims of sex trafficking in centres which are not safe or secure.

This practice is not only a failure of Ireland’s international obligations to protect victims but leaves women and girls within reach of the criminal gangs running a multimillion euro network of prostitution and trafficking in this country.

It is unacceptable that women, who are traumatised after years of exploitation, are being left neglected by the State and are in immediate danger of further abuse, threats of violence to withhold evidence against their abusers and in some cases a return to a life of prostitution.

In addition the placing of victims of sexual abuse and rape in mixed-sex accommodation is unacceptable.

Such are our failings in this area that Ireland has been criticised by the US state department, the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

Notwithstanding those international bodies, as a modern democracy which prides itself on equality and justice we owe it to these women and girls to provide them with every possible support as they attempt to restart their lives. – Yours, etc,

DENISE CHARLTON,

Chief Executive,

Immigrant Council

of Ireland,

Andrew Street,

Dublin 2.

Sir, – In response to my recent article on Donald Caird (“Retired Church of Ireland archbishop led his community to places they had not been”, September 2nd), the former bishop of Cork, the Right Rev Roy Warke, rightly observes (September 11th) that the first woman priest to be ordained in the Church of Ireland in the Republic, Janet Catterall, was ordained in that city.

That is why I stated that Rev Ginnie Kennerley was “one of the first” women ordained in the Republic.

Indeed, as a young solicitor’s apprentice in 1990, I was present in St Fin Barre’s Cathedral when Rev Catterall was ordained and congratulated her afterwards as someone coming from another religious tradition. I am at one with the bishop in feeling that my native Cork’s pre-eminence in this (as in other) matters must never be occluded. – Yours, etc,

AONGHUS DWANE,

Bangor Road,

Kimmage,

Dublin 12.

Sir, – It would seem to me that Minister of Health Leo Varadkar’s medical training is aiding him in his brief, as I believe it did in his previous ministry. I suspect he is applying “Loeb’s Laws of Medicine” to his new portfolio, a modified version of which is as follows: (1) if what you’re doing is working, keep doing it; (2) if what you’re doing is not working, stop doing it; (3) if you don’t know what to do, do nothing; (4) never let the treatment be worse than the disease.

It’s early days, but other Ministers might learn from this refreshing approach. – Yours, etc,

Dr TADHG O’CARROLL,

St Philomena’s,

Tycor,

Waterford City.

Sir, – Ireland is a wonderful country and it’s not surprising to read reports that tourism is a growing part of the economy. That said, the condition of the loos at Busáras in Dublin are not helping. In short, the toilets are filthy and badly in need of repair. Doors are broken, some locks are non-existent and some sinks are not working.

If Ireland is to continue winning the tourism game, safe, clean and functional loos are critical for the traveller at one of the country’s main transportation hubs. – Yours, etc,

STAN BARTLETT,

Fairfield Road,

Victoria,

British Columbia,

Canada.

Sir, – On September 12th, you revealed details of a confidential submission by the Department of Health to the Government on the front page of your newspaper, while on page 8 the confidential parts of one of the delegates to the International Naturist Congress were concealed behind the front page of a provincial newspaper.

What does “confidential” mean, this weather? – Yours, etc,

BRIAN O’BRIEN,

Grosvenor Court,

Templeogue,

Dublin 6W.

Sir, – The “freestanding Corgi” in “Get some Highland bling for your home” (September 13th) is in fact a freestanding West Highland Terrier, a dog I lament every day since that bitter time in July 2012 when he was called to the big kennel in the sky. Hamish, never forgotten! – Yours, etc,

LIZ CAHILL,

Oakwood Grove,

Clondalkin,

Dublin 22.

Sir, – Teenagers are reading less and the teenagers that do read are branded “swats” or “nerds”. Books provide a healthy escape from the stresses of everyday life as a student. While many teenagers and young people do read, there are still a large number that should be encouraged to do so. This could be done by setting up libraries in schools or providing students with even one period a week to read. – Yours, etc,

SOFIA RAINEY,

Raheen Gardens, Limerick.

Sir, – One of my father’s favourite stories was when he asked a paper boy in O’Connell Street in Dublin one evening if he had a copy of that morning’s Irish Press. “It’s news I’m sellin mister, not history” was the curt reply. – Yours, etc,

JOHN QUINN,

Iona Villas,

Dublin 9.

Irish Independent:

The acquittal of Oscar Pistorius on the charge of premeditated murder raises significant issues about the relationship between the judgements of juries and those of experienced judges.

The conclusions of Thokozile Masipa, the judge in the Pistorious case, have been widely criticised. It has been claimed that justice has not been served, as the judge’s conclusions were based on technical legal issues and not driven by where the evidence obviously pointed. It has been assumed by many that trial by jury would have produced a different verdict, basing judgement on the deliverances of common sense, reaching conclusions that any reasonable person would supposedly reach.

The unwarranted assumption here is that ordinary people chosen at random and applying their common sense can arrive at a fair and reasonable verdict based on the evidence and that they are capable of reaching a verdict beyond reasonable doubt and without prejudice.

The notion of common sense is based on the view that in the ordinary course of life we do not have time to engage in lengthy analysis in making decisions. The over-analysed life is unliveable.

However, common sense can easily degenerate into common nonsense. It is not an alternative way of knowing distinct from the exercise of intelligence.

Trial by jury tends to focus on persuading 12 people to reach a certain conclusion. This is intensified by the introduction of victim statements, assuming that the cold rationality of the courts needs to be supplemented by raw expressions of feeling.

The jury trials of the Birmingham Six, Judith Ward, the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven – all wrongly convicted – should have sent a warning sign to all involved in shaping our system of law. These miscarriages of justice were overturned, not by a jury, but by the cold exercise of the law.

Admittedly, there are real moral issues about inequality of access to the law, mostly as a result of the variability in the quality of representation in the courts. It is often said that the wealthy can buy their way out of trouble.

Philip O’Neill, Oxford, England

Home Rule @ 100

I was very glad to see your “Home Rule @ 100″ supplement (September 13), and that a long-forgotten John Redmond is at last receiving the attention he deserves. I was, however, puzzled by the choice of “The 10 main Home Rule Players”. While Parnell (First Home Rule Bill, 1886) and Redmond (Third Home Rule Bill, 1912-14) obviously deserve to be listed, the absence of Justin McCarthy (Second Home Rule Bill, 1893) is baffling.

Overshadowed by Parnell before him and the 1916 rebels four years after his death, McCarthy’s significant contribution to the Home Rule cause has been largely overlooked.

McCarthy’s conciliatory chairmanship of the Irish Parliamentary Party (1890-96) ensured that the Party did not subdivide further after the Parnell split. McCarthy maintained the vital Irish Party alliance with Gladstone’s Liberals. After the 1892 general election, McCarthy and his 71 Irish Party MP colleagues, acting in unison, made it possible for Gladstone to have his Second Home Rule Bill passed by the House of Commons in 1893. Had that Bill not been passed by the Commons that year, it is unlikely that the Liberals would ever have returned to the issue again.

McCarthy is the critical link between the 1886 and 1912-14 Home Rule Bills. He therefore deserves to be included in any list of “Top 10 Home Rulers”.

Eugene J Doyle, Dundrum, Dublin 14

Your otherwise excellent supplement on “Home Rule @ 100″ was marred by the repeated use of “Kitty” in relation to Mrs O’Shea, lover and later wife of Charles Stewart Parnell.

She was, in fact, generally known as “Katie” – though she preferred to be called Katherine. “Kitty” was Victorian slang for a prostitute and it was first applied to Mrs O’Shea by the egregious Tim Healy, and it stuck. It was singularly inappropriate given her essentially uxorious relationship with Parnell.

Felix M Larkin, Academic Director, Parnell Summer School, Cabinteely, Dublin 18

Yes in Scotland? Don’t bet on it

Contrary to the mass media coverage that the referendum in Scotland can go “either way”, please permit me to make the following prediction: The possibility of the “Yes” side winning the Scottish referendum on independence is as remote as me winning the Irish Lotto and the Euro Millions this week.

Vincent J Lavery, Dalkey, Co Dublin

Taking the Lord’s name in vain

Please allow me the chance to appeal to all who write for your newspaper to refrain from using the name of Jesus as an expletive, or for colourful emphasis or simply to gain attention.

It is a holy name and the name of the beloved Son of God. The principle, common to all of us, of wishing to protect our good name, holds good in this case also, I believe. Thank you.

Fr Freddy Warner, Portumna, Co Galway

All that I can’t leave behind

I have nurtured my iTunes music library over recent years.

Apple have greatly disturbed this library by dumping a new U2 album into it. I neither asked for nor wanted this mediocrity. This is a gross invasion of privacy by a band and company who seek to impose their selective tastes on the general public.

K Nolan, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim

Behind the Middle East chaos

Everyone is rightly saddened by the death of David Haines, the British aid worker who was recently butchered. This was a horrific act. We must see the complete picture in this disastrous situation.

Britain and the US invaded Iraq, based on a pack of lies, 11 years ago. They are also still fighting in Afghanistan for some reason. In those two countries combined, around a million people have been killed by Western forces. Then you had Libya, where around another 30,000 people were killed, in addition to the destruction caused. Huge amounts of weaponry have also been sold to that region. The result – chaos.

In order to gain control of the Middle East, and it’s resources, much of the Muslim world has been trashed. And, if that wasn’t enough, we’ve seen the UK and US back Israel’s recent raid, which killed another 2,100 Muslims in Gaza.

Let’s be clear, I am in no way justifying what Isil/Islamic State are doing. This is no excuse for their barbarity, but the totality of the breakdown in the Middle East has to be examined in order to be addressed.

Name and address with editor

Remembering Anne Devlin

This Thursday marks the anniversary of the death of Anne Devlin, the faithful friend of Robert Emmet. She suffered severely at the hands of cruel crown agents.

Anne Devlin’s headstone at Glasnevin tells of her many noble qualities and how she lived and died in “obscurity and poverty”.

Remember her with pride.

J A Barnwell, Dublin 9

Irish Independent

17 September 2014 Meg and Ben

I jog around the park I still have arthritis in my left knee, but I manage to get round the park. A sunny but cool day. I take Mary to the GP and Myself. Meg and Ben come to do some books.

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast wt up gammon for tea and her back pain is still there.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Independent:

Whatever the outcome of the Scottish referendum, I fear the consequence will be one of bitterness and resentment.

For this the blame must fall largely on Alex Salmond. Day after day Mr Salmond has given knee-jerk reactions to anything he doesn’t like – it is irrelevant, it is incorrect, it is a lie, it is driven by panic. There is never an acknowledgment that there are arguments in favour of continued union that deserve consideration and need to be answered.

The fact that independence would also sever links with the Welsh and Northern Irish seems never to be mentioned. Mr Salmond seems determined to foster the notion that the Scots are a subservient people waging a heroic fight for freedom from a hated foe.

There will be a price to pay for this. It is beginning to look as if the result of the referendum will be either acrimonious divorce or an equally acrimonious marital relationship. Can I appeal to both sides to do their best to exercise restraint and display a constructive spirit when the result is known?

Adrian West
London N21

Scotland is a weathy country. We have one quarter of all the renewable energy potential of Europe and we still have oil reserves. We have had enough of  Westminster: they bailed out the banks as they didn’t regulate them properly in the first place; they went to war against Iraq against the will of the United Nations; and they also were found with their hands in the till in the expenses scandal. That’s why I’m voting Yes.

Sarah Barts
Glasgow

At this time of bitter conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, combined UK energies must not be diverted by introverted dissension about our own differences. History will shame us if our island peoples put national self-absorption before international peace building.

Yvonne Craig
London WC1

Progress, wealth and health are created through partnerships: in businesses and councils, schools and clubs, the NHS, fair government and, of course, marriage. Compare the opposite: dictators, feudal lords, divorced states. Look at North Korea, a destitute and starving nation.

Neighbouring countries will question the Scottish separation campaign: ‘‘Why can’t you make compromises and hold the union together? Where will the young adults go for work? And where is the integrity with this proposed separation?”

A UK without Scotland will be a disaster, not only for Scotland but for all of us. An expensive, divisive scenario, especially when one compares other unions and their successes: East and West Germany, the United States of America, the Union of South Africa, the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia. The UK together stood firm and strong. Divided it will weaken, topple and fall. There is no benefit in separation, it will be a disaster for all.

Norman Ball
Maryport, Cumbria

It would be a tragedy if Scots gave up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to choose a Scotland where governments, of any political hue, would be more concerned about social and political justice for Scottish people than any London government would.

We should not be listening to careerist, synthetic Scottish politicians with whom Rabbie Burns might have recognised certain similarities with the earlier treacherous nobles, hastening him to coin the phrase: “We’re bought and sold for English gold, such a parcel of rogues in a nation.”  We should listen to our heads, hearts and souls and not end up spending a lifetime lamenting the great opportunity we missed.

William Burns
Edinburgh

The whingeing from the Scottish nationalists about the so-called BBC bias is the way other groups have behaved whenever coverage is impartial. When someone accuses the Beeb of bias, what they usually mean is that they are angry the BBC isn’t taking sides in their favour. It was the same when Andrew Gilligan was attacked. All the BBC has done is to report the referendum, which I think it has done without any preference for either side.

Steve Lustig
Willesden Green, London

Setting aside all economic and legislative issues, the one thing that should concern the Scottish people about the potential secession of Scotland from Britain is this: with just over a week to go, polls suggest that the result is too close to call. Indeed, it is likely that the outcome will be a matter of 1 or 2 per cent one way or the other. This being so, Scotland could be in the position of opting for drastic upheaval against the wishes of, effectively, half its population.  Surely there should have been built into the referendum protocol a requirement for a minimum two-thirds majority before its result could be the basis of such a break-up?

John Thorogood
London NW2

I am an elderly campaigner for Scottish independence. Many old people are worried about their pensions if we vote Yes, but I am much more afraid of a No vote, because of the opposition to welfare in any form by all Westminster parties.  Over the years the state pension – classed as a “benefit” – has been eroded and gradually replaced by means-tested benefits.

Independence or not, London is legally obliged to pay the contributory pension, but not the means-tested parts. For future pensioners, the state pension may be means-tested, as recommended by the think-tank Civitas, or made conditional on workfare, as recommended by Lord Bichard in 2012.

In addition, Westminster is raising the pension age, so that, given high unemployment for all ages, plus age discrimination, many elderly people will find themselves on JSA, facing the same threats of sanctions as younger people.

In fact, Westminster will probably soon be claiming that ‘we’ can’t afford retirement at all as a right, but only as a privilege. In Scotland, the political culture is different. ‘Welfare’ is not a dirty word here. And crucially, we have influence over the Scottish government, but none over Westminster. For security and dignity in old age, vote Yes.

Katherine Perlo
Prestonpans, Edinburgh

Our role in the death of Haines

Everyone is saddened by the death of David Haines, the British aid worker who was recently killed. However, we must put this horrific act in context, and look at our country’s role in this disastrous situation.

Our media seems to forget that this country, along with the US, invaded Iraq on a pack of lies 11 years ago. We are also still fighting in Afghanistan for some reason. In those two countries combined, around one million people have been killed by Western forces. Then you had Libya, where around another 30,000 people were killed. In addition to the destruction caused, we have also sold huge amounts of weaponry to that region. The result – chaos.

Let’s face it, in order to gain control of the Middle East, and its resources, we have trashed much of the Muslim world. And, if that wasn’t enough, we’ve seen Cameron and Obama back Israel’s recent slaughter of at least another 2,100 Muslims in Gaza. I am in no way justifying what Isis/Islamic State are doing, but I can understand how they’ve come about, and why they have a grievance with America and its allies.

So now David Cameron is trying to push for war in Iraq (partly because he failed last year to get one in Syria). We must not be fooled again, and need to oppose the killing of any more civilians there. We’ve done enough damage already. I say to our PM, why not try and save people in this country first, by reversing this coalition government’s aggressive privatisation of our NHS. That’s if he’s sincere about saving lives.

Colin Crilly
South London

Will the NHS be protected?

David Cameron has promised that NHS Scotland will be “protected” from privatisation if there is a No vote. Will NHS England be similarly protected? Why should the NHS need protecting from privatisation? Could it possibly be to do with the potentially dire con- sequences to the NHS of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership?

John Murphy
Bapchild, Kent

Doctors fighting back at last

You report ‘Doctors to run against Cameron and Hunt’ (8 September). What a relief the medical world is fighting back at last. I hope they can slow down or stop the lunatic “market” between hospitals and other madness.

SG Ball
Bournemouth

Berlusconi to chair ethics committee

Using the same thinking that led to Tony Blair’s appointment as Middle East Peace Envoy, perhaps the EU should appoint Silvio Berlusconi to chair an ethics committee, or Ireland should posthumously award Oliver Cromwell a humanitarian award. The reason groups like Isis form are obvious. They will continue to form as long as we provoke contempt from Islamic countries.

Conor Mulligan
Rathmines, Dublin

Times:

Sir, Your chief rugby correspondent decries the overuse of military metaphors in sport (Sept 16). In 1966, on the eve of the World Cup, your distinguished football writer, Geoffrey Green, asked that if the Germans defeated us in our national sport we should remember that we had twice defeated them in theirs. Times pass.

John Pittman

London SE9

Sir, Dr Shaw’s admonition against ties (Sept 13) may be justified in the case of schoolchildren — I hated them then myself. But when she adds “for adults too”, I take exception. A tie can show a quiet allegience to one’s clan, or to a sports team; I wear my Olympic tie with pride. On the correct date I wear the Tanzania independence tie, with its fine long blue giraffes. And, increasingly at my age, I wear the black tie of mourning.
craig sharp
Brunel University, West London

Sir, Just over 30 per cent of my GCSE candidates this year have appealed successfully against results issued last month and gone up a grade in at least one subject. The range of subjects affected is wide, including arts, sciences, mathematics and, as ever, English. It is increasingly clear that our experience is not isolated. We have devoted considerable staff time and expenditure to holding the exam boards to account, an annual ritual to which we have become accustomed, if not resigned. I fear, however, that wrong grades in state schools may have been allowed to stand because they are not equally well-staffed or resourced.
I have now been informed that a person appointed by one of the exam boards to oversee A-level exams in classical languages has studied neither Latin nor Greek to A level. This inspires zero confidence in a system that is already bereft of credibility. We have a new secretary of state for education who has stated that she wants to listen to teachers. She would do well to begin by asking them what they think of the utter shambles that is our public examinations system.

Richard Russell

Headmaster, Colfe’s School,
London SE12

Telegraph:

SIR – The simplest way to improve the air quality in London is to ban the use of private cars there completely, not by using government-backed bribes to change from diesel-powered cars as mooted by Boris Johnson.

Is the Scottish referendum a case of not knowing how much we love something until it is gone?

7:00AM BST 16 Sep 2014

Comments

Irish Times:

A chara, – Daphne Guthrie (September 16th) wonders if the UK will become the SK, or “Split Kingdom”, in the event of a Yes vote. Perhaps “Former United Kingdom” would provide us with an acronym that would more faithfully reflect the resulting mood in Westminster. – Is mise,

Dr GARETH P KEELEY,

Gneisenaustrasse,

Düsseldorf,

Germany.

Sir, – The latest panic-stricken initiative by the Better Together campaign is genuinely mystifying. What they appear to be saying to Scotland is, if you don’t vote for independence, we’ll give you rather a lot of independence! – Yours, etc,

CADHLA NÍ FRITHILE,

Beechville,

Clonard,

Wexford.

A chara, – The entire referendum debate has clearly proven how the UK, US and EU establishments are afraid of an enquiring population thinking critically about its future and how its country is run. The mainstream UK media’s nefarious campaign of fear and misinformation has backfired spectacularly, shifting many No voters and undecideds to a Yes vote. – Is mise,

CONOR O’HARA,

Kessock Road,

Inverness,

Scotland.

A chara, – An interesting feature of the Scottish referendum is that it allows people of 16 and 17 to vote for the first time. On a hugely significant issue affecting their future, these young people are being asked their views. It will be interesting to see, following such an intense debate, the impact this will have on their future levels of political participation. I believe that it will be positive and will encourage young people to vote more often in later life, as well as become more engaged in civic activity.

Austria has allowed 16-year-old citizens to vote since 2007 and the early evidence suggests that this has led to higher levels of voter turnout among young people. An increasing number of countries allow 16-year-olds to vote at least in local elections. This could have been done by the Government for the council elections here this year simply by legislative change.

If a referendum takes place on this issue next year, as indicated, we should reflect on the Scottish experience and look at other ways of encouraging active youth participation in society as part of that debate. – Is mise,

Cllr MALCOLM BYRNE,

Cathaoirleach,

Wexford County Council,

Gorey, Co Wexford.

Sir, – Patricia Stewart (September 16th) writes that “Scotland is currently ruled by a Conservative Westminster government, having elected only a single Conservative MP out of a possible 59”.

The current UK government is actually a coalition of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, which together have 12 of Scotland’s 59 MPs and achieved 35 per cent of the vote in Scotland at the 2010 general election. So it is quite inaccurate to suggest that the current UK government has no mandate in Scotland.

But even prior to 2010, Scotland has wielded incredible influence over the “Westminster government” which they now portray as some kind of foreign colonising power.

David Cameron’s immediate predecessor as prime minster, Gordon Brown, was Scottish, and his predecessor Tony Blair was born and raised in Scotland. In fact, nine of the last 25 British prime ministers going back to William Gladstone have either been Scottish or represented Scotland in the House of Commons.

So despite having an average of about 10 per cent of the population of the UK for the last 150 years, Scotland has provided over a third of its prime ministers. And perhaps the ultimate irony is that David Cameron himself, with his obvious Scottish surname, is also of direct Scottish descent, as his great-great-grandfather was born in Inverness and migrated south in 1860.

Scotland and Scottish voters have punched well above their weight in the government of the United Kingdom since it was established, and will continue to do so into the future if this ill-advised attempt at independence is rejected. – Yours, etc,

BARRY WALSH,

Brooklawn,

Clontarf,

Dublin 3.

Sir, – I wonder what the odds are against Scotland winning next year’s Eurovision Song Contest? Lulu may be available! – Yours, etc,

BRENDAN CROWE,

Holmpatrick,

Skerries,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – I’m appalled at the amount of anti-English sentiment circulating since the campaign for Scottish independence began. Seemingly it’s slipped some minds that a significant number of Scottish men and women emigrated in their droves to England for hundreds of years in search of a better life. Perhaps Scottish nationalists would quit exploiting this old chestnut to win a Yes vote. – Yours, etc,

BARRY MAHADY

Cypress Springs,

Mill Lane,

Leixlip, Co Kildare.

Sir, – Speed, bonnie Scotland, with the wind in your sails. I have high hopes that you will say Yes. Dare for the best. – Yours, etc,

ANTONY FARRELL,

Sitric Road,

Arbour Hill,

Dublin 7.

Sir, – It’s not the fiscal consequences or political implications of an independent Scotland that concern me, but the real possibility that us Sassenachs will be deprived of the Scottish football results and with it the unlikelihood of us ever hearing the score East Fife 5 Forfar 4. – Yours, etc,

FRANK GREANEY,

Lonsdale Road,

Formby,

Liverpool.

Sir, – The message from Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband to the people of Scotland – vote against independence and we will give you more independence. – Yours, etc,

PÁDRAIC HARVEY,

Bóthar an Chillín,

An Cheathrú Rua,

Co na Gaillimhe.

Sir, – At last some new – or perhaps not so new – thinking in relation to the dire housing crisis (“Prefabs may be used to ease housing crisis”, September 15th.

After the second World War in 1945, the UK needed an immediate means of replacing the vast number of houses destroyed by six years of wartime bombing. It was recognised that the traditional “bricks and mortar” method of building would be far too slow to provide the answer and factories which had been used to manufacture aircraft and munitions were rapidly converted to assemble “prefabs”.

They were transported in sections by road and assembled on pre-constructed bases to form new estates in and around every major city in Britain. They were robust, low-maintenance and comfortable homes produced rapidly for thousands of families and even now, some 70 years on, there are some of them still in use. In Ireland we have come to associate the word “prefab” with temporary school classrooms, which are greatly inferior to the prefab dwellings produced in postwar Britain and certainly inferior to units which could be manufactured today.

With the advances in technology, materials and assembly processes, it must be possible to produce modern, pre-fabricated homes to form attractive long-term estates in Ireland.

Traditional house-building could continue simultaneously employing the skilled workforce available. However, the factory-built house production would be a quick and effective means of producing much-needed accommodation, unimpeded by weather and providing additional employment.

Perhaps the starting point for factory-produced homes would be a design competition to harness the abundant talent in Ireland’s educational establishments? – Yours, etc,

PETER COOGAN,

Temple Manor,

Celbridge, Co Kildare.

Sir, – We should have great sympathy for the failures of John Michael McDonagh (“Director of The Guard says Irish films are not ‘intelligent’”, September 15th). He fails to convince the public, the arts “industry” and even the more objective tax authorities that his Calvary is anything but an Irish film.

It was filmed and set in rural Ireland, featuring a cast including Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Dylan Moran, Pat Shortt, David McSavage and with a plot based on clerical sexual abuse, suppressed adolescent rage, drunkenness, domestic violence and fanaticism.

Whatever about the ordinary filmgoer, Mr McDonogh’s arguments evidently also eluded the aesthetes of the Irish Film and Television Academy who insisted on awarding Calvary the 2014 best Irish film accolade. The revered authorities of the Irish Film Board gave his film almost a million euro in funding. Clearly they failed to recognise that his work was too technically accomplished and too intelligent to qualify as Irish. Presumably the artistic devastation of this insult prevents him returning either award or money.

He also seems to have failed to persuade the Revenue Commissioners that his film should not be granted section 481 tax relief certification for, as the Act specifies, the “contribution which the film will make to the development of the film industry in Ireland, and the promotion and expression of Irish culture”. There is hope yet for, as the Revenue’s documentation adds helpfully, the relief can be withdrawn “if it subsequently transpires that these conditions cannot be satisfied”. – Yours, etc,

MICHAEL ANDERSON,

Moyclare Close,

Baldoyle,

Dublin 13.

A chara, – I would never consider the film The Guard to be an intelligent film – which is precisely why I enjoyed it. The old phrase “notions as high as the goats of Kerry” springs to mind when reading Mr McDonagh’s comments about Irish films. – Is mise,

JENNY McCABE,

Windmill Park,

Crumlin,

Dublin 12.

Sir, – Charles Townshend reviewing Gemma Clark’s Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War (“Campaign of fire”, September 6th) writes that: “Between 1911 and 1925 [County] Tipperary lost 46 per cent of its Protestant population . . . it seems likely that the great majority left after 1921”. He concludes: “fertility and migration patterns can hardly account for such an exodus. If this was not, as some historians have suggested, ‘ethnic cleansing’ . . . it was a process far from the normal”.

Prof Townshend’s observations balance on a hunch and a few statistics.

In a recent article in Irish Historical Studies (“Protestant Depopulation and the Irish Revolution”, November 2013), Prof David Fitzpatrick arrived at different conclusions. Prof Fitzpatrick charted the steady depopulation of southern Irish Protestants between 1911 and 1926 in which, he argues, revolutionary violence in 1920-3 played no exaggerated role. “The . . . Protestant malaise in the nascent Irish Free State”, Prof Fitzpatrick says, “was not excess migration but failure to enroll new members, presumably as a consequence of already low fertility and nuptiality, exacerbated by losses through mixed marriages and [religious] conversions”. Prof Fitzpatrick’s reinterpretation rests on a sophisticated analysis of census and other data.

However, common to both interpretations is the laboured suggestion that southern Irish Protestants might have experienced, despite the lack of evidence, ethnic cleansing. For Prof Townshend, this is because some historians have “suggested” as much. In 1996, the late Prof Peter Hart used the term “ethnic cleansing” to describe the experience of southern Protestants, whereupon it was seized on by polemicists. Prof Hart was the only serious historian ever to apply the term to the 1920s, but he reversed his position in 2005. Then he conceded that the conditions for ethnic cleansing had not existed in southern Ireland. Prof Hart’s unequivocal rejection of his earlier findings is often overlooked.

In her new study of the Civil War, Gemma Clark also categorically rejects “ethnic cleansing” terminology.

In his article Prof Fitzpatrick writes: “If any campaign of ‘ethnic cleansing’ was attempted, its demographic impact was fairly minor”.

But “if” ethnic cleansing was attempted, how, logically, could it go undetected and still be worthy of the name? For reasons unexplained, an invented event for which there was never any credible evidence remains a reference point for diametrically opposed interpretations of Protestant demographic decline.

“The spectre of Protestant extermination has distracted debate about revolutionary Ireland for too long and should be laid to rest”, says Prof Fitzpatrick. I could not agree more.

Prof Fitzpatrick’s conclusion that the “inexorable decline of southern Protestantism was mainly self-inflicted” is very far distant from continued suggestions that ethnic cleansing, or something of its kind, might have happened. – Yours, etc,

Dr JOHN M REGAN,

School of Humanities,

University of Dundee,

Scotland.

Sir, – In your editorial of September 15th, the question is raised concerning whether Islamic State “poses a direct and serious threat to western countries”. This terrorist organisation poses a lethal threat to the people of the Middle East, as evidenced by its murderous assaults against various communities in Iraq and Syria. Nations outside the region should not wait until the threat arrives within their own borders.

Members of Islamic State have publicly issued warnings that it is prepared to carry its campaign of terror to the United States.

When Islamic State issues threats to create a vast region under its control, these remarks are neither accidental nor inconsequential.

The environment of external threats to any nation’s security is no longer defined exclusively by massed armies of millions, or by intercontinental missiles with megaton nuclear warheads. A force of several thousand, or a cadre of just 19 men, can inflict staggering destruction in this age of asymmetrical warfare. – Yours, etc,

DAN DONOVAN,

Shandon Street,

Dungarvan, Co Waterford.

Sir, – Margaretta D’Arcy (September 15th) is outraged that a US military aircraft used Shannon airport at the same time that she was arriving at the airport on a commercial flight. She says she repeatedly demanded answers from an air hostess on her flight.

She knows, of course, that Shannon airport facilities are used by the US military because of an agreement between the governments of Ireland and the United States. Instead of interrogating an air hostess, perhaps in future she could simply address such concerns to our political representatives. – Yours, etc,

EDWARD BURKE,

Burgatia,

Rosscarbery, Co Cork.

Sir, – Further to “Should I be worried about knotweed?” ( August 28th), in Co Clare, where I live, Japanese knotweed is rapidly establishing itself in local woods, roadsides, hedgerows and on the shores of Lough Derg.

In the UK, where I come from, there is legislation in place to control it. Educational courses are also being run for homeowners, builders, forestry workers, etc, to help them recognise what this invasive plant looks like – so they know what to do about it.

Two forestry workers in Clare that I spoke to had never heard of it and had no idea what it looked like or how it spread, which is worrying because they were not far from where it was growing.

Wake up officials in Clare! Get proactive or face the prospect of spending millions of euro the longer you put it off. – Yours, etc,

SHEILA WHITTAKER,

Caher,

Ogonnelloe, Co Clare.

Sir, – At last we’re catching up with the rest of the developed world and getting a national postcode system. This is a good thing. Why, though, do we have to insist on giving everything a “uniquely Irish” name? Why can’t we simply call it a postcode, not an Eircode?

I can foresee endless confusion when fields on official forms are labelled Eircode, and when foreigners are asked for their Eircode, etc.

Everyone knows what a postcode is, but no one knows what an Eircode is. Other countries are secure enough in themselves not to have to call it the “Britcode” or the “Deutschecode”. Why can’t we simply call it a postcode or a postal code, like a sensible country would? – Yours, etc,

PAT McARDLE,

Greenmount,

Castlebellingham,

Co Louth.

Sir, – I notice that this morning’s Irish Times chess puzzle is number 13,000.

At a rate of six per week this represents over 41 years of daily puzzles.

Congratulations and thank you to your chess correspondent JJ Walsh for providing this daily mental stimulation to chess fans for so many years.

I remember that JJ (Jim) Walsh presented a weekly chess column in The Irish Times during the 1950s and 1960s. His endeavours must be some kind of record.

Well done and keep it up.

JOHN McMAHON,

Lucan, Co Dublin.

Irish Independent:

Published 17/09/2014 | 02:30

So the clouds of war are being mustered by politicians again. The Islamic State is an evil that must be “destroyed” according to some politicians, and we have been fed scenes from that part of the world that would make one think so. Nothing new there.

It is a sad fact of history that all wars are politically motivated. They are the result of one rhetoric sizing up another, with the men of each side thrown on the bonfire of the vanities of politicians and the businesses that benefit from making machines of war. They are also an excellent method of what we farmers call “a cull” of the young men of these nations.

These are cold hard facts of history and not some conspiracy theory. Politicians do not die in wars on the battlefields – gone are the days when the political leaders had to lead their men out to face the opposing army. The recently-discovered bones of Richard III in England are those of one of the last warrior kings to die in battle when two large groups of men faced each other in open war.

We can look to Michael Collins as an example from this island of a politician soldier dying. He was killed by one who he went to liberate from British rule.

Modern war is now a very ugly beast. It has become urban. It has become as much about genocide and refugees as it has about principle. It uses weapons that can create such havoc and injury that one could be forgiven for wondering if the lucky victims of war are those who die in it, rather than those who witness and survive it. It allows men with military training to wipe out enemies many miles away without ever having met one of their enemies or having to stare into the dead eyes of their victims.

And, as if Isil are not enough of a problem, our “wonderful” European Union seems a little zealous in its attitude to getting embroiled in Ukraine.

Perhaps we shouldn’t care. America and its allies have been at Russia’s throat for years and vice versa. Perhaps we shouldn’t care that the Middle East has now enough blood spilt on its sands that another oil boom is guaranteed when that blood soaks down through the sand and decomposes into oil.

Dermot Ryan, Athenry, Co Galway

Scottish referendum

Regardless which way the vote goes in Scotland, the governments in the UK and across the EU and the EU itself should now realise that proper and balanced regional development across all regions is important and necessary. We should return to European Economic Community for all, rather than a centralised federal system ran by all politicians for banks.

John Healy, Liverpool, England

Dominic Shelmerdine (Letters, September 15) has a very strange view of the United Kingdom. The Scottish parliament already has powers to change the lives of its people and has chosen not to. The fact that there is oil in Scotland is the only reason the SNP want this separation. If there were no oil they would not be considering it at all. To say Britain is ruled by a bunch of old Etonians is laughable. Was he born after the ten years of Labour in government?

The houses of Parliament are full of Scots, Welsh, Northern Irish and English. They have all had an input into the policies of the UK, including invading Iraq, which was under Tony Blair. Gordon Brown was Scottish and was not very canny to sell the gold reserves of the UK cheaply.

For myself, I will be very sad if Scotland leaves the UK. Although I am English and live in the Irish Republic I view all of the people of the UK as my fellow countrymen and women. As a body we are the arms and legs; if an arm or leg is amputated the body can carry on, but it will never be as good as a whole body.

Jayne Donnelly, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford

Time to harvest Sam

Our lovely town of Glenties can also be heaven on a sunny Sunday evening, especially with a nice pint of Guinness at around 6pm on the Main Street outside Phelan’s lovely pub. That’s the way it felt last Sunday after watching all the wonderful floats and bands at the yearly Harvest Fair Festival.

Sitting with me were a group of lovely ladies with diamonds in their eyes and gold dust in their hair. And if you don’t believe me come and meet me there at next year’s festival.

Congratulations to the festival committee, it’s a real credit to you all for giving such enjoyment to us all. Thank you so much.

Please God, we will be in heaven again this Sunday when our Jim and the lads bring Sam home again to the hills!

Brian McDevitt, Glenties, Co Donegal

The Trident firing line ?

The thought has occurred recently: exactly where are the UK’s 250 Trident nuclear missiles pointed? At Lagos? At Johannesburg? At Mumbai? At Dublin?

As the UK and its wartime ally, the United States, seek to put Iran on trial for developing nuclear technology, those of us in their potential nuclear firing line are eager for answers.

Cadhla Ni Frithile, Clonard, Co Wexford

Education and gender

Last week’s publication of this year’s Junior Cert results again draws attention (Irish Independent, September 12) to how well girls do relative to boys in this exam (and, of course, the same is true in respect of the Leaving Cert).

While various explanations are offered in respect of this phenomenon, one point that is rarely mentioned is the feminization of the teaching profession in recent decades (something which appears to have coincided with the development of the present academic achievement gap between boys and girls), which is illustrated by the fact that 68pc of secondary teachers and 86pc of primary teachers are now female, with the overall percentage of teachers who are female being 74pc, which is up from 63pc in 1961.

While, ideally, the gender of a teacher shouldn’t matter provided they have been employed on the basis of merit and doesn’t favour pupils of one gender over the other, some UK research suggests that boys’ academic performance has suffered due to the shortage of male teachers there (which is similar to here).

It also suggests the existence of a preference among this mainly female teaching force for teaching girls (though this is a general point, of course, and is by no means necessarily true of all teachers, whatever their gender). In relation to the above, the following statement can be found on a UK website (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/girls_school_success.htm): “Sexism has died out in schools, with teachers recognizing, and preferring to teach girls than boys.” Now, if the last part of this statement is true, that’s obviously not good news for boys.

While that research relates to the UK, could it be, given the similar female/male imbalance in the teaching profession here, that the findings of this research are relevant to this country as well?

Hugh Gibney, Athboy, Co Meath

Top Marx for Mary Lou

Mary Lou McDonald obviously never heard of Karl Marx‘s riposte when he was accused of betraying the proletariat while travelling first class in London.

“But when my socialist revolution comes, everybody will be travelling first class!”

With his usual impeccable timing, Michael O’Leary is now introducing business class for Mary Lou’s proletarian revolutionaries.

Travellers of the world unite, – you have only your (socialist) baggage to lose!

Brendan Dunleavy, Killeshandra, Co Cavan

Irish Independent

18 September 2014 Ben

I jog around the park I still have arthritis in my left knee, but I manage to get round the park. A sunny but cool day. Ben comes and does some books.

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast wt up lamb for tea and her back pain is still there.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Does this look familiar iPhone users? Photograph: Vincent Besnault/Getty Images

The Apple iPhone is indeed a thing of surpassing beauty packed with wondrous applications, as Stephen Fry suggests (Apple haters look away, 17 September). Unfortunately, it fails at its primary objective of being a clearly audible mobile phone. Users will be surprised to hear that when you use other mobiles, your interlocutor is not constantly begging your pardon and asking you to repeat yourself. On behalf of non-iPhone users everywhere, could I plead with Apple to ensure their next iPhone has a microphone that works?
Paul Sawbridge
Bolton

• Try as I might, I couldn’t spot the header “Advertisement feature” above Stephen Fry’s fawn-fest to the latest iPhone.
Paul Tothill
London

Independent:

There is more to this independence referendum than the trivial arguments of “here today gone tomorrow” politicians and their policies that can be, and are, changed on a regular basis.  It is about our United Kingdom and the people who have lived together, worked together, fought and died together, for over three centuries.

At stake is our United Kingdom, a country that we have built together. We have achieved so much more together than we ever could have achieved as separate nations, why throw all that away on the basis of a White Paper that raises more questions than it answers? As people from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland we urge our friends in Scotland not to let the arguments of separatism and division win the day.  We can have a bright future together as a United Kingdom.

Richard Hyslop Berkshire
Vincent Acheson Bury St Edmunds, Pam Allan
Cumbria and 143 other people from the rest of the UK

Am I the only person who is fed up with the wall-to-wall coverage of the Scottish referendum? What possible relevance is all this for the 50 million people in the UK who have no say in the matter? If the Scots are gullible enough to vote for independence then they deserve all that is coming: another small country to be pushed around by the big powers, the multinationals and global finance. I hope they are not taken in by the SNP and those on the left who think independence will herald a bright new dawn for Scotland.  Scotland is not Cuba and Salmond is no Castro.

Fawzi Ibrahim
North London

As the Scots, who already enjoy free university education and prescriptions, are wringing so many more concessions out of the Government with their independence campaign, can we in England, once the hoo-ha is all over north of the border, also threaten to break away from the Union?

Charles Garth
Bedfordshire

Perhaps my childhood left me overly suspicious, but those citizens comfortably domiciled in England who seem to be enthusiastically encouraging the Scots to go for it and vote to leave the Union somehow remind me of those kids who used to hang about on the far side of streams or below the branches of trees and were always ready with the words of encouragement, “Go ahead, jump!”

Julian Self
Milton Keynes

Your interesting article (15 September) entitled ‘‘Scotland decides: the hot topics’’ encompasses the issues uppermost in voters’ minds but, I believe, does not mention the criterion by which posterity will view an independent Scotland. It will be seen as part of a wider move towards narrow, insular nationalism in Europe and the Middle East, which has followed the post-war liberal desire and achievement to unite people and look for the common good between national, ethnic and cultural identities.

The effects of this, particularly when accompanied by radicalism, are already clear to see in many current conflicts and it should never be forgotten that precisely the same issues were the root cause of the two world  wars. It is fanciful to suggest that England would ever again be at war with Scotland but economic, social and political conflict there will be, the extent of which only history will tell. The possible short-term political and social gains for Scotland will pale into insignificance compared with the long-term divisive effects of breaking up the UK.

Dr Hugh Savill
Devon

An extraordinary fact about the Scottish referendum is that the Scottish National Party is assuring the electorate of all manner of things that will be achieved with a Yes decision but fails to mention that it, too, has an election around the corner. The SNP majority is wafer thin; they have 65 seats out of a total of 128. The possibility that they will lose is real. If this happens, all Alex Salmond’s promises go out the window and then the people of Scotland will have no idea what it is they have voted for.

Peter Rutherford
London

Army chiefs say “Yes vote is irresponsible” but are they just another part of Cameron’s background lackeys, spreading doubt? The government has slashed the size of the army, putting P45 heroes on the scrapheap while, at the same time, advertising for people to make a career in the services. They are trying to persuade legions of working people to become part-time soldiers, so that they can be sent abroad in the event of war. The Government pretends that smaller means better. They propose to spend many billions on Trident, the most expensive of the nuclear weapon options. We are the only country that exclusively sites its nuclear weapons in submarines.

Nuclear is useless in many wars.  They are pointless with regard to Ukraine, Isis, or Gaza. They were not appropriate in Afghanistan or Iraq.

If Scotland says Yes, why not save an awful lot of money and base our nuclear weapons on land. How about silos in Surrey? If any defence policy is irresponsible, it is the cutback on conventional forces. About two years ago, the Navy had to rent a conventional submarine from the Germans, because we did not have one available.  A few months ago the Queen launched an aircraft carrier that has to wait years to be fitted out, and even longer to get planes. Irresponsible?

Alistair Miller
Leicester

Alex Salmond declares that if denied currency union and forced to use sterling unofficially as Panama uses the US dollar, then he will refuse to take Scotland’s share of the national debt. While not technically a default, it will be interpreted as such so that Scotland will not be allowed to borrow money for 10 years and will be plunged into unprecedented austerity. In addition, the EU could not possibly admit a country which had walked away from its debts as it would create a precedent for Catalonia to say nothing of Greece and Italy. Scotland’s retention of sterling would become a source of speculation, which would quickly result in failure, with the statelet forced to introduce its  own currency within months.

Dr John Cameron
St Andrews

Don’t push putin too far – he’ll fight back

he big bad wolf Putin is now in a much stronger position to negotiate on his terms. The pro-war, hawkish government, the Baltic States, Poland and Romania, are at odds with the more dove-ish governments – the Germans, the French and Spanish who want to maintain the trade relationship with Russia.

There is little doubt that the United States and Russia have contributed to the destabilisation of Ukraine. The root cause of the conflict was precipitated by the overthrow of an elected pro-Russian president and our ill-advised messianic zeal to align Ukraine with Europe and Nato. What makes the situation even worse is government steps being taken to dismantle the pillars of democracy with arbitrary arrests, censorship and banning the Communist Party. If Russia is pushed too far, it may respond with short-range tactical nuclear weapons, which will draw the US and Europe into another world war.

Tejinder Uberoi
Los Altos, California

Modern hymns and few ladies in hats

I’ve just read Rosie Millard’s rant on Songs of Praise. I wonder when she last watched it?

Although I only see it occasionally, I am aware that there are lots of modern, thought-provoking hymns and songs and very few ladies in hats. The programme is well-loved and Millard doesn’t have to watch it. A schedule made up of what she likes would not suit many of us!

Bob Davies
Mossley, Manchester

Military assistance is not the answer

For the US or the UK to intervene with military force of any sort is symptomatic treatment. It is as if we pulled a series of drowning men out of a river instead of going upstream to stop who was pushing them in. Worse, it forces us to take sides in the conflict and heaps fuel on a fire.

This is a world crisis and we need to urge both Saudi Arabia and her supporting countries and Iran and her supporting countries to meet and talk. We must not send military assistance of any sort to either side, but to offer humanitarian aid to both sides and urge them to negotiate wholeheartedly.

Too often Western powers have rushed into involvement on one side or the other with disastrous results. Let us spend all our efforts encouraging dialogue and giving aid.

John Atkins
Swainby, North Yorkshire

Small charities must be scrutinised

Paul Vallely’s article of 10 September on charities doesn’t mention fraud.

Small charities may be “the lifeblood” of the sector, as the chair of the Charity Commission, William Shawcross, says. But only charities with an income of over £25,000 are required to file accounts. Without accounts, the public cannot examine the money flows in and around a charity.

Vallely briefly touches on whether there are too many charities. The number of military charities, for instance, is confusing for the public and those who serve. Yet this isn’t only about duplication and inefficiencies. This over-supply and the fact that military charities have become one of the most popular causes – consider Help for Heroes – also mean fraudsters are active in this charity sector.

Dr Alex May
Manchester

Times:

Sir, I was not surprised to read that woodpeckers and thrushes in Warwick Faville’s nature reserve fall victims to the resident sparrowhawk (letter, Sept 16). Recently a sparrowhawk swooped on a woodpigeon in our garden, and expertly denuded it of feathers before carrying it away. Songbirds are now a rarity thanks to magpies, jays, crows and the ever present sparrowhawk.
Angela Walker
Farnham, Surrey

Sir, Mr Hedgcock’s contention (letters, Sept 16) regarding the erroneous Yorkshire claim to have more cricket clubs than all Australia might itself be inaccurate. One can only presume that the figures were arrived at using the Duckworth-Lewis method.
Ian Carman
Newport Pagnell, Bucks

Sir, Like Giles Coren (Magazine, Sept 13) I was mortified to find I had gout. Giles might like to know that he can possibly avoid attacks by eating cherries. Six a day is enough and I have mine in cherry yogurt.
Jennifer Hall
Torquay, Devon

Telegraph:

6:58AM BST 17 Sep 2014

Comments

7:00AM BST 17 Sep 2014

Comments

Irish Times

Sir, – The impending referendum in Scotland is one of the most short-sighted and self-interested exercises given the likely negative effect it will have on the value of sterling. “King” Salmond appears to seek the status, without any of the wisdom, of King Solomon, by seeking to slice the baby in two, and hang the consequences. – Yours, etc,

MARK VEALE,

Lower Glenageary Road,

Dún Laoghaire,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – As a Dubliner, long time a resident in Scotland, may I, on the eve of the vote, commend The Irish Times for its coverage of the referendum on Scottish independence. I have found Mark Hennessy’s comprehensive and informative coverage, complemented by analytical editorials, a welcome alternative to the often party-political selectivity in much of the Scottish press. – Yours, etc,

HAYDEN MURPHY,

Royal Circus,

Edinburgh.

Sir, – The future of Alex Salmond and the SNP could become precarious in an independent Scotland. Independence could result in serious economic decline and isolation, for which the Scottish people would blame the SNP for having misled them in the referendum debate. The SNP would suffer accordingly at election time. On the other hand, if the majority votes in favour of retaining the union with the UK, then the SNP has a much more assured future – the future and the hope of “keeping the dream alive”. – Yours, etc,

MICK O’BRIEN,

Springmount,

Kilkenny.

Sir, – By an irony of history, in Roman times the Emperor Hadrian tried to keep the Scots “out” of England by building a wall, and today Mr Cameron is trying to keep the Scots “in” by the carrot of more devolutionary powers. Whatever transpires, I wish the people of Scotland well with this historic referendum. They are, after all, our nearest “cousins”. – Yours, etc,

JOE MURRAY,

Beggars Bush Court,

Ballsbridge,Dublin 4.

Sir, – The Home Rule Act was suspended on September 18th, 1914. It will be an irony of history if the people of Scotland dismantle the union by voting Yes today. Alba gu bràth. – Yours, etc,

BRENDAN Ó CATHAOIR,

Ryecroft,

Bray, Co Wicklow.

Sir, – Paul Delaney (September 16th) suggests that the Scots would be “stupid” for not wanting to remain part of the “union”. The opposite is true, for Scotland has a rare opportunity to secure its national sovereignty through the ballot box, without the requirement for bloodshed. For most of history, a vassal nation wishing to restore its sovereignty would have to fight a bloody (and militarily successful) war of independence. The experience of the United States, and of Ireland, comes to mind in this regard. The ability of a nation to secure its independence through a legally binding plebiscite is a thoroughly modern phenomenon, and it is a credit to the Scottish first minister, and leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, that his skills have made such a phenomenon possible for Scotland. To achieve a sovereign and free country, which would remain united in political geographic terms (there would be no “northern Scotland” and “republic of Scotland” divide, unlike in Ireland) after a Yes vote, is the prize that the Scots would be mad not to take. – Yours, etc,

JOHN B REID,

Knapton Road,

Monkstown,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – One factor that has not been highlighted to date in the upcoming referendum in Scotland is the Ulster connection. There was two aspects to this: the Scottish Presbyterians that came over with the plantation of Ulster; and the emigration of Catholic Irish, many from Donegal, to Scotland after the Famine and right up to the 1960s. So both groups are going to have a big influence in relation to the outcome of the referendum. Ulster has more in common with Scotland than to the rest of the UK so if Scotland does vote Yes then Northern Ireland should look to join up with the new state and sever its ties with Westminster. – Yours, etc,

DANNY MONAGHAN,

Ardeelan,

Rossnowlagh,

Co Donegal.

A chara, – It is interesting that the establishment in the UK are frantically trying to suppress a previously unanticipated Scottish Yes vote in the forthcoming referendum on independence, yet hope to flex a different type of nationalism in the proposed referendum on EU membership in 2017. Irrespective of the result on Thursday, Scottish independence or increased sovereignty will have a defining implication on the union of its peoples, regardless of any territorial change. Inadvertently, the die has been cast. The future UK government’s hand in any potential EU membership renegotiation will be diminished. – Is mise,

ERIC CREAN,

Cherrymount Park,

Phisborough, Dublin 7.

Sir, – Now that Scotland is having its say, is it not time that we declare independence from Geldof and Bono? – Yours, etc,

KEITH NOLAN,

Caldragh,

Carrick-on-Shannon,

Co Leitrim.

Sir, – I think correspondent Frank Greaney (September 17th) has got his results mixed up. I think it should be East Fife four, Forfar five. Perhaps he is a misguided East Fife supporter! – Yours, etc,

MARTIN TOMLIN,

The Village,

Bettyglen,

Raheny, Dublin 5.

Sir, – Perhaps the British could avoid what will doubtless be embittered and acrimonious fallout from the “Scottish Question”, whichever side should win by a minuscule majority, and take a lesson from history by offering Alex Salmond the position of British prime minister, in much the same way that 400 years ago James VI of Scotland was invited to become James I of the United Kingdom. – Yours, etc,

ROGER A BLACKBURN,

Abbey Hill,

Naul, Co Dublin.

Sir, – Recent letters have highlighted complications to our forthcoming postcode system.

What about the code itself?

I fear that we are going to have an alphanumeric code. Alphanumeric codes cause more confusion than simply numeric codes as they are often hard to read. How to tell an “0” from an “O”? Is that a “1” or an “I”. Are you looking at a “V” or a “U”?

Countries much larger than Ireland manage very well with all-numeric postcodes. – Yours, etc,

KATHLEEN KELLEHER,

Rathdown Park,

Greystones,

Co Wicklow.

Sir, – Pat McArdle (September 17th) is correct in stating that “at least we are catching up with the rest of the developed world and getting a national postcode system”. The problem with catching up is that we are implementing a 1960s-era postcode that requires an expensive database to work. This database must be paid for by users and must be maintained at great expense by taxpayers.

Rather than catching up with the rest of the developed world, Ireland should be overtaking it with a 21st-century solution of embedded geo-data that allows on-device navigation and routing and doesn’t need expensive database maintenance.

If Ireland is in any way serious about a knowledge-based economy, its citizens, businesses and visitors deserve better than Eircodes, which the Freight Transport Association of Ireland has already described as “not fit for purpose”.

A bad postcode system will be a disaster and as bad a waste of money as the e-voting machines. – Yours, etc,

GAVIN TOBIN,

Greenogue Business Park,

Rathcoole,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – I read with interest the article on the Eircode system (Karlin Lillington, “Postcodes at last but random numbers don’t address efficiency”, September 4th) and I thought it raised some interesting questions in relation to the future use of the code in Ireland. I would make the following observations based on my experience as the director of Deutsche Post who led the introduction of the new postcode in Germany following reunification in the 1990s and who subsequently supported a number of projects in the postal logistics sector in Ireland and elsewhere.

First, a postcode is a technical system that is primarily to support access or deliveries to households or businesses and as such there is no specific perfect solution which is right for all countries at all times. The code has to be based on specific ambitions and objectives of the owner, in this case the Government. In Ireland, while there is the standard ambition to create a system to support access to households, there is also the specific challenge of creating a system that helps to resolve the economic and social inefficiencies of a high proportion of non-unique addresses, while working within the complexities and rigours of Irish privacy laws. While I would agree that the structure of the code does have some of the functional limitations outlined by other commentators, it does, however, meet many of its initial objectives.

Second, there are issues around the format of the code. There are two core issues – is it in a format which is likely to intuitively support take-up and is it emotionally accepted by the population? In relation to adoption, there is supporting experience that short codes have been adopted and that they are more intuitively remembered than longer codes based purely on numeric geo-locators.

In relation to perception, experience in all countries shows that emotional reaction to the code impacts both the acceptance and its uptake. Consequently in establishing a postcode, its sponsors have to be very thorough in explaining the rationale and design of the code and stressing that postcodes are not value-classifying criteria, ie A55 isn’t any better or worse than D3D but a technical classifier which will improve the economic efficiency of infrastructure in a country. Individual likes and dislikes based on historic identification with a given area are not a useful design element.

Finally a lot of work has been done for Eircode, with the core design being agreed over the last years. The three phases remaining are development of the code, implementation and dissemination and application and usage. Each phase has its own implementation challenges for stakeholder and decisionmakers. At the end the well-justified expectations and requirements of the user groups must be met – mailers and senders, receivers and inhabitants and all kind of service providers. The challenges are to ensure the compatibility of all their interests, and that the support infrastructure and pricing models are in place to enable government, business and individuals to incorporate the code into everyday life and generate the latent potential of moving toward a 21st-century postcode. – Yours, etc,

HEIMO THOMAS,

Hubertusstrasse,

Königswinter,

Germany.

Sir, – Minister for Finance Michael Noonan’s statement that he will not be asking Jean Claude Trichet, former governor of the European Central Bank, to attend the banking inquiry is very disappointing. Mr Trichet had a key role in advising his board on the adequacy of the national regulatory regimes to monitor and manage the introduction of the euro. He was also responsible for the way in which the banking crisis in Ireland was handled by the ECB, especially the decision not to burn the bondholders. He has many questions to answer and should be compelled to attend, if necessary. – Yours, etc,

PADDY CORLEY,

Beechpark,

Ennis, Co Clare.

Sir, – The decision of the Bishop of Killaloe to delay the introduction of the male-only permanent diaconate may prove to be a pyrrhic victory for the women of Killaloe, who were opposed as they “felt hurt and disappointed” at the proposal, “as they do the majority of work in the parishes” (“Bishop delays male-only diaconate”, September 16th).

I would welcome anyone of either gender following their call to ministry, but this is not likely to happen in the near future. But what is a reality already is the shortage of priests and deacons to administer the sacraments. Enlightened parish priests have the authority to facilitate all parishioners – male or female – to take a leadership role within their parishes, with or without a male deacon as part of that parish team. – Yours, etc,

FRANK BROWNE,

Ballyroan Park,

Templeogue,

Dublin 16.

Sir, – I refer to the opinion piece by Mary Feely “Once a culchie, never a Dub” (September 17th). As a native of the Liberties of Dublin, it was generally accepted in Francis Street that the definition of a Dublin person was anyone who lived there and didn’t talk about going home for their holidays. – Yours, etc,

SEAN O’CONNOR,

Merton Road,

Dublin 6.

Sir, – What makes Mary Feely think that a culchie would want to be a Dub or a Dub a culchie? Most of the 72 per cent of indigenous Irish people born outside the metropolis are happy with their background and the other 28 per cent are pleased to be Dubs.

When James Joyce was asked would he ever return to Dublin, he replied, “I never left”. As the Greek poet, Cavafy, said: “In those streets and fields where you grew up, there you will live and there you will die”. – Yours, etc,

MATTIE LENNON,

Kylebeg,

Lacken,

Blessington,

Co Wicklow.

Sir, – The statement by director John Michael McDonagh (“Director of The Guard says Irish films are not ‘intelligent’”, September 15th) that the film Calgary “is not an Irish film, it’s just set in Ireland with lots of Irish characters” brings to mind the words of the American writer James Whitcomb Riley – if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck then I call that bird a duck. – Yours, etc,

ERNEST F CROSSEN,

Knockmaroon Hill,

Chapelizod,

Dublin 20.

Sir, – Your coverage of the death of Ian Paisley was a fine example of what the best journalism can achieve – multiple viewpoints, coherence, depth and insight.

As Maurice Hayes, who was quoted in one of the pieces, said: “I have often thought there are about six Paisleys. Two of them are very nice people, two quite awful and the other two could go either way.” You captured a good proportion of them all. – Yours, etc,

CATHAL RABBITTE,

Im Walder,

Zollikon, Switzerland.

Sir, – If all elder statesmen, politicians, hierarchs, cultural icons and other ageing celebrities would now agree with their families that their final exequies should follow the good example set by the Rev Ian Paisley, we might truly say, as Malcolm said of Cawdor, that nothing in their life became them like the leaving of it. Homilists and eulogists might be out of a job, but some Catholic bishops would whisper a quiet word of gratitude to a former Free Presbyterian founder’s sense of moderation. – Yours, etc,

EDDIE FINNEGAN,

Wightman Road,

London.

Sir, – Fianna Fáil has stated it will not go into government with Sinn Féin or Fine Gael, and Labour has stated that it will not do so with Fianna Fáil.

Can I suggest that the parties sign a binding agreement to pay €1 million to a nominated charity in the event of them breaching these statements after the next general election? – Yours, etc,

EWAN DUFFY,

Castletown,

Celbridge,

Co Kildare.

A chara, – My sister nursed at the Royal City of Dublin Hospital some 35 years ago.

One of her favourite stories was of the newspaper boy who, in an attempt to broaden his market, would visit the public wards to ply his trade.

One afternoon, having marched up and down a particular ward twice, to the tune of “Pressa-Herrald, Herralda-Press”, he failed to make a sale. Eventually an elderly lady motioned him to her bedside and purchased an Evening Herald.

“Thank Jaysus”, said our intrepid vendor. “For a minute there I thought I was in the Eye and Ear”. – Yours, etc,

MICHAEL HOGAN,

Rathgar Road,

Dublin 6.

Sir, – Canadian visitor Stan Bartlett (September 16th) laments the state of the toilets in Busáras. Might I respectfully suggest that such shoddiness – common to most of our bus and railway stations – tells us what our rulers, and our trade unions, really think of the masses who use public transport. After all, only the little people can’t afford a car. – Yours, etc,

GERRY KELLY,

Orwell Gardens,

Rathgar,

Dublin 6.

Irish Independent:

“Still round the corner there may wait / a new road or a secret gate, / And though we pass them by today / Tomorrow we may come this way / And take the hidden paths that run / Towards the Moon or to the Sun.”

These captivating words of the great JRR Tolkien, from his timeless ‘Lord of the Rings’, led me to think about Scotland’s opportunity today. The “new road” or “secret gate” to be travelled upon, or through, struck me as being applicable to post-independence Scotland.

Tolkien believed that for any individual to find himself and eventually fulfil his potential, he must leave his comfort zone and venture out into the world which will put him to the test. Staying put, clinging to what is perceived as a safe harbour, without ever spreading your wings, means that your true purpose in life will forever be obscured.

Tolkien’s view of what it takes for an individual to fulfil his potential, and grow in strength and virtue, can be extrapolated upon to encompass a country. The restoration of independence is the new road that must be ventured on if Scotland is to come out of her shell, to find herself again and fulfil her potential.

I have been a long-time supporter of Scottish independence, as I do not believe that Scotland comes close to fulfilling her potential, either socially or economically, whilst being treated as a child of the British state. It is my great hope that Scotland votes Yes to independence today.

John B Reid

Monkstown, Co Dublin

Independence referendum

It was reported at the time of the handover of Dublin Castle to Michael Collins, on behalf of the new Irish Free State government, that the Lord Lieutenant, Edmund FitzAlan, said: “You are seven minutes late Mr Collins.”

He received the reply: “We’ve been waiting over 700 years, you can have the extra seven minutes.”

Could it be that Collins then added, sotto voce, “Don’t worry, we’re not too pushed about this independence thing, we only want it for about 90 years”, perhaps foreseeing a situation where the State, when trying to re-negotiate a deal on debt, would have to obtain the approval of 27 other states.

In the light of this precedent, maybe when they go to the polls today, the Scottish people can take solace in the fact that, even if they vote for independence, they will probably have the opportunity to change their minds somewhere down the line.

Paul Harrington

Navan, Co Meath

I always understood that Scotland belonged by right to the Scots. They lost their country and their language, but they could no more lose their right to their own country than their accent. This is their first real chance – in more than 300 years – to take back what always belonged to them, their own native land. The vote will show who is a Scot, and who is not.

Sean McElgunn

Belcoo, Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh

Now that Scotland is having its say, is it not time that we declare independence from Geldof and Bono?

K Nolan

Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim

Perhaps the Brits could avoid what will doubtless be embittered and acrimonious fall-out from the ‘Scottish Question’.

Whichever side should win by a minuscule majority could take a lesson from history by offering Alex Salmond the position of UK Prime Minister, in much the same way that 400 years ago James VI of Scotland was invited to become James I of the United Kingdom?

And should you doubt that any referendum between two evenly-matched and extremely passionate sides can be anything but acrimonious, just wait until the next referendum on abortion is held in Ireland.

Roger A Blackburn

Naul, Co Dublin

Ireland can show EU the way

I am an Italian teacher who, with three other colleagues of mine – Mrs Gaggiano, Mr Di Fiore and Mrs Occhionero – is in Ireland with 42 young students who want to improve their English following some lessons in an institute of your wonderful capital.

I followed, some days ago, a debate about Europe at the Italian Institute of Culture in Dublin (in the presence of the Ambassador Giovanni Adorni Braccesi and the journalist C. La Malfa) about how to overcome the crisis and build a new Europe made up of ideals, freedom and economic development.

I think there are two essential guidelines through whom the whole training process of this new Europe passes: the young people and the culture. And this is what happens in our experience in Dublin, where students and educators, both Italian and Irish, are sharing their history, tradition and culture in a peaceful and constructive way.

In my opinion using the tourist route to recognise and discover own identity, through cultural ideals and traditions that unite and not divide, is the better way.

This wonderful Joycean land, that collects all European feelings, should make us better appreciate the beauty and the culture of the world-unifying emotions, ways of feeling and seeing. The young people who would like to build the tomorrow Europe, the future Europe and the advanced Europe could do it with us.

Matteo Coco

San Marco in Lamis, Foggia, Italy

Positive side of Irish history

Mr John Bellew wrote (Letters, September 1): “By the time of the Famines, Ireland had been deforested and timber was at a premium. The only boat available to the inhabitants was the Curragh…”

I will respond to this generalisation with specific facts. In Kilmore, Co Wexford, men fished in conventional boats before, during and after the Famine. Their great problem was the tiny harbour there and there was a prolonged campaign involving landlords, Catholic and Protestant clergy, Catholic gentry, farmers and fishermen, to obtain funds from the Board of Works to build a better harbour. The Board had given money for harbours elsewhere.

In 1849, on the basis of funds from the Board of Works, work commenced on a new harbour in Kilmore; this later proved inadequate. All the eminent people involved believed that there was a cornucopia of wealth – the fish – off Kilmore coast. A large number of boats plied conventional trades off the south Wexford coast.

There was a forest of 1,500 statute acres at Killoughram, Co Wexford. It was leased to the Purdon brothers in 1862 – trees included! – at £160 a year; a rent later deemed excessive by a court. The Purdons made farm lands of it. The contemporary newspapers carried notices of regular timber auctions.

Research of the micro-details confounds the irredeemably gothic and apocalyptic scenarios of modern Irish history.

There is, indeed, trauma in Irish history but there is, conversely, a more positive aspect.

Tom McDonald

Enniscorthy, Co Wexford

The centre cannot hold FG

I was amused and baffled by Pascal Donohue’s assertion that Fine Gael is a party “of the centre”, unless he means that – on the political spectrum – Fine Gael lies in the centre between the Conservatives in the UK and the Republicans in the US.

In that case Fine Gael would indeed be “right” in the middle.

Simon O’Connor

Crumlin, Dublin 12

Irish Independent

19 September 2014 Scotland decides

I jog around the park I still have arthritis in my left knee, but I manage to get round the park. A sunny but cool day. A quiet day

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast wt up rabbit for tea and her back pain is still there.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Is it surprising that NHS hospitals are facing a deficit (Financial crunch tips NHS towards £1bn deficit, 16 September) when the so-called “efficiency savings” of 4% a year have been running for at least four years and the money for hospitals for doing the work (tariff and non-tariff) has been reduced every year. Mental health hospitals have had a bigger reduction in payments than other hospitals and there can be no rational reason or justification for that, particularly as Jeremy Hunt stated there was to be “parity of esteem” for the treatment of mental illness.

Simon Jenkins (Devolution of the NHS is next, 16 September) is wrong to say that there is a growing lobby of doctors calling for charges for GP care. The number is small, not growing and the call was decisively rejected at the BMA annual representative meeting this year. I am glad Jennifer Dixon of the Health Foundation agrees that the NHS needs more money (Letters, 18 September), but disagree with her solution.

Since managers took over the NHS in 1984, administrative costs have risen from 5% to 15.5% in 2011. The Commonwealth Fund, an independent US body recently placed the NHS at the top of the OECD league for efficiency. We believe that abolishing the purchaser-provider split and the market would save at least £10bn; and if Monitorand other “regulators” were also abolished, and clinicians really put in charge, we believe merging health and social care would improve services for patients and save money, once the system had bedded down.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but the combination of tough language from the Department of Health; the yearly reduction in frontline funding; the fact that in the previous two years the NHS paid back over £3bn to the Treasury; and the continual denigration of the NHS from the centre; does make one suspicious that the NHS is being set up to fail so that the private sector will seem a more attractive option.

As David Cameron said during the floods, “We are a rich country”, and we can afford to provide a properly funded NHS. As Andrew Lansley said during the passage of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act: “No decision about me without me” and “clinicians will be in charge”. This has not happened, but we could try it – and ask NHS staff how to make the service run better, as well.
Wendy Savage
President, Keep Our NHS Public

• Urgent action must be taken to ensure that equal value is placed on patients’ mental and physical health and mental health patients are no longer let down by a lack of adequate care (Report, theguardian.com, 16 September). Repeated warnings that many mental health patients have to wait a dangerous amount of time for treatment have gone unheard and as a consequence thousands of people have attempted suicide while waiting for psychological treatment. Very simply, these people have been failed by the current system. Mental health in the UK is not universally held in the same regard as patients’ physical health, nor does it receive comparable levels of funding. There would be an outcry if patients with a physical illness were denied treatment or care due to cuts in funding, yet this is what we are seeing for those patients suffering from mental illness.

Waiting times for therapy treatments must be reduced, mental and physical health problems must be regarded with equal importance and provided with the same high levels of care, and training must be improved for medical trainees and doctors in how to deal appropriately with people with mental illness and to make any needed adjustments to their care to achieve positive outcomes.
Professor Sheila Hollins
Chair of the board of science, British Medical Association

• It’s astounding that the Labour party, which, in the NHS, created one of the greatest institutions this country has ever seen, feels it is a gamble to state clearly it will protect that institution. And, further, that it is a problem that “the service is likely to end the year £1bn in the red”. We, the taxpayer, supported the banking sector to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds (which then found its way on to their balance sheets via QE). I feel I am more likely to need healthcare, free at the point of need, than I am a bank, most of which are not free and will largely abandon you in your hour of need. No, Labour, be plain and be clear, tell people you will protect the majority, not the privileged few. £1bn versus £375bn – no contest.

Healthcare before bankers.
Barnaby Stackhouse
Shepshed, Leicestershire

• This situation was common before the NHS came into being in 1948 (Poorer women receive worse maternity care, 17 September). Poor women could not afford to go to a doctor or hospital, with the result that they’d cope with childbirth themselves.

This resulted in multiple injuries for many and some couldn’t even walk without pain. I know because as a student nurse on a gynaecological ward I was able to help them when at last they did not have to pay. We must not allow this to happen again.
Joyce Morgan
London

Boxes of food ready to be picked for distribution at a food bank. Labour’s commitment to austerity ‘will only intensify the social damage caused by austerity policies’. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

The coalition’s spending plans for the next parliament are an intensification of austerity, demanding what even the Institute for Fiscal Studies calls unsustainable cuts to public services. Under the coalition, poverty has increased, living standards have fallen dramatically, and homelessness and dependence on food banks is rising. In contrast, corporate profits and reserves are holding up nicely and executive pay is increasing at more than 10 times the average wage.

Given that the Labour party started this parliament saying government austerity was “too far, too fast” it is extremely disappointing that the party leadership has said it will adhere to the coalition’s reintensified austerity for 2015-16. This commitment, including to the 1% pay cap policy, will only intensify the economic and social damage caused by austerity policies, and by reducing demand could easily see the UK slip back into recession. Labour must also end the race to the bottom on tax and regulation.

We urge Labour members, MPs, and trade unionists attending Labour party conference to demand an economic policy that boosts living standards and invests in the economy – and to save their party from a calamitous mistake.
John Christensen Tax Justice Network, Andrew Fisher LEAP economics, John Hilary War on Want, Richard Murphy Tax Research LLP, Ann Pettifor Prime Economics, Professor Prem Sikka, Mick Brooks

• I welcome new ways to make the NHS more efficient (Letters, 18 September). But how can Frank Field say £30bn of new revenue can’t be found for the NHS by the end of the next parliament? Five years of growth of 2.5%/year, as is usual, is 13% of GDP, recently worth £200bn, of which £30bn is 15%. That’s more than the low fraction spent on the NHS but why could it not be increased by this much? The answer is belief the budget deficit is a failure to balance the books so justifies austerity. But it’s due to excess global saving that must be borrowed to avoid a slump. This excess should be reduced by more spending, preferably on wages. Surely Field knows common sense is sometimes wrong?
George Talbot
Watford, Hertfordshire

Independent:

According to an article in The Independent (7 September), Katie Derham ‘‘wants to bring classical music to the masses and rid the Proms of its posh-people-only stereotype’’.

How many times in my 68 years have I heard this? Every one of them, probably. It really is time to scotch this nonsense. High art – complex plays, difficult paintings, intellectual music – requires not only a certain level of intelligence to uncover hidden meanings, but a degree of commitment to work at this ‘‘art’’ – a commitment which not everyone wants to make.

I, like many, am not terribly interested in the subtleties of pole-vaulting, so I don’t watch it and make no attempt to understand it. That doesn’t make pole-vaulters ‘‘posh’’ and ‘‘elitist’’, it makes me just not very interested in  pole-vaulting.

It’s time we stopped this folly of imagining ‘‘the masses’’ (whoever they are) are sitting there impatiently waiting to be exposed to Bach and then their lives will be complete. This is such arrogance! Maybe their lives are complete already? Maybe they’ll get along just fine without Bach?

No one ever says football is elitist because there are many millions of us who wouldn’t be seen dead going anywhere near a match. Why does classical music have to be any different? The irony is Katie Derham cites the Proms – of all occasions – as posh! If you held a pole-vaulting, or even, I suggest, a football match in the Royal Albert Hall every night for three months, would there be larger crowds? Could there be larger crowds? Classical music is difficult to understand. That’s it. Nothing more. Not everyone wants to commit the time and energy to understand it. That’s it. Nothing more.

Robert Walker
Abergavenny

We need more organ donations

I hope that The Independent readers found Katy Charlton’s account of organ donation (Andy’s last wish,  16 September) a brave and inspiring read. Our thoughts are with Katy and her family at what must be an unimaginably heartbreaking time for them.  We hope that by reading Katy’s story, people will be able to see how important it was for her to honour her husband’s decision to be an organ donor and the comfort she takes knowing that she was able to spare five families from also going through the heartache of losing someone close to them.

Katy is a member of the Women’s Institute (WI) and earlier this year the WI passed a resolution to help raise awareness of organ donation. We are delighted that such an influential organisation is supporting organ donation and that their involvement helped Katy to make the decision that she did. We are working with more organisations throughout the UK which, like the WI, can help us to change public attitudes to organ donation so that more people donate when and if they can. Organ donation saves lives but with fewer than 5,000 people each year in the UK dying in circumstances where they can donate their organs, it’s important to make every opportunity count. Three people will die today and every day because there are not enough organs available. Join the Organ Donor Register and tell your family.

Sally Johnson
Director of Organ Donation and Transplantation

Media should reject stick-insect ideal

I enjoy reading The Independent and am respectful of its values as a newspaper. I also enjoy reading about fashion at times, but I did not on Saturday, 13 September, as I was confronted in the Independent Magazine by a picture of an emaciated and decidedly sick-looking young model, who could easily have passed for a famine victim, were it not for the cost of the clothes and shoes she was wearing.  This photograph opens the fashion section and is headed ‘‘Gang Leaders’’.  I think your editors should acknowledge the influence the media have on impressionable young girls and women, and face up to their moral responsibilities. Why succumb to the pressure of the fashion industry’s portrayal of the ideal figure as that of the stick insect? As an ex-teacher, I am aware of the damage that such  images can do.

Christine Renshaw
Maidstone, Kent

Journalism’s role in the rise of Isis

The apparent swiftness of the rise of Isis and its potential threat to the Western world can in part be attributed to journalism. Even at the beginning of the Syrian conflict many foreign correspondents, including  those coming from assignment in Libya, considered Syria too dangerous to operate safely in. In addition,  the reduction of foreign  bureaus and the increasing  reliance on wire services has meant Syria received  scant attention. Perhaps this trend in reporting needs to be seriously reconsidered by editors and board members?

Paul O’ Sullivan
Bristol

Just how old is Rosie Millard?

Is Rosie Millard older than she looks? I can’t remember when I last saw “people in hats” singing hymns on Songs of Praise and I am 82.

Merrill Johns
Dover, Kent

Phones 4U and the companies act

Your articles on the Phones 4u story, assuming them to be true (18 September), miss a far more fundamental problem, sadly now very common. Under Section 151 of the Companies Act 1985, a company’s provision of financial assistance to purchase its own shares was a criminal offence. Such provision would include unusual dividends.

The purpose of the rule was to stop the very thing to which your coverage refers. These rules had in one form or another been around since Victorian times but were then so watered down in the Companies Act 2006 as to render them ineffective. Who lobbied for this change? I’ll put my money on Private Equity being part of that story. So get some lessons from lawyers experienced in Company Law and start investigating this outrageous change in 2006.

Christopher Yaxley 
Shrewsbury

After weeks of increasingly vitriolic and divisive debate about Scottish independence I’m suffering from referendum fatigue. Can you imagine what it’s going to be like in 2017 if we decide to have a referendum on Europe? With so much of the world already tearing itself apart, do we really have to  join them?

Stan Labovitch
Windsor

One of the reasons Sarah Bart (letters, 16 September) has given for deciding to vote Yes in Scotland’s referendum is that Westminster MPs ‘‘were found with their fingers in the till’’. Curious judgement. Does she not know that Alex Salmond was a Westminster MP at the time of the expenses scandal, and was one of the many MPs who had made questionable expenses claims. The details were published in the Complete Expenses Files supplement published by the Daily Telegraph in June 2009.

his and other such information concerning Mr Salmond is readily available on the internet.

John Elder
Chepstow, Monmouthshire

When Harold Wilson held a referendum on Europe in 1975 he made sure that the question was asked in such a way that the side he wanted to win staying in Europe was the ‘Yes’ side of the argument. First can I ask please who negotiated the question on Scottish independence in such a way as to allow the SNP the advantage of this Yes factor? Secondly why was the referendum held so early? Alex Salmond wanted to postpone the voting by two years.

The Scottish vote might have easily taken place after next year’s general election. Referendums on Scottish matters have always taken place in the past during Labour governments.

Hasn’t that always favoured the United Kingdom staying together? This argument, of course, assumes a Labour victory next year. Third and last, why didn’t we have a referendum on Europe first and then a referendum on Scottish independence? Uncertainty over English people’s commitment to the EU has played a big part. These three factors had an enormous impact on yesterday’s vote in Scotland. Who handed these advantages to Alex Salmond? We haven’t really had a PM who knew what he was doing since Harold Wilson have we?

Nigel F Boddy
Darlington

Richard Topping (17 September) repeats the myth that Margaret Thatcher used Scotland as a “guinea pig” for her poll tax. In fact a rating revaluation was due in Scotland, which would have seen the rateable values of many properties (which had not been re-valued for many years) increase dramatically. This would have caused financial difficulties for many people and was thought likely to trigger an electoral backlash against the then Conservative Government. To avoid this, Mrs Thatcher’s Government cancelled the rating re-valuation and introduced the poll tax a year earlier in Scotland. Ironically, this led to a different electoral backlash, which ultimately resulted in Mrs Thatcher’s downfall.

Brian Jones
Garforth, Leeds

Times:

Sir, The picture of the London property market painted by Shadow London Minister Sadiq Khan (Sept 18) does not stand up to scrutiny or represent the reality of the situation in Westminster. Earlier this summer, this council commissioned the first detailed analysis of London’s prime and super-prime residential market from independent consultant Ramidus Consulting, whose findings strongly countered the perception that overseas investors are buying high-value properties in London as an investment and leaving them empty. On the contrary, the majority of such properties are occupied by owners or rented by London workers — the perception of “ghost homes or communities” is not true. Moreover, the report found that this market is such a small sector of London’s property market that it does not have a significant impact on prices further down the chain. It did, however, show the huge contribution that the owners of super-prime properties make to the economy — estimated to be £2.3 billion a year. Mr Khan’s interpretation, based on a single set of figures obtained through one Parliamentary question, does nothing to help London’s economy or the attempts of councils to provide affordable housing to the capital’s residents.
Philippa Roe
Leader, Westminster City Council

Sir, Yesterday I travelled on the top deck of a bus between Kensington Olympia and Holland Park. It was obvious that most of the houses I passed were unoccupied. A mansion tax is one way to approach this problem, but this discriminates against UK resident owner-occupiers. Another way is to introduce some form of land value taxation (LVT). My late mother was an advocate of LVT for most her life; I thought she was mad but now I realise how forward-thinking and sensible she was.
Janet Davies
London W14

Sir, The article on Alan Johnson (Sept 17) reminds me of a saying in a factory many years ago. “It is easier for a fitter’s mate to become prime minister than to become a fitter.” For without serving an apprenticeship it was impossible to become a fitter.
Max Lines
Frome, Somerset

Sir, The “have a nice day” culture has invaded the internet. Completing an online form, I entered my first name and got an ingratiating “Hello, Reg!” So far, so creepy. When I added my surname the algorithm responded with “Great name!” At this point I logged out. Give me BSI (British Sullen Indifference) every time.
Reg Manser
Cranleigh, Surrey

Sir, Times2 (Sept 17) has on its cover “Oh you pretty thing . . . London fashion lightens up”. A glance inside shows the usual scowling, arrogant-looking, models. Shouldn’t “lighten up” also include a smile or two?
Jeremy Hornsby
London N1

Sir, Professor Patnick’s belief that randomised control trials are ethical in and of themselves is worrying (report, Sept 17). I recently declined an invitation to have breast cancer screening, having become aware of the risk of over-diagnosis. The Harding Centre for Risk Literacy has done good work on this and Professor Patnick, as director of NHS cancer screening, should be aware of it. I looked in vain in the literature that came with my invitation for the numbers that would enable me to make an informed decision. Some 32 years ago, I was an unwitting participant in a randomised control trial, part of a project conducted by midwives. I assumed I was signing up for an emergency caesarean, should the need arise. When I protested that I had not given informed consent to a randomised episiotomy trial — no woman in her right mind would do so — I was rebuffed at the highest level on the grounds that the trial met the ethical standards required. I still wonder how many babies’ lives were damaged by that trial.
Patricia Mulcahy
Henley-on-Thames, Oxon

Telegraph:

?

6:59AM BST 18 Sep 2014

Comments

Irish Times:

A chara, – In his recent address to the Royal Irish Academy (“Scotland shows 1916 Rising a mistake, says Bruton”, September 18th), John Bruton made a very daring attempt to predict what never happened.

There may be some similarities between Scotland today and Ireland 100 years ago. The differences, however, are many and there are three that are crucial.

Scotland does not have an armed militia, like that of the UVF, which was allowed to organise and arm itself in the open to oppose reform. There is also not a seemingly interminable world war happening on our doorsteps. Neither will Scotland have to deal with the agony of internal partition, which was written into the Third Home Rule Bill in Ireland since 1912.

Violence and partition were political realities in Ireland well before 1916. Thankfully, they are not in Scotland in 2014. – Yours, etc,

MAITIÚ de HÁL,

Cearnóg an Ghraeigh,

Baile Átha Cliath 8.

Sir, – The 1916 Rising is a fact and attempting to retrospectively justify or condemn the actions of Pearse et al is a spectacular waste of newsprint. Spare us, please, the historical fetishism and fantasy.

In this centenary of commemorations, let’s deal with each event objectively. Looking into our hearts and making conclusions based on “what ifs” and “might have beens” is a peculiarly Irish character flaw and one which I hope will be struck out by future generations. – Yours, etc,

NEIL O’BRIEN,

Affick,

Tulla,

Co Clare.

Sir, – John Bruton has conflated the Irish home rule movement and the Scottish independence referendum.

He is picking and choosing facts for a nice piece of pointless revisionism. In 1914 Ulster was armed to the teeth; so was the south but that was mainly a reaction to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers.

To take a page from Mr Bruton’s book, ie pointless and spurious historical revisionism, I would say that if the first World War had not broken out, there would have been a civil war in Ulster if all-Ireland home rule was granted as planned in 1914. That is essentially what they were planning anyway, with the weird doctrine of disloyal loyalty. Remember that 237,368 men and 234,046 women signed the Ulster Covenant specifically pledging themselves to oppose home rule at any cost. Whereas in the south there were the Irish Volunteers, with a strength of some 200,000, formed to protect home rule. Not only would home rule have led to a war, it is entirely possible to assume that this war would have been on a far greater scale, with much greater loss of life.

This is all of course absent in Scotland, making his comparison somewhat less than apt. – Yours, etc,

MARC O’CONNELL,

Margaret Street,

Cork.

Sir, – Billy Timmins is quoted as saying that “The Irish Parliamentary Party and John Redmond had no political descendants” (“Woodenbridge park to mark Wicklow dead of first World War”, September 18th).

Garret FitzGerald for one recognised that their traditions and values were very well represented in Fine Gael. I recall him saying more than once that he was particularly well placed to persuade the Fine Gael party to accept compromises on traditional nationalist positions on Northern Ireland because the FitzGeralds were from the original Sinn Féin founding wing of Cumann na nGaedhael/Fine Gael. The suggestion being that other Fine Gael leaders such as Dillon and Bruton were temperamentally unsuitable to dealing with republican nationalists because they represented the Irish Parliamentary Party and the Redmondite traditions of deeply rooted antipathy to use of violence for political ends and their absolute adherence to the principles of parliamentary democracy.

John Bruton as taoiseach had a portrait of John Redmond in his office and it was not there because they went to the same school.

The Irish Parliamentary Party tradition did not evaporate – it adapted to independence and continued its adherence to parliamentary democracy.

One wonders where we might have gone without it. – Yours, etc,

MICHAEL ANDERSON,

Moyclare Close,

Baldoyle,

Dublin 13.

Sir, – It should not be forgotten by your newspaper that same-sex marriage will shortly be the subject of a referendum, in which citizens will be required to examine the pros and cons of a fundamental change in a key building block of our society. Jennifer O’Connell in her column (“Two men and a baby now so wonderfully ordinary”, September 15th) described how “special and wonderful and beautifully ordinary” her meeting was with two new fathers she met in a local park last week. Their new baby was two days old and had been born three weeks premature. They did not live in Ireland, but had come from Germany to “get” the baby!

It did not seem to occur to Jennifer that this baby had at least one further parent (who was not present) and that the baby might never be allowed to know who her genetic mother was, or indeed where she continues to live. There was no mention of the pangs of separation being suffered by the birth mother, or the fact that the baby would never bond with her mother or be breast-fed. She would forever be a motherless child.

Has Jennifer no knowledge of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the right of a child “to know and be cared for by his or her parents” (Article 7)? Has she never read Article 9.2, that speaks of the right of a child “to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents on a regular basis except if it is contrary to the child’s best interests”? Nowhere are the rights or wishes of parents given precedence over the fundamental rights of a child.

Has Jennifer not seen the film Philomena? Why are nuns cast as heinous monsters for depriving a baby of knowledge of its birth mother, whilst two fathers, who may very well be doing exactly the same thing in a premeditated way, are not questioned at all on this issue by a passing journalist? Instead, they are lauded for “doing something wonderful and beautifully ordinary”!

The baby in the accompanying photo was clearly a lot older than two weeks old.

This uncritical approach to same-sex marriage is not worthy of a newspaper such as The Irish Times. – Yours, etc,

GABRIELLE

BROCKLESBY,

Beechwood Lawn,

Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.

Sir, – Jennifer O’Connell writes of the phenomenon of homosexual couples parenting and how it is becoming “wonderfully ordinary”. By drawing attention to this welcome phenomenon, she is making it extraordinary. Rather than allow homosexual parents feel accepted and – dare I say it – “normal”, such articles in fact do the opposite. – Yours, etc,

DONAL Mac ERLAINE,

Synge Street,

Dublin 8.

Sir, – I refer to “Timeline of penalty points controversy” (September 17th). Unfortunately, the timeline omits matters of substantial relevance. They include the following:

September 2012: Correspondence containing a large number of allegations that fixed-charge notices had been improperly cancelled by members of An Garda Síochána furnished to the Garda Commissioner with a request that the allegations be fully investigated, without revealing the name or identity of the member of An Garda Síochána who made the complaint.

May 2013: The publication of the O’Mahoney Report, and a related report by the Garda Professional Standards Unit, detailing the findings of the investigation, an examination of the processes and systems in place to deal with the cancellation of fixed-charge notices and recommendations to ensure the integrity of the system. As minister for justice, in implementation of the recommendations contained in the two reports, I asked the Garda Commissioner to ensure that seven essential principles were incorporated and made central to the decision making process in relation to fixed-charge notices. These were:

1. There must be no question mark hanging over the integrity of the fixed-charge notice system and in the application of penalty points. 2. No individual should receive preferential treatment because of their perceived status, relationship or celebrity. 3. The law and any discretionary application of it to individuals must be administered fairly, with compassion and common sense. 4. No member of the Garda force should feel compelled by a person’s position, relationship or celebrity status to treat that person any more or less favourably than any other person. 5. There must be proper oversight and transparency to the discretionary decision-making process and the applicable rules and procedures must be fully complied with. 6. All statutory provisions, regulations, rules, protocols and procedures applicable to the termination of fixed-charge notices must be readily accessible to all members of the Garda force and the circumstances, factors and procedures applicable to the termination of fixed-charge notices should be detailed clearly on the Garda website for the information of members of the public. 7. Where application is made to terminate a fixed ticket charge, where possible and appropriate, material to support any application made should be sought while understanding in some circumstances no such material may exist or be obtainable.

Additionally, due to my concerns to ensure that no further difficulties arose and at some of the decisions made in cancelling fixed-charge notices, which I described in a statement of the May 15th, 2013, as defying “logic and common sense”, as minister I referred both reports to the Joint Oireachtas Justice Committee to enable it hold such hearings as it deemed appropriate and make any necessary further recommendations. I also asked the independent Garda Inspectorate to examine the matter and the recommendations received to ensure the difficulties that had arisen did not reoccur.

As you record, the report of the inspectorate was published in March 2014 and its further recommendations fully implemented.

January 2014: Following Sgt McCabe making additional allegations concerning the cancellation of fixed-charge notices, at a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee, as minister, I asked the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission to conduct an investigation into the new allegations made and also to revisit the original allegations.

Unfortunately, the omission of the above matters from your timeline could give credence to the false accusation made during my time as minister that the allegations made by Sgt Maurice McCabe regarding the fixed-charge notice processing system were ignored and not taken seriously.

This is very far from the truth, as would be evident to anyone revisiting the statement issued by me on May 15th, 2013. – Yours, etc,

ALAN SHATTER, TD

Leinster House,

Kildare Street,

Dublin 2.

Sir, – Any optimism about our “economic recovery” is surely tempered by listening to debates on national radio about whether or not qualified teachers should be paid €50 on top of their social welfare payment for a full week’s work (“O’Sullivan pledges to ensure no abuse of JobBridge scheme”, September 18th). Education is the indispensable foundation of a country’s social and economic future development. It offers the next generation the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills to live fulfilling lives and contribute successfully to society and economic growth.

Government spending on education is an investment in the future for all of us. That we have become so inured to injustice that anyone, least of all the professional teachers to whom we entrust the care and education of our children, could be expected to work for €50 a week is an utter travesty.

Rail workers, refuse collectors and nursing staff have also been driven to strikes and protests due to continued deterioration of their pay and working conditions. These measures are politically justified by the requirements of “austerity” and “fiscal adjustment”. Meanwhile, 17 bankers in Ireland were paid an average of more than €1.2 million each in 2012, with 10 investment bankers and three retail bankers earning more than €1.4 million each.

The inevitable outcome of decades of financial deregulation is that unelected and unaccountable bankers now effectively run the world. They feather their own nests while ordinary workers, both public and private, are reduced to serfs in a regressive, exploitative neo-feudal system. These new aristocrats offer nothing but a vision of unhindered private profiteering for the top 1 per cent and their lackeys; and austerity, discipline and ultimately impoverishment for the rest of us. – Yours, etc,

MAEVE HALPIN,

Ranelagh,

Dublin 6.

Sir, – I share Pat McArdle’s amazement (September 17th) at the apparent need to call a postcode an “Eircode”. I blame in part the framers of the Constitution and the utterly pointless double naming of the country in Article 4. Had they called the country Ireland and left Éire to the Irish-language text, many things would be a lot simpler.

Mr McArdle is right to suspect the appeal of “uniquely Irish” names for the Eircode mess; to that, I would add a uniquely Irish addiction to ambiguity. – Yours, etc,

IAN Mac EOCHAGÁIN,

Väinölänkatu,

Helsinki, Finland.

Sir, – “The mountains labour and a ridiculous (and confused) mouse is born”.

It is distressing to read that after such a long wait we are to be saddled with a system that will be more unhelpful to business and the man in the street than that which already pertains. Imagine asking directions to four random numbers?

The fact that it will require the purchase of special equipment to interpret implies the protection of vested interests. Surely we deserve something simpler and better. – Yours, etc,

EDMOND KENNY,

Montpelier Parade,

Monkstown, Co Dublin.

A chara, – Pat McArdle asks, “Why do we have to insist on giving everything a ‘uniquely Irish’ name?” Whatever about the name, to reflect both languages, the postchód/postcode could have omitted the letters JKQWXYZ. –Is mise,

EILÍS NÍ­ ANLUAIN,

An Pháirc Thiar,

Bré,

Co Chill Mhantáin.

A chara, – Joe Humphreys in his “Cog Notes” column (September 16th) is very wide of the mark when he describes the position of ASTI and TUI on the Framework for Junior Cycle document as a “rejectionist stance”. On the contrary, the position of both unions is and has been positive and protective of the best traditions in Junior Cycle education in Ireland. In seeking the retention of State certification and external assessment, we are endeavouring to safeguard consistent educational standards across the country in the interests of all of our students.

We have been measured and responsible in our joint campaign against then minister for Education’s Ruairí Quinn’s decision (without consultation with ASTI, the National Council for Curriculum Assessment or any of the education partners) to abolish the Junior Certificate in October 2012. Incidentally it was Mr Quinn who rejected the NCCA’s advice of 2011.

What has changed now is the decision of the new Minister, Jan O’Sullivan, to persist with implementation of the framework in the absence of agreement with the second-level teacher unions on the key areas of assessment and certification.

It is imperative that teachers in the ASTI ballot send a strong message to Ms O’Sullivan in advance of the talks due to take place in October. – Yours, etc,

PHILIP IRWIN,

President, ASTI,

Thomas MacDonagh House,

Winetavern Street,

Dublin 8.

Sir, – Whatever the result, it must be said that Alex Salmond is a remarkable man. Using entirely peaceful means he is on the cusp of achieving dramatic constitutional change. He has successfully led a coalition that includes trade unions, pop stars, hedge fund managers and possibly Rupert Murdoch. He argues that independence is necessary both to protect the welfare state and at the same time to promote business in Scotland. Such a broad nationalist coalition is not without precedent. I believe that Mr Salmond is the reincarnation of Charles Stewart Parnell. – Yours, etc,

WILLIAM PRASIFKA,

Wilfield Road,

Sandymount,

Dublin 4.

Sir, – Passing through Dublin Airport’s Terminal One this week I paid €2.49 for a single, unadorned croissant. Is this a record? – Yours, etc,

JOHN D O’BRIEN,

Churchtown,

Dublin 14.

Sir, – There was a time when I would have been happily among the tractor fans as described by Frank McNally (“Irishman’s Diary”, September 18th) but that day is over. I’m now an extractor fan. – Yours, etc,

GERRY CHRISTIE,

Monalee,

Tralee, Co Kerry.

Irish Independent:

I am sure many of your readers saw the “debate” on ‘Primetime’ between John Bruton, Eamon O’Cuiv, Michael McDowell and Kevin Myers on the legacy of 1916 and its place in Irish history.

Many points were raised and many were, depending on perspective, valid.

All were missing a very important point about 1916.

The reason for 1916 sticking in the Irish psyche as a flashpoint in our history is that the men in the GPO and Boland’s Mill and other points throughout the city during that fateful weekend had rifles. They had limited ammunition and no explosives. The opposing Imperial troops had cannon and a gunboat and used a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

This, allied with the fact that the Rising leaders were offered only a military trial and were subsequently executed, is where the real story of 1916 as the birth of our nation is – 1916 was when Britain proved through violence that it did not wish to allow self-determination in Ireland. It was the very coalface of the tradition of monarchy versus republic that hadn’t been seen since the late 1700s in France and America.

If you imagine yourself back in those times, the Irish had – since its parliament had been voted away by, according to many accounts, a drunken mob of parliamentarians in 1800 – been subjected to great hardships by a parliament in London. The Famine, Land War, tenement slums and the Lockout had all preceded 1916, as had two years of World War I, which saw men from many families trade their lives for a letter from some British Army officer who would have shot the same men if they refused to charge into no man’s land.

The history of Ireland under direct rule from London, which had only lasted for four or five generations, was one of the most harrowing of any people who produced so much wealth for little reward. Indeed, Van Diemen’s Land was, for many, no worse than the conditions that had given rise to the actions that put them on that one-way ticket.

Dermot Ryan, Athenry, Galway

Scotland’s day of destiny

This morning, David Cameron may well be ruing his decision not to offer the Scots maximum devolution.

Although English, I will be sad if the Union has come to an end, but I hope the Scottish people would have grasped the monumental opportunity for independence.

Whatever the financial cost, if I were a Scot, I would prefer freedom from Westminster than to be treated as a second-rate citizen. If the vote was “No”, the change will still be huge.

The present UK coalition government is dominated by the undisguised ambitions of Boris Johnson plotting to seize the Tory leadership and premiership after the next election. The ‘Old Etonion Mafia’ are more in tune with champagne and caviar, than the bread and butter needs of the ordinary Briton. Only the clever man can act the clown. This morning, Alex Salmond may well have made a mockery of England’s so-called political ‘elite’.

If so, the Scots’ wrath will only have been the first to be delivered last night. The English will deliver the rest in due course.

Dominic Shelmerdine, London SW3, UK

Dirty secret of the ‘Great War’

There has been much commentary about the so-called ‘Great War’ over the last few months. However, the ruthless execution of 346 men in the course of that war was kept secret for many years.

The authorities in Britain finally relented, giving access to the court martial files of those men to retired judge Anthony Babington (an Irishman). He wrote an account of the deaths in a book, ‘For the Sake of Example’.

It is a horrific tale of callous destruction without mercy of the lives of many young men. The policies and the promulgation of sentences came from General Staff, who were for the most part based in comfortable chateaus far from the front lines.

The men in the trenches faced repeated orders to go “over the top” to face the German machine guns. It was over the top to your death or refuse and face certain death from your own side.

Great War indeed.

Harry Mulhern, Millbrook Road, Dublin

Mind your language

Now that we’ve all agreed to stop skinning cats, perhaps it’s time to ban expressions like “I’ll kill him!” and “you’re dead” lest they normalise the practice of murdering people?

Tom Farrell, Swords, Co Dublin

Mary Lou’s flight of fancy

Regarding the Mary Lou McDonald flight affair, Brendan Dunleavy (Letters, Irish Independent September 17) quotes Marx’s riposte that when the revolution came everyone would be travelling first class. He mentions that even Michael O’Leary has introduced business class.

This brings to mind another Michael O’Leary (the late TD and minister) who, when admonished for smoking a cigar as he arrived for a union meeting, blew a large cloud of smoke and simply said, “nothing is too good for the workers”.

John F Jordan, Killiney, Dublin

History is repeating itself in Iraq

A new book by Ian Rutledge entitled ‘Enemy on the Euphrates’ illustrates clearly how in the present “crisis” in Iraq, Isil should not be a surprise to the British Government They have faced it all before.

In 1915, the infamous Sir Mark Sykes, the British diplomat who framed the Sykes/Picot agreement which carved up the Middle East between Britain and France, said “the Muslim intellectual uses the clothes of Europe and has lost his belief in his creed, but the hatred of Christendom and a lust for the domination of Islam as a supreme political (goal) remains.”

In 1920 there was a huge rebellion against the British rule in Iraq. It was a greater threat than any other anti-British uprising in modern times, with 131,000 Arabs under arms, in which tribal and religious conservatives led the insurrection.

This revolt was eventually brought to its knees. The British went on a village-burning exercise to teach the Iraqis a lesson they would never forget. From the air, the RAF chased men and women into the swamps and machined gunned them there.

An example is a quote from Air Commodore “Biffy” Borton about a 1921 attack by eight aircraft at Nassariyah, “The tribesmen and their families were put to confusion, many of them who ran into the lake making good targets for the machine guns.”

It is little wonder, then, that the present Isil will seek revenge when it’s possible that their grandparents were victims of British justice two generations ago?

Hugh Duffy, Cleggan, Co Galway

Feminist confusion in deacon row

In relation to Bishop O’Reilly seeking candidates for deacon training (Irish Independent, September 3), women in Killaloe diocese should acknowledge the difference in the Catholic Church between power and authority.

Feminists seem to confuse democratic systems with hierarchy; the authority of consecrated clergy comes from almighty God, whom we lovingly obey as Jesus taught us. Women have always served the people of God through many roles – advisors, missionaries, mothers, wives, nurses, teachers, etc.

Many parish and diocesan positions are well served by lay people. Though fallible humans, God shares His creativity with us through many religions and none. The courage of churchmen is admirable.

BJ O’Connor (Mrs), Carlow

Irish Independent

More in Letters (2 of 20 articles)

Scotland stands on the cusp of… Read More

20 September 2014 Ellie and Richard

I jog around the park I still have arthritis in my left knee, but I manage to get round the park. A sunny but cool day. Ellie and Richard come to call.

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast wt up rabbit for tea and her back pain is still there.

Obituary:

Guardian:

So it’s a no, but only just. And what a journey. I wonder if it might have made a difference if the yes had been to stay and the no a big negative to the union. There was something about the yes for me, as a Scot living in Birmingham, that made it feel disloyal to Scotland not to want to go with the yes. No might have felt less of a rallying cry and the results might not have been so close. And what of tribalism, anyway? The Breathes There the Man poem by Sir Walter Scott, which I recited at school, has hugely tribal sentiments; and I proudly waved a Scottish flag at the annual gala march. We bullied the English girl who came to our primary school. Then I went to live in Nigeria, during the Biafran war, and witnessed the effects of tribal hatred – of course, it was about oil too – but decent Ibo academics were killed or forced to leave their homes and jobs. I began to have a feeling of being a citizen of the world: feeling the colossal unfairness that the accident of birth bestows. I felt I was not part of any cultural group there. This detachment from a group identity meant that there were no longer cultural clues to place people with: class, accent, clothes – nothing helped. Plus the fact that many intelligent people were poor and uneducated. So I had to take people as they presented themselves, to learn to read them using other, un-culturally cluttered, information cues.  

So here I am again, the same amount of Scottish as yesterday, but where yesterday it felt like a layer, a foundation of my being, today it feels somehow less important. It doesn’t matter today as it might have done if the yes vote had won, and Scotland had become an exclusive club, excluding me from being Scottish.

This is what I find difficult – the subtle difference between national identity, national characteristics and stereotypes. The Scots are … what? A continuum like every race, country, group, family. Now when I think “Scottish”, I am back to imagining a vast continuum that includes tartan and bagpipes, and that horrible chalky Edinburgh rock, through to trainfuls of drunken, puking, loudmouthed football fans; juxtaposed with my mother’s kind, bridge-playing, friends and my father’s decent, working-class, thoughtful parishioners.

When the no vote won, it felt like an enormous relief. I can still feel Scottish, then, perhaps even more so since not excluded. I can be as Scottish as I choose, whatever that means. Thank goodness. We are all world citizens. We might as well try to get along.
Judy Tweddle
Birmingham

• In your editorial on election day (18 September), you say that the debate now should lead to decentralised powers from Westminster. It seems to me that the Tories have been very clever – in fact they are already attempting to shore-up their power in London by addressing the West Lothian question, so that Scot’s MPs can’t vote in westminster on certain important English policies. See how rightwing England goes then. Combine that with a possible EU exit, and maybe the Guardian might consider it could have been more hopeful about an independant Scotland.

As someone brought up in England, having lived in Scotland for 20 years, I strongly believe an independent Scotland would have thrived. Many Guardian journalists wrote eloquently and passionately in favour of independence. The paper sided with the no campaign. If the promises of Cameron, Clegg, Miliband, Brown and Darling that Scotland will have prompt devolved powers in the event of a no vote prove hollow, I hope the Guardian does not shy way from exposing those politicians as dishonest opportunists, and reconsiders its position on the idea of Scottish independance.
John Macdonald
Edinburgh

• The Conservatives may well be trying to take the initiative on future UK devolution, but before the dust settles on the referendum, we need to remind ourselves of a few facts. The union was almost destroyed by the Tories. Because they have been able to rely on support from the south of England, the have ignored the way in which they have alienated Scots in the last 35 years. What does it say of a political party that it has only one Westminster MP returned by Scots? No wonder Scotland was tempted by independence. Doesn’t it also speak volumes that Cameron had to rely on two Labour politicians to head the no campaign and save the union? Instead of jumping on the devolution bandwagon, the Tories ought to be asking themselves how can they engage more with people north of the border, how can they improve their standing in Scotland, how can they make their politics more acceptable to the whole of the UK and not just to the affluent south of England.
Arthur Gould
Loughborough, Leicestershire

• The Scottish debate has given us the opportunity for the most innovative debate on our constitution and politics since 1945. But much of the talk about devolution misses the main point. It may be readily accepted that local authorities should have more power within their localities. But the crucial need is for a constitutional counter to the power exercised  by dominant capital interests (increasingly foreign) through our national government. We need a system of regional governments – say eight English regions, alongside Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – playing a direct, constitutional role in the machinery of central government, for example, through mandatory representation in cabinets alongside departmental secretaries of state.
Richard Pengelly
Cardiff

• Now the Scottish people have demonstrated that the public are prepared to engage with politics when they feel that their vote counts, couldn’t this be the ideal opportunity to consider some form of proportional representation of regional representatives into a reformed second chamber?

And surely this is the time for Ed Milliband to lead the drive for fairer society, which was one of the main demands of those supporting the vote for independence. Limiting pay differentials between the CEOs and lowest paid staff, increasing taxes on the very highest paid and a review of property taxes would be a strong and welcome start in demonstrating that you don’t have to be Scottish to value fairness.
Steph Crutchley
Newton Abbot, Devon

• Now that the Scottish people have voted to remain within the United Kingdom, will our UK parliament instigate an international programme of education to inform the wider global community that the terms “England”, “Great Britain” and “United Kingdom” are not synonymous. Further, will all media organisations promise to take steps to correct interviewees, correspondents and contributers when they use the terms inappropriately. It may seem a trivial matter to some, but with repetition comes resentment.
Hugh Craig
Edinburgh

• David Ward (Letters 18 September) should indeed incorporate swithering into his vocabulary. He should also add scunnered – as I am today.
Tom McFadyen
Glasgow

• In the wake of the Scottish referendum result the PM is dangerously wrong to press for “English votes for English laws” as the answer to the West Lothian question. Such an arrangement would be utterly inconsistent with the constitutional doctrine of responsible government. For instance, it is entirely possible that a future Labour administration would have enough UK-wide MPs to govern the UK while the Conservatives formed a majority in England. What then? Will we have two administrations sitting side by side in the House of Commons responsible to two classes of representatives? How will executive government be conducted in these circumstances? For instance, if the English executive loses the confidence of English MPs will there be an UK-wide general election? And so on. In practice, Cameron’s proposal is not a solution to the West Lothian question but a recipe for chaos and ultimately the dissolution of the UK.
Richard Edwards
Senior lecturer in law, University of Exeter

• Surely the answer is staring us in the face: the House of Commons becomes the English parliament; the House of Lords becomes the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Elected! By PR. The remaining questions: What would the leaders be called? If one of them is prime minister, how about the other being first lord of the Treasury? That way, 10 Downing Street wouldn’t have to change its letter box. Oh, but where would the other one live? No 11? No 12? We’d better have that constitutional commission…
Ian Chown
London

• I was moved almost to the point of tears when I saw 16- and 17-year-olds enthusiastically entering the polling booths in their school uniforms to cast their vote in the referendum. Surely Westminster needs to move on this very quickly and amend the Representation of the People Act to lower the voting age and extend the franchise in time for the 2015 general election? We could even motivate young people by allowing them to vote in school.

However, I’m under no illusions that the Westminster establishment will find procedural and other reasons to block this.
Steve Flatley
York

• So UK citizens aged 16 and 17 voted for the very first time. Many older Scots voted for the first time for a long time; some for the first time ever. People have been involved, excited, engaged and empowered in a political discussion as never before. The political landscape in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as in Scotland has been changed. No small achievement.
Chris Birch
London

• The Scottish referendum must be taught in schools. Scotland has gained worldwide admiration for its ingenuity, rationality and democratic performance. No deployment of tanks and military personnel such as the case in the Crimean peninsula, no electoral fraud and rigging as the case in many parts of the world, and most importantly, no illegal forms of voter intimidation. The voting was a happy ending, a colourful demonstration of a strong sense of belonging to the UK. The UK has asserted itself as the bastion of freedom and democracy. As Cameron put it: “Now it is time for our United Kingdom to come together and move forward.”
Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob
London

• What a relief! Never again should there be a referendum on secession in this island. A decision based on a simple majority, which could for example be affected by the weather on the day, is not appropriate for a choice so massive and final. But more than that, after 300 years and all we have been through together, surely the island belongs to everyone.
Myer Salaman
London

• Following the result of the Scottish referendum, I have a suggestion for our relatives, friends and neighbours north of the border, beginning perhaps with those in Glasgow and Dundee. It has occurred to me that in Italy there is a Northern League, which works to defend the privileges of that country’s northern cities. Our northern cities, both English and Scottish, have fewer privileges to defend, but we could work together to promote their prospects in the face of the strong power base in the south-east of England. How about it Liverpool, Tyneside and Hull?
Kate Allen
Guisborough, Cleveland

• It is to be hoped that the result of the referendum will be seen as a massive rejection of nationalism and independence and that the concepts will be put to bed for good. There is then a need to rebuild relationships which have been damaged during the campaign and two steps would help to accomplish this. First, Alex Salmond should recognise that his personal credibility as leader has been rejected and he should resign. Second, the SNP has lost its ultimate raison d’etre and should re-name itself: the Scottish Democrats would be a possibility.
Dr D J Rowe
Newcastle upon Tyne

• Now that the Scottish referendum has settled their question “for a lifetime”, please remind me why the European one of 1975 no longer applies.
Mike Mulliner
Belper, Derbyshire

• Thank you, Scotland. Memo to the UK parties: Keep your promises, devolve powers, and give England a voice. Strengthen the Union by three simple immediate steps: 1) Make it clear that God Save the Queen is the British national anthem: tell English teams never to play it before a game; 2) Rename the Bank of England the British Reserve Bank; 3) Disestablish the Church of England.

Get on with it: England expects.
Ian Turner
Melbourne, Derbyshire

• So good to see the democratic process working in Scotland, despite the absence of the promise of a referendum in the Conservative 2010 manifesto. In the interests of democracy, could we please have the opportunity to vote on new party manifestos and a properly constituted conference before new laws for devolution in England and the rest of the UK are passed, or indeed could we have a referendum on the issue? Anything else will be a gross misuse of political power and a denial of democracy, for the rest of the UK.
Dr John Crossman
Sherborne, Dorset

Having supported the yes campaign pretty much throughout, I had tears in my eyes this morning when it was a no. Tears of thanks, relief and of being deeply moved. That after all this, Scotland is not going – it’s not over. Some very important things have been said, felt, explored, dreamed and Scotland is going to stay – for the time being, at least.

I know of course that it was never going to be a complete and acrimonious separation. And I know that independence might have led to something extraordinary; a new paradigm for life on this island, that may even have spilled over to the south one day. But right here right now there’s just relief that Scotland and England are not parting ways. That after everything has been said, we are staying together.
Tim Foskett
London

• As an Englishman who spent several happy years living and working in Scotland, I commiserate with those who voted for independence. A golden opportunity to create a fairer society has been missed. Burns got it right: “We’re bought and sold for English gold. Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.”
Paul Hewitson
Berlin

• A narrow escape for Cameron, whose cavalier approach nearly sank the union, thanks to Gordon Brown, whose passionate oratory probably saved it.
Roy Boffy
Walsall

• Thank God. Scotland is trusting us to drive for real change now. We must sort the lack of UK democracy out, especially in England. We mustn’t let their trust down! Now we all have a real chance in our future together. Well done to both sides in the debate. (And can we please have this Gordon Brown back? Labour, heed: timidity gets you nowhere.)
Olivia Byard
Witney, Oxford

• And there I was thinking it was about Scotland’s future and it turns out to be about the English parliament.
Saveria Campo
Glasgow

• If nothing else the Scottish referendum stands as a reminder that it is not the people who are unwilling to engage in real political debate, it is the politicians.
Jane Thomas
Eglwyswrw, Pembrokeshire

• I suppose it’s too late to check the hanging chads, isn’t it?
Simon Aves
Edinburgh

• Alex Salmond must be the most relieved man on the planet.
Jim Eccleston
Alicante, Spain

• Being half Scottish, the result for me showed two important things that our politicians should note: 1) That almost half the population of Scotland is disillusioned with English rule. 2) That 97% of the population actually voted, revealing a strong commitment to the democratic process. For me it was summed up by the words of an old man from a poor estate interviewed for the BBC who said: “Whatever the outcome, it shows that a large percentage of Scots are disillusioned with all three party leaders.”

If there can be one lesson to be learnt from this, it should be for Cameron, Clegg and Miliband to seriously reconsider their values. For Cameron, the shameful attacks on the NHS and for the poor in our society; for Clegg, his shameful about-turn on student fees; and for Miliband, following in the footsteps of Tony Blair, his rejection of the true values of the Labour party. If we are a truly democratic country, could we please have a referendum on essential decisions such as the NHS.
Lorraine Haldane
Hove, Sussex

• Three factors are required for a high turnout: a clear choice; a strong campaign on both sides; and continuing doubt about the outcome. This enables the maximum number of voters to feel qualified to decide, to be encouraged to vote whatever their preference, and to believe their personal choice has consequences. This conjunction is relatively rare, as are very high turnouts.
Paul Martin
London

• Clearly some of the yes vote reflected support for the SNP. However, when it comes to major cities like Glasgow, it was surely something rather more than that. The grassroots anti-austerity campaigning of the left made its voice heard and felt. No doubt Mr Cameron will continue to ignore that voice as he has since 2010, but Mr Miliband would do well to take note. The referendum vote was about much more than yes or no to independence.
Keith Flett
London

• Further to Niall Cooper’s suggestion (Letters, 19 September) that parliament should move out of London, wouldn’t now be a very good time to announce that the capital of the still United Kingdom was to move to Edinburgh? This would demonstrate the establishment’s commitment to Scotland, help to rebalance the British economy and defuse the absurd London housing market all in one go.
Peter Malpass
Bristol

• Now the result is in, can we think about the phrase “devo max” a bit more carefully. It surely should not be taken to mean just a few extra tax-raising powers (which a future Westminster government could nullify by cutting Scotland’s block grant), but rather maximum devolution, that is, full home rule.

When around 40% of the total electorate say they would like to leave the union and a large number on the other side are undoubtedly in favour of substantial change, something on this scale is clearly what is required. And that in turn demands careful consideration of the implications for the structure of the UK state as a whole. Rushing through badly thought-through, piecemeal legislation is not the answer.
Richard Middleton
Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway

Independent:

Times:

Sir, Stephen Pollard (Thunderer, Sept 18) is wrong: homeopathy can be a matter of opinion since interpretation of evidence is debatable. The researcher Dr Klaus Linde has written of the confusion of “too many anomalous results in high quality studies to rule out a relevant phenomenon”, and a research group from the University of York reported in 2010 on eight systematic reviews providing evidence that the effects of homeopathy were beyond placebo for a range of childhood conditions. The existence of meteorites was formerly dismissed, and journals rejected early reports of manned flight. It is always thus with developments that break the mould. Allegations of quackery, however, with its moral undertone, are uncalled for.
Earl Baldwin of Bewdley
formerly Joint Chairman, All Party Parliamentary Group for Integrated Healthcare), House of Lords

Sir, Is it too late to get my 1963 GCE exam papers re-marked, if only to stop old school friends who still allude to my remarkably poor performance?

Alan Phillips

Epping, Essex

Telegraph:

Irish Times:

A chara, – Bought and sold for English gold? No, this time it’s just a handful of magic beans. I’m waiting for England’s generous rolling out of the desperate promises they made to the Scottish people.

I’m not holding my breath. – Is mise,

NICK McCALL,

Glasdrumman Mor,

Drumkeeran,Co Leitrim.

Sir, – I congratulate the Scottish people. Not for voting No, but for the manner in which they conducted themselves throughout the campaign. We listened to debates and opinions that were both robust and passionate but with few hysterics. Irish parliamentarians, please take note. – Yours, etc,

JOHN BELLEW,

Riverside House,

Dunleer,Co Louth.

A chara, – The 307-year-old union as been saved. The people have spoken. Scotland remains part of the family of nations that make up the United Kingdom. However it does so amid a flurry of promises, vows and reassurances of further devolution and increased autonomy over tax, health and welfare. Much analysis will be done as to why the Better Together campaign succeeded. Some will cast blame on what many interpreted as scaremongering, with RBS and Lloyds banks threatening to move operations south of the border should independence have been endorsed. What has been intriguing is that economic arguments featured as the key to influence and not any ideology based on language, culture or identity. Scotland and its people have always had a clear and distinguished identity in this regard.

Westminster has made promises that it must keep with Scotland. Now that the genie is out of the bottle Westminster must give equal regard to other areas of the United Kingdom – Wales, England and Northern Ireland. Failure to do so would could lead those nations to feel “Bitter Together” and not “Better Together”. – Is mise,

KILLIAN BRENNAN,

Clare Village,

Malahide Road, Dublin 17.

Sir, – The will of the people of Scotland was determined with out the loss of one life. The biggest win of all. – Yours, etc,

ROSALEEN CROTTY,

Radolfzeller Strasse,

Allensbach, Germany.

Sir, – Repeated attempts to denigrate England failed to convince a fair-minded people. We, too, have had little else but slurs and put-downs from our propaganda-mills for a century. And where have our huddled masses, failed by this State, headed for? Why to England, of course, where they received full citizenship rights and plentiful opportunities. What a shame the Irish people were never asked. They would have settled for “Devo-Max”, but what they got instead was “Dev Max” and a partitioned country. – Yours, etc,

PADDY McEVOY,

Ardmore Road,

Holywood, Co Down.

Sir, – As a Scot living in Ireland, I really don’t understand why so many people voted No but, like their children and grandchildren, who won’t understand it either, I fear that we’ll all live to regret it, and maybe in unexpected ways. The referendum was never actually about nationalism, or at least not in the anti-English sense that the No camp tried to paint it. It was about admitting that the politico-economic union of the last three centuries has simply run its course, and that Scotland and England have been moving in different directions for at least a generation now.

The socio-cultural union, which stretches back for a millennium or more, is rich and rewarding and we are very much “better together” in that sense. The overwhelming majority of Yes voters wanted it to continue yet, ironically, independence was the surest way to safeguard that it did. – Yours, etc,

SEÁN LYNCH,

Milltown,

Dublin 6.

Sir, – Interesting that David Cameron’s first act for Scotland is to ask an unelected peer, Lord Smith of Kelvin, to oversee the process of devolving more powers over tax, spending and welfare to Scotland. – Yours, etc,

CHARLIE McGEEVER,

Derrycastle,

Ballina,Co Tipperary.

Sir, – There are lesson for our European leaders in this. Let’s hope that they are alert to the effects the referendum will have across Europe and the need for substantial changes to give regions and the general population far more say in EU decisions. – Yours, etc,

PETER B MacNAMARA,

O’Callaghan Strand,

Limerick.

Sir, – In what way was the result like a cold in the head? Sometimes the Ayes had it and sometimes the Noes. – Yours, etc,

MICHAEL DRURY,

Avenue Louise,

Brussels.

Sir, – Scotland the Brave? Yeah, right. – Yours, etc,

PATRICIA O’RIORDAN,

Stamer Street, Dublin 8.

Sir, – To the thoroughly disappointed – though by no means despondent – Scottish nationalists I say this – if at first you don’t secede, try, try again. – Yours, etc,

PAUL DELANEY,

Beacon Hill,

Dalkey, Co Dublin.

Sir, – Scotland seems to be saying “Never, not now, possibly”. Remember that even Big Ian said yes eventually. – Yours, etc,

DAVID CURRAN,

Clybaun Heights,

Knocknacarra, Galway.

Sir, – The Scots are a canny lot. It would appear they went along with Hilaire Belloc’s advice – “and always keep a-hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse”. – Yours, etc,

OWEN DEIGNAN,

Marina Village,

Malahide, Co Dublin.

Sir, – The pollsters had it neck and neck, while Paddy Power had it by a distance. – Yours, etc,

PAUL MULCAHY,

Merlyn Park, Dublin 4.

Sir, – At least that’s the Scottish question answered – now know what’s not under the kilt. – Yours, etc,

JOHN DEEGAN,

Market Square,

Kilbeggan, Co Westmeath.

Sir, – I note that Enda Kenny (“Turn off tap when brushing teeth to save water’, says Kenny”, September 18th) has taken to endorsing the advice of Barney the Dinosaur, who sang “While I’m brushing my teeth and having so much fun, I never let the water run, no, I never let the water run”.

In the grown-up world, does the Taoiseach have any suggestions as to how cash-strapped citizens are going to pay €400 water bills? I’m all ears! – Yours, etc,

JACKIE Mac ARDLE,

St Columba’s Villas,

Laytown,

Co Meath.

Sir, – I would hope that the regulator will include in any compensation scheme for contaminated water those households which must run a sinkful of water first thing each morning due to lead contamination from old pipework.

There are about 100 such households in Dundalk. – Yours, etc,

MARK DEAREY,

Corrakit,

Omeath,

Co Louth.

Sir, – Your interpretation of the OECD position (Editorial, September 18th) that Ireland should “move sooner or later to end abusive tax avoidance” by multinationals should equally apply to ending our tolerance of mechanisms and regulatory interpretations that support social dumping on a continental scale.

In 2009, the Revenue Commissioners closed one loophole preventing the abuse of sole trader status as an acceptable means of engaging pilots in the Irish aviation industry. Unfortunately, the exploitation of pilots continued in an evolved model, requiring them to become directors of limited companies for no obvious benefit to the pilots themselves.

Ireland’s apparent tolerance for such “clever” arrangements brings our national good name further into disrepute. Ireland is increasingly seen as a peddler of cheap employment practices in the service of corporate engorgement.

Given its potential to destroy the lives of individual workers and to undermine the social fabric of society, it is past time to review the export of abusive social and employment practices from Ireland, as much as it is time to curb the abusive tax avoidance schemes that the OECD has so clearly identified. – Yours, etc,

EVAN CULLEN,

President,

Irish Airline

Pilots’ Association,

Corballis Park,

Dublin Airport.

Sir, – After three years and some media attention, Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton has had an epiphany and decided that cleaning positions may not be suitable for JobBridge, despite them appearing on JobBridge.ie for years (“Cleaners in schools ‘not best use’ of JobBridge, says Burton”, September 18th).

What I am disappointed by is how JobBridge has had a detrimental effect on jobseekers with disabilities. It was not until 2012 that most disabled people were given access to the scheme, while vision-impaired people continue to be barred.

The Department of Social Protection will tell you that there are “other schemes” for blind and disabled people, just as there were “other seats on the bus” for black people in the US before the civil rights movement. The positions I am qualified for are not advertised on schemes like the work placement programme or the other schemes “for my kind”. I did not put four years of my life into a degree just so I could go weaving baskets!

Would it not be better for the Minister to put her efforts into giving access to schemes to those who want the experience of work rather than wasting money by forcing people into positions they may not be interested in or suitable for? – Yours, etc,

FRANCIS DUNNE,

Peter O’Donovan Crescent,

Ballincollig, Co Cork.

Sir, – When I read Gabrielle Brocklesby’s letter (September 19th) I had to go and dig out Jennifer O’Connell’s piece from last Monday (“Two men and a baby now so wonderfully ordinary”, September 15th). I expected a major full-page gay rights propaganda piece, driving home the benefits of having two fathers with remorseless logic and vigour. Instead I found a short, neatly written description of an encounter in a park with two parents of a newly born baby. Ms Brocklesby’s letter was longer than Ms O’Connell’s article!

If Ms Brocklesby wants us to challenge gay adoptive parents as to the whereabouts and psychological state of the natural mother of their child, then we should do so with all adoptive parents. This has nothing to do with same-sex marriage.

As a nit-picking aside, the article is written from California so the parents were never in Ireland, and the accompanying picture is obviously a stock photo, not an actual picture of the family.

It is essential that the Minister for Justice removes the issue of adoption from the debate by clarifying our adoption laws before any referendum. Let us discuss the issue of same-sex marriage on its merits and not have other issues brought in to confuse the issue. – Yours, etc,

CONOR McWADE,

Wilfield Road,

Sandymount,

Dublin 4.

Sir, – John Bruton again asserts that the Easter Rising was unnecessary (on the basis of no evidence whatever) and that the offer of home rule should have been pursued (“Scotland shows 1916 Rising a mistake, says John Bruton”, September 18th).

Mr Bruton seems to have forgotten that the Irish people overwhelmingly voted in the 1918 general election for independence and this exercise in democracy was comprehensively dismissed and disregarded by the British government, which decided to meet the wishes of the Irish people with military might.

Perhaps Mr Bruton could explain how the Irish were at fault here? Perhaps he could also let us know if he considers that any of Britain’s colonies were right to take up arms in a bid for freedom ?

Maybe if the American people hadn’t had the temerity to seek and win independence they might be expecting an offer of home rule any day now. – Yours, etc,

HUGH PIERCE,

Newtown Road,

Celbridge, Co Kildare.

Sir, – Former taoiseach John Bruton in drawing parallels between Irish and Scottish Independence models once again rebukes our revolutionary past.

Addressing a Reform Group seminar at the Royal Irish Academy, Mr Bruton said Scotland had decided to seek a mandate for Scottish independence from the UK without loss of life and without the bitterness of war and Ireland could have followed the same peaceful path towards the independence that Scotland is now considering taking.

The fight for Irish separatism was not just an ideological strike for independence. The Irish people had endured for centuries the violence of colonisation by our imperial masters This colonial violence inflicted on the dispossessed peasantry included the punitive policy of transportation to the penal colonies for minor infringements of law. It also forcibly imposed the plantation of Ireland, the Penal Laws that led to the “hedge schools” and Mass rocks, harsh evictions, harsher landlordism and chronic hunger. The violence of the Famine, which saw Ireland lose millions of her poorest children to starvation, disease and emigration, despite being an integral part of the wealthiest and most powerful empire in the world, was more than sufficient reason to forcibly rid this country of British rule. In the general election of 1918 John Redmond and home rule were overwhelmingly rejected by an electorate that espoused separatism. This wholly constitutional and parliamentary decision of the Irish people was rejected by the British government, a rejection which led to “loss of life and bitterness of war”. – Yours, etc,

TOM COOPER,

Templeville Road,

Templeogue,

Dublin 6W.

A chara, – John Bruton says that “Ireland could have followed the same peaceful path towards independence that Scotland is considering today”. He is forgetting (or pretending to be ignorant of the fact) that half a million Ulstermen and women swore to reject Ireland’s first step to separation from the UK by force of arms, and that the British army threatened mutiny if sent to counter this threat; two minor details that do not exist in Scotland’s situation. – Is mise,

SAM QUIRKE,

Church Street,

Killaloe, Co Clare.

Sir, – John Bruton’s fixation on the 1916 Rising is bordering on a Freudian obsession. – Yours, etc,

DEREK HENRY CARR,

Harcourt Terrace,

Dublin 2.

A chara, – I attended the conference at which John Bruton spoke. While Mr Bruton understandably is accorded full coverage for his praise for John Redmond and John Dillon in taking the Home Rule Bill to the statute book on September 18th, 1914, it was made quite clear at the conference that this was a mere parliamentary achievement which would never achieve reality. A speaker from the floor outlined James Joyce’s contention that British political leaders from Gladstone to Asquith never seriously intended to accede to home rule to Ireland but were stringing the Irish Parliamentary Party along.

This Joycean view was substantiated by Ronan Fanning, at the conference, based on his book Fatal Path, which studied the process from the British government records.

It is a pity that in his attempt to bolster the standing of John Redmond, John Bruton has to seek to undermine the heroic revolution of Easter 1916. – Yours, etc,

ANTHONY J JORDAN,

Gilford Road,

Dublin 4.

Sir, – If Alan Shatter (September 19th) in office had pursued the penalty points issue with the same vigour as he is pursuing it now that he is out of office, he would probably still be minister for justice. – Yours, etc,

NORMAN DAVIES,

Belton Terrace,

Bray,

Co Wicklow

Sir, – If Alan Shatter (September 19th) in office had pursued the penalty points issue with the same vigour as he is pursuing it now that he is out of office, he would probably still be minister for justice. – Yours, etc,

NORMAN DAVIES,

Belton Terrace,

Bray,

Co Wicklow.

Sir, – Further to correspondence relating to Eircode, if the Government is so insistent on the widespread use of the “Eir” prefix, why isn’t Enda Kenny called the “Eirhead”? – Yours, etc,

KEVIN O’SULLIVAN,

Ballyraine Park,

Letterkenny,

Co Donegal.

Irish Independent:

Love him or loathe him, Paisley – the enigma – will be missed

Letters to the Editor

Published 20/09/2014 | 02:30

It is crystal clear from the various views of Ian Paisley that at the end of his life he was an enigma to g people, especially to the opinion-formers trying to assess him.

Paisley was a tub-thumping anti-Catholic bigot on the stump. This was a man who bullied, intimidated and shouted down people who opposed him while at the same time exercising great charm in one-to-one meetings.

I still remember an amazing ‘Late Late Show’ with Gay Byrne hosting Paisley and what seemed like the majority of the Paisley family during his pre- First Minister period.

Paisley came over like everybody’s favourite film star. He was humorous, affable, witty, tolerant and extremely charismatic.

There was no sign of the Free Presbyterian preacher who would rail against ‘Romanists’, the Pope, Sinn Fein and the Nationalists. Dr No was replaced by Mr Nice. Those who said that the last time Paisley said “yes” was when he married his wife were confounded and dumbfounded. As I recall, the Rev Ian made such a good impression that night that Rhonda, his daughter, presented the ‘Late Late Show’ some time afterwards.

The big question, of course, is why he changed his long-ingrained policy of no truck whatsoever with the IRA and Sinn Fein to form a power-sharing government with them.

It was as if he had suddenly stopped reading the Old Testament and started reading the New Testament.

It will take a better and more-informed writer than has appeared so far to satisfactorily explain the life of Ian Paisley.

One thing is certain – love him or hate him he’ll be missed.

There is nobody around with his peculiar mixture of religion, politics, bile, hatred, humour, sarcasm and just downright hyperbolic demagoguery.

The verdict of history on Paisley will be interesting.

Liam Cooke, Coolock, Dublin 17

Commemorating Home Rule

I have decided to throw my pen behind the calls for Home Rule and John Redmond to be gloriously commemorated, but feel it should not be celebrated as a stand-alone event.

What I propose is that we have a ‘Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda Day’.

While I am sure the hardline republicans will be somewhat distressed to see the Home Rule Act receiving support, I suggest to appease any derision from this quarter by proposing we include ‘Nice 1′ and ‘Lisbon 1′ in any national day of commemoration.

Nice 1 could be the ‘we could have held onto our right to determine our own future’ argument commemorated.

Lisbon 1 could be a celebration for all those who argue that austerity and the banking collapse would never have happened had it been passed in our own parliament ?

I would also like to propose a date for the celebration of such a day – let’s say, April 2 – just to keep all those who are staunch supporters of Nice 2 and Lisbon 2 happy. And who knows we might get Brian Cowen out of political retirement and away from his day job to officially cut a ribbon, or plant a tree.

Dermot Ryan, Athenry, Co Galway

Cost of providing for asylum

There can hardly be better proof of the correlation between the political ‘silly season’ and the fine weather than the current controversy about direct provision for asylum seekers.

Much has been made of the fact that some people and their Irish-born families have been in the system for up to a decade.

Apart from the trademark state inefficiency, they are there because they have chosen not to accept the answers given to their asylum application and appeal, which were negative.

These processes are now dealt with in 12 and 18 weeks respectively, according to the 2013 ORAC/RAP reports. They are instead pursuing an eight-stage process at tax-payers’ expense, which has resulted in more than 849 appeals being listed at the High Court on June 14 and many more at Supreme Court level. The total cost of this asylum industry in the last five years is €1.27bn, according to Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald.

Ted Neville, Douglas, Co Cork

Vote for FG? Not anymore

Much as I admire Enda Kenny and his government for the difficult decisions and work they have done in turning our country’s finances around, I cannot, in all honesty, vote for any Fine Gael candidate in any future election.

The reason for this are the continuing pronouncements from John Bruton on any matter pertaining to the Irish nation!

K Nolan, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim

Bridging the Scottish divide

I think it is time we built a bridge from Ireland to Scotland as our next big civil engineering project. That would be from the nearest point, of course, from south west Scotland to Northern Ireland. We can do this together now we are staying as one country.

We could use a fixed link to revive the economy of both of these islands. The Chinese have built bridges over 26 miles long. Th e distance between south west Scotland and Northern Ireland is a mere 16 miles.

How many jobs would we create? We are greater together than apart. Now the sterling zone is staying as it is, perhaps we should rejoin sterling and take part in the type of negotiations we nearly had to have with Scotland?

Nigel F Boddy, Darlington, England

Spread knowledge, not illness

We should be grateful for the generosity of the US for sending 3,000 troops to combat Ebola.

This is a war worth fighting. The current outbreak is the deadliest, the most complex and most severe since the virus was initially discovered four decades ago. The speed of infection and the number of fatalities outpace the capacity of authorities to contain the virus.

People are highly vulnerable to diseases and infections which science is supposed to solve.

This is due to weak health systems and the failure to base policies on existing knowledge. And since the transmission chain of infection is from wildlife to livestock to humans, and it occurs from the consumption of bushmeat and burial practices, knowledge becomes an effectual tool to curb the spread of this virus, especially in under-resourced countries. Knowledge leads to the improvement of health as it becomes assimilated into the daily lives of people.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob, London, England

Irish Independent

21 September 2014 Tired

I jog around the park I still have arthritis in my left knee, but I manage to get round the park. A damp quiet day

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast wt up gammon for tea and her back pain is still there.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Independent:

Times:

Two voters in the referendum wear their political colours proudly. Now Scotland has decided to stay in the Union, will Westminster’s pledges be kept? (Robert Perry)

The Scots have spoken. Now let England have its say

IT IS excellent news that the sensible Scots have voted for the beloved status quo. In our contribution to world peace, democracy and commerce we are more influential together. What would it have cost us to reorganise institutions, set up border patrols and relocate our nuclear submarines, among other things?

The tail should not wag the dog, however, and there should be no more special treatment for Scotland over funding or votes at Westminster. Any further devolution must be openly debated and voted on by the English electorate. That’s what we have been denied by most British political parties over the debate on Europe.
Malcolm Hey, Portsmouth

TOO LATE IN THE DAY

The “no” vote on Scottish independence is due to the common sense of the Scottish people and in no way due to David Cameron, whose panicky last-minute promises showed how little he plans ahead.

Let us hope he will do better over the renegotiation of our relationship with Europe and will tell us his specific aims rather than leaving it to the last minute before declaring his hand, as he did with Scotland.
Dr Douglas Model, London SW1

BROKEN PROMISES

For the first time I am ashamed of my fellow Scots, who have been bought off in the referendum by a series of half-thought-out promises from the Westminster trinity of Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband. Does anyone believe that Westminster will honour pledges to give greater powers to Scotland when these three are fighting for their political lives at next year’s general election?

The promises will all be lost in a porridge of excuses and Scotland will degenerate into a backwater of England.
Dr Don Campbell-Thomson, Glasgow

BROWN COUP

The star of the Better Together campaign was Gordon Brown. This was his finest hour. He deserves at the very least a knighthood.
Pamela Shimell, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

YOUNG SHOULDERS

Alex Salmond’s ingenious idea to give the vote to children of 16 has not had the desired effect.
Don Roberts, Birkenhead, Merseyside

CONVERSION COURSE

What is clear is that Salmond is the smartest and wiliest politician in Britain today by some margin. Should the Scottish National party (SNP) convert itself into a British political force, he could reconsider his decision to step down and lead the party at the general election next year.
Douglas Lindsay, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset

TAKING LIBERTIES

I cannot express how delighted I am that the independence referendum proved to be a triumph for those who wished the UK to remain intact. My reasons are not political, constitutional, financial or even emotional.

Rather, I would be fearful of a Scotland run in the manner displayed by so many in the SNP and its allies during the campaign — a Scotland where opponents are labelled anti-Scottish, or are threatened with retribution for their opinions. I would also have been fearful of a country where free speech and expression are no longer precious.
Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

CHANGING THEIR TUNE

Having conceded that they can’t rise now and be a nation again, shouldn’t the Scots change their “national” anthem?
Walter Roberts, Edinburgh

ENGLAND EXPECTS

The MP John Redwood asks: “Who speaks for England?” (“If the marriage is saved, the English deserve new rights too”, Comment, last week). While MPs may speak on England’s behalf, they are neither elected nor mandated to do so.

The 2012 Future of England survey showed 56% support a form of governance that treats England as a distinct political unit, compared with 8% in support of regions in England having elected assemblies.

MPs of all parties in English constituencies need to reject any further attempts at imposing regionalisation — and call for an English parliament.
Matthew Aldridge, Campaign for an English Parliament, London SE6

SEATING ARRANGEMENTS

I do not normally agree with Redwood, but much of what he wrote made good sense. Should Scotland get devo max, its MPs ought not be allowed to vote on English-only issues.

There are 59 Scottish seats at present in Westminster, so who will form the government after the next election? The party with the most seats overall, or the one with most in England and Wales? I fear there may be trouble ahead.
Gareth Bennett, Cardiff

QUESTION TIME

The resolution of the West Lothian question is overdue. Politicians must grasp the nettle.
Robin Knott, By email

WESTMINSTER COUNSEL

Scottish MPs are likely to be excluded from English topics at Westminster. How are they going to react to working two or three days a week on a pro-rata salary? Perhaps it is time to follow the example of the Northern Ireland and the Welsh assemblies and send representatives of the Scottish government to Westminster instead of the present MPs, who vote as instructed by their whips.
Brian Chilles, Alva, Clackmannanshire

OFF COLOUR

Shame on Camilla Long for her sneering and offensive description of the Loyal Orange Lodges’ march in Edinburgh (“Own goal by Hobbit horde in pompoms and braids”, News, last week). To refer to the marchers as “Hobbits” and the meeting as being “like a nuclear version of Ladies’ Day at Aintree” is cheap journalism.

I had the privilege of coalmining with lodge members in Fife as a young man. They were hard-working Christians whose core values embraced loyalty to Queen and country and a strong family life.
Professor Andrew Porteous, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire

DEMOCRATIC VICTORY

We should appreciate living in such a democratic country. An independent Scotland lost and the UK won. There were no riots in the street, no heads rolled and no leaders were thrown in prison. No wonder this little island is the utopia for so many repressed people.
Mavis Goldberg, Manchester

Give children gift of time with parents

How sad that Sian Griffiths urged parents to congratulate themselves for choosing daycare instead of home-based care (“The nursery kids are all right”, News Review, last week). Time and time again we’re told that more childcare, more paid work for mothers and fathers and less family life is progress. But for whom? Not for babies and young children, who, if they could express themselves, would always rather be with their parents at that tender age.

If we’re talking “research”, there’s plenty to show that parents would dearly like to have more family time and that children benefit enormously from the loving care provided by a special person in their lives when they are young. It gives them the secure base they need and it’s the best place for learning about life. Family time is also important for teenagers and for elderly relatives. What a miserable world if we don’t have time to care.
Marie Peacock, Mothers at Home Matter

POINTS

FORCED ENTRY

While sympathising with the UK’s plight regarding illegal immigration from Calais, I also urge it not to forget the pickle Malta has landed itself in as a result of its EU membership (“Leaky EU borders behind tide of migrants to UK”, Letters, last week). We are now being invaded by hundreds of illegal African migrants, whom under various EU regulations we are forced to keep, despite being a tiny, overpopulated island with a very small economy. The best the EU commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom could offer us was to urge our government not to detain these illegal immigrants but to “integrate” them as soon as possible.
Dr Charles Gauci, Gozo, Malta

JIM SLIP

Richard Brooks (Biteback, Culture, September 7) called attention to the increasing absurdity of cross-gender casting in plays. Surely the most ludicrous outrage will be perpetrated in the National Theatre’s scheduled production of Treasure Island, in which Jim Hawkins is to be transmogrified into the “innkeeper’s granddaughter”. As Robert Louis Stevenson made clear, his classic was written for boys, and it is probably the finest male adventure story of all. One cannot imagine boys taken to the show as a Christmas treat will be pleased to see that Jim is not a lad at all. Some theatres complain that it is difficult to attract young men. Treasure Island would be an ideal introduction, so why emasculate it?
Alan Stockwell, Smarden, Kent

DUTY OF CARE

Theresa May said after the resignation of Shaun Wright, the South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner, over the Rotherham scandal that anyone who fails in their duty should step down. So why is Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, considering standing for mayor of London after failing to act over the allegations of child abuse in Islington care homes when she was the council’s leader (“Hodge’s choices”, Magazine, last week)?
Dermot Donegan, Darwen, Lancashire

BIG MISTAKE

I can’t decide if India Knight is being ironic or a fool in her column “Bite your lip, chew your knuckles, but never tell a child they’re fat” (Comment, last week). Obesity is the biggest health crisis this country faces: in 25 years it will be the cause of an NHS crash. And yet Knight feels we should not mention to anyone that they are fat for fear of hurting their feelings. Obesity should be socially unacceptable in the way drink driving and smoking are.
Terry Whitehead, Bourne, Lincolnshire

HOME TRUTHS

Eleanor Mills fails to understand the nature of any big expansion of historic cities such as Oxford (“New builds to keep the spires dreaming”, News Review, September 7). You would see not a new Bloomsbury or Regent’s Park but endless dour estates, as no finance would be available if the object was to provide affordable housing. The historic centres would crumble under the strain of increased pressure. The figure of 100,000 new homes for Oxfordshire is based on a dubious report for a business-led organisation with its own agenda, and the leadership of the Oxford Civic Society does not express any public desire for more urban sprawl.
Paul Hornby, Oxford

PAISLEY PRAISE

I think everyone expected Ian Paisley, a fiery politician turned gentle giant, to be around for ever. The tributes on television were poignant and the words from the deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, were moving. It showed how far the people of Northern Ireland have moved on since the Troubles, and Paisley’s positive relationship with McGuinness served as an example of this for all to see.
Colin NevinTel Aviv, Israel

Corrections and clarifications

Rod Liddle (“Yours at a snip: a Jo’burg heaven with murder at the gate”, Comment, last week) wrote that Oscar Pistorius’s house where he shot dead his girlfriend was in one of Johannesburg’s most salubrious suburbs. This is incorrect. It is in a suburb of Pretoria. We apologise for the error.

Our property report “Country club”, featuring 10 vibrant but commutable villages (Home, last week), confused Whipton, a district of Exeter, with Whimple, a village near the city, and contained inaccurate information. We apologise for the error.

Complaints about inaccuracies in all sections of The Sunday Times, should be addressed to complaints@sunday-times.co.uk or Complaints, The Sunday Times, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF. In addition, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) will examine formal complaints about the editorial content of UK newspapers and magazines. Please go to our website for full details of how to lodge a complaint.

Birthdays

Curtly Ambrose, cricketer, 51; Jimmy Armfield, footballer and pundit, 79; Jerry Bruckheimer, film and TV producer, 71; Ethan Coen, film maker, 57; Leonard Cohen, singer, 80; Don Felder, guitarist, 67; Liam Gallagher, singer, 42; Stephen King, author, 67; Ricki Lake, chat-show host, 46; Bill Murray, actor, 64

Anniversaries

1792 the National Convention in France abolishes the monarchy; 1937 JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit is published; 1964 Malta gains independence from UK; 1981 Belize gains independence from UK; 1999 earthquake strikes Taiwan, killing about 2,400 people; 2013 al-Shabaab Islamists attack shopping centre in Nairobi, killing at least 67

Telegraph:

Irish Times:

Irish Independent:

Madam – May I congratulate Lucinda O’Sullivan on her interview with Alison de Vere Hunt of Cashel Mart (Sunday Independent, 14 September). She articulated the intolerable pressures experienced by the farming community in rural Ireland today, some, unfortunately, even leading to loss of life, as happened in Alison’s family.

At last year’s Agricultural Science Association conference in Waterford, I asked the Government to

introduce a “yellow card” system for farm inspections for this very reason. The recent response to me was: “We would have to get EU permission.”

Since then I was told it is operating in France. Why not here?

Politicians have abandoned rural Ireland and are now carrying out the suggestions raised in Huxley’s “Brave New World” to take people out of rural Ireland.

Their tactics of extra charges, reduced or no public services, encouraging rural crime and using fear for our property and even our lives to drive us out, are just a few of their conceived methods.

The commission for the development of rural areas chaired by Pat Spillane have reported on “34 ways to improve Irish country life” but have omitted to include the number one priority – remove the fear factor which is a priority issue for families and the elderly.

May I call on our law makers, our public representatives and all politicians to read Lucinda’s article  on Alison’s experiences and act immediately on the issues raised.

Save rural Ireland where the very roots of our great image of beautiful countryside , natural health-giving food production and Irish friendliness is born. It’s intentional destruction experienced today will ruin Ireland as a nation.

David Thompson, B Agr Sc,

Cappamore,  Co Limerick

Are there no Irish Navvies?

Madam – Recently on the return leg of a 40 km journey along the scenic Wicklow Way with my son,   water and supplies were running low. We decided to make a slight change to our pre-planned route in order to take respite at a well known traditional Irish pub. This was located near the small village of Glencullen.

Enjoying the weather, flora and fauna we descended from Glencullen Mountain onto the R116 when. Then, upon rounding a bend a few hundred meters from the pub, we stumbled upon a rare sight indeed.

No, it wasn’t the red deer we had seen in the hills, nor was it the elusive red grouse, but to our surprise a large fleet of  UK- registered  vehicles and  machinery together with with several dozen men, all busy laying tarmacadam and chippings along the road.

I consulted my OS maps  – sheets 56 & 50  – and no,  I hadn’t made a map reading error, we had not strayed into the UK and were in fact still in the Republic.

While sitting down outside the pub enjoying our well earned refreshments, perusing our maps and planning route home, a few questions sprang to mind.

How was it viable for a UK company to undertake such road works in the Dublin/Wicklow Mountains; and  given that wages here in Ireland have been driven to a record low since the end of the Celtic Tiger era, and that we still have record numbers here in Ireland unemployed, why can we not compete with these companies for such contracts?

 Have all of our own home-grown road maintenance technicians emigrated to the four corners of the world?

Noel Tuohy,

Drogheda, Co.Meath

First, face up to past mistakes

Madam – Jody Corcoran’s article (Sunday Independent, 14 September) about celebrating the lives of public figures like Bertie Ahern before they die, misses the point.

He doesn’t seem to understand that the reason there was a genuine response to the death of Albert Reynolds is not because people glossed over his mistakes, nor even that people had ever supported Fianna Fáil. It was because on his death, the mistakes he made became part of history to be debated at another time and place.  The public’s compassion came from the recognition that he didn’t pretend he was something he was not. Also, his funeral was not about what political offices he held but was about his wife, his children and his grandchildren.  There were no political speeches, no line of old time party hacks.  Just his family whose clear warmth touched an emotional chord within people. They empathised when they saw Kathleen Reynolds and her children quite clearly distraught at their loss on their journey through this life, with all its ups and downs. In a nutshell, you get the sense that if the Reynolds family invited you into their home for dinner, you’d feel welcome and you’d enjoy the meal.

But when it comes to people like Bertie Ahern, or Gerry Adams for that matter, the fact is they continue to wallow in denial about their past and their contribution to the damage caused to our country and the impact their mistakes had on all our lives.  Until they face up to their past and admit it, there can be no forgiveness for what they did or the mistakes they made.

You cannot draw a line unless you know what it is you’re drawing a line under and the permission to draw such a line must come from their victims, not in Mr Adams’ case some squalid secret deal with the British government. In Mr Ahern’s case it must come from the Irish people whose lives he destroyed, the hundreds of thousands of emigrants, the people who lost jobs or homes or businesses.

 Desmond FitzGerald

Canary Wharf, London

‘Scurrilous’ article on John Paul II

Madam – I was astonished to read the scurrilous attack on St John Paul 11 by John Boyne in the Sunday Independent last week. For someone who said he didn’t want to be hard on the Church, he seemed to operate on the principle that you can’t libel the dead, when he accused him of criminal behaviour.      As the world and his wife know, the process of canonisation involves a rigorous examination of the deceased’s actions, writings, speeches, etc. I doubt very much if John Boyne applied the same rigour to his judgement of John Paul, a man who fought the evils of Nazism, Communism, capitalism and secularism.

Sean Ryan,

Dundrum, Dublin 16

Water supply now has to be asked for

Madam – Irish Water are sending out to every household, what they are calling an “application form” for supply and billing.

This must in fact mean the life-giving liquid can only

be obtained if we are asking for it to be provided by Irish Water.

“Application Form” implies we have a choice in whether we drink and wash with ‘their’ water, or if we decide to paddle our own canoe, without he benefit of a flow from the only supplier.

In the midst of the destruction of so many lives in this cruel country through existing taxes and levies, to think people have the added fear of not being able to afford water in their  homes, is the last straw. We are merely taxable units now, and not citizens with valid rights and concerns.

If and when there comes a widespread demand for water barrels with which to catch rain water in the future, be assured there will also be some other tax imposed through a follow-up lie.

Robert Sullivan,

Bantry, Co.Cork

Kealy’s piece on socialism ‘spot on’

Madam – I wish to defend Willie Kealy’s article (Sunday Independent, 7 September) –  “Socialist Ireland pushes capitalism to the margins, “ after the response it received from Vincent Kennedy who was “aghast” last week.

Mr Kealy was spot on, when he wrote that those who work for the State “do not produce anything which can be sold for real money”.     It is of huge importance that we all grasp this fact.  The private sector which is the wealth- producing part of the economy,  pays the taxes that support public and civil servants.

As well, the government continues to borrow €800 million per month of “consumptive debt”  to service, completely unaffordable salaries, golden handshakes and pensions to those embedded in the top tier of the public service system as well as politicians and those on extremely lucrative state contracts, namely  legal, accountancy and managment consultant firms. These people  have been  protected  to the core, at huge cost to the private sector and the economy in general since  2008.  We can therefore safely say,  we have a new form of neo-capitalism, where the Irish state has become the economy; capitalism has been turned on its ear, and the private sector is subservient to the State.

If we do not put a stop to this, the parasites at the top will bring the entire system crashing down upon us.

Olivia Hazell,

Clane, Co Kildare

First class flights damaged Ferris

Madam – I find the revelation in the Sunday Independent that Martin Ferris TD flew business class on a 27 hour plane trip to Melborne both astonishing and disappointing, given his numerous calls on this and previous governments to quit reckless expenditure on junkets or unnecessary travel around the world.

His party paid for his luxury flight. How must all those people who contributed money to it feel? The many dedicated men and women who organized fund-raisers, large and small,  across the country must feel like twats after hearing about this.

His credibility as a defender of the poor and underprivileged is in ruins. The precious party funds spent on that trip down under could have put food on the table for hundreds of Irish people whose lives have been ravaged by the recession and cruel austerity regime. And to think his supporters have frequently asserted that he walks in the footsteps of the great Connolly!

Sinn Fein must as a priority expel Martin Ferris and he should also resign his Dail Seat for the sake of the very cause he claims to hold dear: a political system under which all are equal, where wealth is distributed fairly and that is purged of the cute-hoorism that has bedeviled Irish politics. If James Connolly, a true socialist, had foreseen Ferris’s pathetic party-financed luxury jaunt he might well have stayed at home in Easter Week…or maybe just called to the GPO to buy a stamp.

John Fitzgerald ,

Callan, Co. Kilkenny

Only one way to clear Ragworth

Madam – Approximately 30 years ago while living up the Dublin mountains, I was approached by a local farmer to give him a hand for two days removing Ragworth weed from his field. We agreed on a fee for the work and to my astonishment he wanted each one hand-pulled and piled  into large haycock-type stacks. It was a three acre field and needless to say my back ached for weeks after. About a fortnight later he doused the stacks with diesel and lit them; a week after that he put ten goats on the field.

I passed that same field a month ago and its smooth clean weedless surface resembles a snooker table. Clearly removing this pesky weed by hand followed by the goats is the only permanent solution.

Proinsias O Rathaille,

Killiney, Co Dublin

Giving and sharing is the true path

Madam – Some very good points were raised in Colum Kenny’s article concerning the Irish bishops. I concur with most of what he had to say in his article; and, in particular, the need for embracing women completely into the ‘priestly role.’

God treats all of us equally and with the same love. When mankind can learn to love as Christ taught in a total giving/sharing way for the good of all, only then will our pilgrim journey on earth be completed.

Our  sin is in not recognising the beauty of Christ in our

Lives, and our inability to

forgive our enemies their

worst acts against us.

Thomas O’Reilly

Monasterevin, Kildare

Sharia Law is not for Irish women

Madam – Claire Mc Cormack’s article ‘Rows erupts over wearing hijabs …’ (Sunday Independent, 14 September) prompts me to think there are some people out there who have but a single agenda: that of softening up their audiences into thinking Sharia Law is the best thing that has ever happened to humanity. Well, it is not.

 Having lived for six years in countries ruled by Sharia Law, and having studied it, I have a fair idea of what I am talking about. A Rubik’s Cube is still a Rubik’s Cube ever which way you turn it. However eloquently and scholarly Sharia Law is presented it still remains a means of repressing women.

David Quinn of the Iona Institute is on the right track when he says he has “issues” with what he is hearing. The only inclusiveness that Sharia Law unabashedly upholds is that of the subjugation of women.

Women of Ireland – this is a major attack on your dignity, and ultimately a destroyer of our nonpareil Irish culture. Let your hair blow freely in the wind; your eyes be glistened by the sun, and your lips by the rain sweetly kissed.

Richard Mc Sweeney,

Tallow, Co. Waterford

Penal law memory puts us off Sharia

Madam – Having read Carol Hunt’s article (Sunday Independent, 7 September) and Adrian Burke’s letter (Sunday Independent 14 September) regarding the views of Dr. Ali Selim, I feel compelled to say I could not agree more with the sentiments of both.

 It seem extraordinary that Dr. Selim should lecture this country on our educational obligations knowing full well that the system we in Ireland have enjoyed since independence has served the nation very well indeed.

I would be able to take and digest his suggestions about removing school emblems depicting Christian beliefs seriously if I could travel to his country wearing a crucifix or other such Christian emblem and be certain that I was not subject to Sharia Law or that my wife could accompany me and not be required to wear the Burka.

Perhaps Dr Selim is familiar with our history in penal times when the Irish were forced to express their Christian beliefs in secret in fear of being caught by the imperial masters of that time.   This generation is more enlightened and Dr. Selim should be so aware.

Tom Butler, Co. Dublin.

We need a new  plan for Palestine

Madam – I am so disappointed in your publishing such a tendentious letter as that from W. Dunphy (“Writers ‘were wrong’ about Israel/Gaza , Sunday Independent, 14 September) in which he had the chutzpah to claim not to be “anti-Jewish or anti-Zionist” while referring to “the murderous, land-grabbing Israelis”.

The claim that “the people of Gaza are living in a virtual concentration camp”, let alone the allegation of “the destruction of a people”, is ludicrous and shows how easily one can be misled by mendacious Palestinian propaganda.

As it happens, the population density of the Gaza strip is lower than, for example, that of Singapore and Hong Kong, both highly successful economically. There is no reason why Gaza should not be equally so if only it could be rid of Hamas’s stifling crypto-theocratic control or, what would be almost equally disastrous, its replacement by Abbas’s Fatah kleptocracy.

The first step for its rehabilitation must be the abolition of UNRWA which encourages a perpetual dependency culture by its definition of Palestinian refugee as anyone with an ancestor who was displaced as a result of the invasion of Palestine in 1948. Its place should be taken by the UNHCR whose definition should be implemented whereby only those actually displaced would qualify, and then only where nothing else can be done to help them rebuild their lives, as was the case with all other refugees elsewhere in the world.

  I find the writer’s comment on “the indifference of you and some of your columnists to the plight of these poor people” utterly appalling and implore you not to be bullied into taking a partisan line on this complex international problem.

Martin D. Stern,

Salford,  England

Penal law memory puts us off Sharia

Madam – Having read Carol Hunt’s article (Sunday Independent, 7 September) and Adrian Burke’s letter (Sunday Independent 14 September) regarding the views of Dr. Ali Selim, I feel compelled to say I could not agree more with the sentiments of both.   It seem extraordinary that Dr. Selim should lecture this country on our educational obligations knowing full well that the system we in Ireland have enjoyed since independence has served the nation very well indeed.      I would be able to take and digest his suggestions about removing school emblems depicting Christian beliefs seriously if I could travel to his country wearing a crucifix or other such Christian emblem and be certain that I was not subject to Sharia Law or that my wife could accompany me and not be required to wear the Burka.    Perhaps Dr Selim is familiar with our history in penal times when the Irish were forced to express their Christian beliefs in secret in fear of being caught by the imperial masters of that time.   This generation is more enlightened and Dr. Selim should be so aware.

Tom Butler, Co. Dublin.

We need a new plan for Palestine

Madam – I am so disappointed in your publishing such a tendentious and bigoted letter as that from W. Dunphy (“Writers ‘were wrong’ about Israel/Gaza , Sunday Independent, 14 September) in which he had the chutzpah to claim not to be “anti-Jewish or anti-Zionist” while referring to “the murderous, land-grabbing Israelis”.

The claim that “the people of Gaza are living in a virtual concentration camp”, let alone the allegation of “the destruction of a people”, is ludicrous and shows how easily one can be misled by mendacious Palestinian propaganda.

As it happens, the population density of the Gaza strip is lower than, for example, that of Singapore and Hong Kong, both highly successful economically. There is no reason why Gaza should not be equally so if only it could be rid of Hamas’s stifling crypto-theocratic control or, what would be almost equally disastrous, its replacement by Abbas’s Fatah kleptocracy.

The first step for its rehabilitation must be the abolition of UNRWA which encourages a perpetual dependency culture by its definition of Palestinian refugee as anyone with an ancestor who was displaced as a result of the invasion of Palestine in 1948. Its place should be taken by the UNHCR whose definition should be implemented whereby only those actually displaced would qualify, and then only where nothing else can be done to help them rebuild their lives, as was the case with all other refugees elsewhere in the world.

I find the writer’s comment on “the indifference of you and some of your columnists to the plight of these poor people” utterly appalling and implore you not to be bullied into taking a partisan line on this complex international problem.

Martin D. Stern,

Salford, England

22 September 2014 Boredom

I jog around the park I still have arthritis in my left knee, but I manage to get round the park. A damp quiet day we are bored but too tired to do anything about it

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast weight up rabbit for tea and her back pain is still there but decreasing.