2 December 2014 Bank

I still have arthritis in my left toe I am stricken with gout. But I go to the bank and the Post Office and the Market to Boots to buy a hot water bottle for Mary,

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast weight up rabbit for tea and her tummy pain is still there. We go to see the GP

Obituary:

Sabah was a Lebanese singer who perfected sentimental ballads and melodramatic movies but not the art of marriage

5:36PM GMT 01 Dec 2014

Comments

Guardian:

Pre-charge bail was introduced 30 years ago to limit the freedom of individuals while police conducted further investigations. No restriction was put on the amount of time police can hold someone on pre-charge bail.

It has led to a perversion of justice where today more than 70,000 people are languishing on a form of legal limbo in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. More than 5,000 of those have been on police bail for more than six months. Innocent people have been left on pre-charge bail for years before their cases have been dropped or thrown out of court.

This is a scandal. Those on it have their careers put on hold. The mental anguish of not knowing what will happen to them is in itself a form of punishment without trial: the weight of suspicion grows heavier with each day. There is no right of appeal.

All these individuals are innocent until proven guilty. It is a fundamental axiom that justice delayed is justice denied. Home secretary Theresa May has called for a time limit. We believe it should be a maximum 28 days, reviewed by a judge and not by police. We welcome her words of support. Words must be turned into action. The government must act swiftly to right this wrong and we ask all political parties to strongly consider putting a 28-day limit on pre-charge bail at the centre of their general election manifestos.
Baron Daniel Finkelstein Associate editor, the Times
David Davis MP Conservative, Haltemprice and Howden
Dominic Raab MP Conservative, Esher and Walton
Janet Street-Porter Editor at large, Independent on Sunday
John Hemming MP Liberal Democrat, Birmingham and Yardley
Nigel Evans MP Conservative, Ribble Valley
Frances Crook Chief executive, Howard League for Penal Reform
Gavin Millar QC Media lawyer
Roy Greenslade Professor of journalism, City University London
Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss Former Lord Justice of Appeal
Jon Robins Editor, Justice Gap
Sir Edward Garnier QC MP Conservative, Harborough
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC Labour peer, civil rights campaigner
Damian Green MP Conservative, Ashford
Eddy Shah Publisher
Renate Samson Chief executive, Big Brother Watch
Caroline Lucas MP Green party, Brighton
Steven Barker Founder, Barker Gillette solicitors
Lord Brian Paddick Liberal Democrat peer and former Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner
Matthew Elliott Chief executive, Business for Britain
Peter Tatchell Human rights campaigner
Andy  McNab Former SAS sergeant and author
Lord David Craig Former chief of defence staff
Lord Guy Black Executive director, Telegraph Media Group
Baroness Jenny Jones Green party peer and member of the London Assembly
Andrew Caplen President of the Law Society
Milos Stankovic Former Major in the Parachute Regiment and victim of police bail
Graham Stringer MP

• Roy Greenslade writes that the police have declared war on journalists; I would add lawyers and campaigners to the list (Plebgate fallout: police appear to have declared war on journalists, 1 December). I am not going to defend the dodgy practices used by some journalists. However, the examination by the police of phone records of 1,700 people, including lawyers and journalists, surely cannot be legal.

The police appear to be using Ripa to snoop on journalists, lawyers and campaigners. Their database that monitors “domestic extremism” contains a file on me, an elected politician with no criminal record, who used to sit on the official scrutiny body for the Met. They are overreaching and misusing the powers they have.

If we are to restore trust in the Met, the mayor of London must hold them to account when they overstep the mark in this way. He should be asking the Met why they hold files on journalists and elected politicians on a database about domestic extremism. The mayor has said he wants the police to seek judicial approval before going after journalists’ phone records. As the man responsible for the Met police he should get them to seek judicial approval as a matter of course and lobby government to make this change permanent.
Jenny Jones
Green, London Assembly

• Devolution of the justice system should be seen as a positive step towards creating a court system which is fit for the 21st Century and fit for London (Mayor seeks control over London’s court system, 1 December). Our research, Better Courts, shows that when decisions about courts are made locally, not from Whitehall, they are more innovative, better coordinated and more effective at reducing crime.

London can learn from other leading world cities, like New York. There, through local accountability and coordination, judges, policy-makers and agencies have been able to concentrate efforts to tackle repeat offending. New York City has transformed itself from one of the most dangerous cities in the US to one of the safest.

The problems our courts face are specific to the areas they serve. What might make sense in London might not work in rural Norfolk or Cumbria. Judges are key to effective local courts and are better placed to manage them. Central control misses the point. Judges should lead local efforts to reduce crime and guarantee meaningful justice.
Phil Bowen
Director, Centre for Justice Innovation

• Boris Johnson’s proposes to make the crown prosecution service in London answerable to him as the Metropolitan police already are. The current record of the CPS when it comes to prosecuting police misconduct is feeble enough. Look at its failure to pursue cases of deaths in police custody or by police marksmen. How much more feeble would its oversight of the police be if it were accountable to the police’s own head? What is needed for improved police and legal system accountability is the removal of the monopoly on prosecution held by the CPS and the creation of an independent, truly powerful, oversight body for all the institutions empowered to use force against citizens.
Nik Wood
London

Concerns that apprenticeships are no longer focused on young people are misplaced (Report, 1 December). Only 6.25% of apprenticeships currently go to workers aged over-50 – one of the few publicly funded forms of training available to older people. At a time when the pension age is rising and will require people to work to the age of 66 by the end of the decade, it is more important than ever that older people have access to the training opportunities that allow them to develop the skills needed to find and keep jobs. Just under 45% of all unemployed older people aged between 50 and 64 (153,000 people) have been out of work for more than a year and have little prospect of finding a job without training and other help.
Caroline Abrahams
Charity director, Age UK

19.41 GMT

Christine Smith (Country Diary, South Uist, 28 November) writes about the wrens sheltering from the cold in nest boxes. In the early 70s my father owned an old farmhouse just outside the village of Iden, near Rye in Sussex. There was a sudden severe cold snap one night near Christmas. We became aware as evening fell of a noise all round the house. Every bush and tree was alive with birds. They flew to the wall of the house and in a great wide river streamed up and under the eaves disappearing into the roof. The roof was huge and the wrens, for that was what they were, were, seemingly, endlessly streaming in. There were, I am sure, thousands. The house was later badly damaged by fire and the roof replaced. I’m sure access for birds was not considered. The original house was over 500 years old and I wonder if the wrens had built up their knowledge over hundreds of years and were coming from miles around. Now, that is all lost – nowhere to shelter and survive. It’s said wrens are among the most numerous birds, but I’m sure their numbers have declined in the last 40 years as access to buildings has been cut off. In the 70s we were unaware of the miracle we were seeing. We didn’t consider the astonishing fact that we were sharing our house with all those tiny bodies.
Christine Dixon
London

Independent:

The general agreement in the press appeared to be that George Osborne’s £2bn promise of funding for the NHS constituted some form of electoral sweetener or “lollipop” for voters gearing their minds toward a general election.

Sadly, this follows four-and-a-half years of brutal cuts to our health services and in particular to our mental health services.

As someone who works in community mental health and who has had to navigate all tiers of the psychiatric system in recent months on behalf of a distressed family member, I have seen first-hand the ways in which this funding decimation has played out on the ground.

And George Osborne’s electoral lollipop has come too late for the distraught and desperate families and their many fine professionals pulverised into professional impotence and desperation by an austerity programme  that has savaged equally  the mental health services and the many people  who are drawn into  needing them.

It has come too late for the 16-year-old girl with mental health problems who was kept in police cells for two days because of a lack of care beds.

Mr Osborne’s pre-election lollipop has also come too late for the seven mental health patients who have killed themselves in England since 2012 after being told that there were no beds for them – and for the patient who was denied a bed and who then went on to kill his mother.

Such pre-electoral sweeteners are too late for the many affected by the 2,179 mental health beds cut since 2011. When mental health beds are cut, lives are lost. Sweeteners and lollipops are too late for the seven patients mentioned above.

However, these cuts are not too late for the one in five Coalition MPs with links to private health firms whose asset-stripping of the NHS presents a win-win scenario of both pleasing the public with pre-election lollipops and funnelling more funding to the private sector.

For the sake of the families of those seven people and for the many vulnerable people whose needs can’t be met outside the election period, we urgently need to chart a new politics of mental health provision where our desperately underfunded services finally receive parity with our partners in the developed world. As the election looms and Mr Hunt and Mr Osborne don the industrial high-visibility jackets and hard hats that have become the de rigueur electioneering costume, one might hope that they also stop in to a local mental health facility to see first-hand the damage that their neglect of the mental health agenda has wrought.

It’s the kind of damage that voter lollipops cannot put right.

Dr Carl Walker
National Health Action Party and European Task Force on Austerity and Mental Health
Worthing, West Sussex

Justice delayed is justice denied

Pre-charge bail was introduced 30 years ago to limit the freedom of individuals while police conducted further investigations. No restriction was put on the amount of time police can hold someone on pre-charge bail.

It has led to a perversion of justice where today more than 70,000 people are languishing in a form of legal limbo in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

More than 5,000 of  those have been on police bail for more than six months. Innocent people have been left on pre-charge bail for years before their cases have been dropped or thrown out  of court.

This is a scandal. Those on pre-charge bail have their careers put on hold. The mental anguish of not knowing what will happen to them is in itself a form of punishment without trial. The weight of suspicion grows heavier with each day. There is no right of appeal. All these individuals are innocent until proven guilty. It is a fundamental axiom that justice delayed is justice denied.

Home Secretary Theresa May has called for a time limit. We believe it should be a maximum 28 days, reviewed by a judge and not by police. We welcome her words of support. The Government must now act swiftly to turn words into action.

Baron (Daniel) Finkelstein, David Davis MP, Dominic Raab MP, Janet Street Porter,  John Hemming MP, Nigel Evans MP, Frances Crook, Gavin Millar QC, Roy Greenslade, Baroness (Elizabeth) Butler Sloss, Jon Robins, Sir Edward Garnier QC MP, Baroness (Helena) Kennedy QC, Damian Green MP, Eddy Shah, Renate Samson, Caroline Lucas MP, Steven Barker, Lord (Brian) Paddick, Matthew Elliott, Peter Tatchell, Andy McNab, Lord (David) Craig, Lord  (Guy) Black, Baroness (Jenny) Jones

Media overkill on Black Friday

Your front-page photograph (29 November) of crowds fighting over a television, was presumably meant to illustrate the public hysteria generated by Black Friday.

However, a closer  look at the photo reveals that there are eight customers vying for the television, with four store staff in attendance – and nine photographers (not including the snapper taking the picture) all crowding in to get the shot. More of a media frenzy than a public one.

John Rices
Brighton

Might Sir Bob save Myleene and Sol?

In the event of a Labour government and a mansion tax, could we encourage Sir Bob Geldof to come up with a charity single to help out Myleene Klass, Sol Campbell and others in their hour of need.

Mr Campbell seems a deserving case, as he would appear to be down to his last mansion.

James Dixon
Newcastle upon Tyne

Great education and small minds

I agree with much of Emma Fox Wilson’s letter (1 December) concerning the behaviour of Andrew Mitchell and David Mellor, but I believe the problem is more fundamental than “stupidity”. I think it is more a question of “great education but little souls”.

Stanley Tyrer
Greenmount, Bury, Lancashire

Move Parliament  to the real world

Penny Mordaunt is the latest of a long line of politicians who seem to have destroyed their own credibility (and any future) by one ill-chosen speech to the House of Commons. Why do they do it?

Westminster is an odd, lonely place. No one appears to be listening to anyone else. MPs can spend a decade in Westminster failing to make any impact at all. In attempts to attract publicity MPs frequently go too far. One is put in mind of Lembit Opik.

Westminster is not, alas, a place where talent, ability or a worthy past are recognised. As someone who once worked for an MP and had a Westminster pass, I would move Parliament out of London altogether. Usually good people behave out of character there, and parliamentarians, both MPs and peers, would regain a sense of proportion if we took them out of London.

Nigel F Boddy
Darlington

It’s nice to see MPs with a sense of humour in this age of grey identical politicians, but I’m sad that Penny Mordaunt had to stoop to the level of the Bullingdon Club for a laugh.

If saying “cock” is the best our brightest MPs can do, then let’s observe two minutes’ silence to honour the passing of the political bon mot, backbench quip and Churchillian one-liner.

Ian McKenzie
Lincoln

Another man with rare vision

The discovery of another copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623), almost 400 years after its publication, is welcome news. Writing from Paris, John Lichfield says that it is “one of the rarest and most precious books in the world” (report, 1 December). One can readily agree on the preciousness of the book, less so on its rarity, with 233 copies surviving. How would he describe a book of which only a dozen copies have survived? This is the case for Emeric Cruce’s The New Cyneas, published in Paris in the same year.

Long regarded as lost, it is now regarded as a work which pioneered the theory of free trade, and proposed (in the middle of the Thirty Years War) an organisation for world peace which in several respects is still ahead of the UN.

The only known copy in the UK of this remarkable work is in the Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature in Senate House, University of London.

Dr Peter van den Dungen
Peace Studies
University of Bradford

Martin Wiggins states (1 December) that “we already knew” that Shakespeare was admired and studied by English Catholics.

What is intriguing is to know whether the Jesuits of St Omer equally admired and studied the works of Marlowe, Kyd, Peele, Middleton and Fletcher, as Shakespeare’s peers, well before Shakespeare became the acknowledged premier among them. In other words, what other playwrights’ writings are found in the library associated with the Shakespeare First Folio?

Thomas Merriam
Basingstoke

Times:

14

Sir, Your item (News, Nov 29) extolled the virtues of teaching maths using pictures. Such ideas are not new, however.

Anyone who taught maths in the Sixties will remember Cuisenaire rods, which used Piaget’s theory and practice of allowing children to manipulate apparatus before they could move on to the abstract concept of numbers. They proved effective but the rods were, however, the bane of the tired teacher’s life when at the end of the day you had to scour the floor to find the tiny cube units.
Ann Tyas
Brampton Bierlow, S Yorks

Sir, It is important to get facts right before people outside Hong Kong, no matter how well meaning, rush to support the “pro-democracy” protest in the former British colony (“China stokes old tensions as MPs banned from Hong Kong”, Dec 1).

First, recent polls all indicated that a clear majority of people in Hong Kong do not support the continuation of the protest, which has caused disruption and challenged the excellent legal system that Hong Kong has established.

Second, when Hong Kong was under British rule, democracy was suppressed. There was never any form of election to select the chief executive, and the “governors” who exercised almost unopposed control were always appointed by the British government.
Jane Tam
Birmingham

Telegraph:

A time limit must be put in place to stop people languishing in a legal limbo

11:05PM GMT 01 Dec 2014

Comments

The Home Office’s crackdown on migration; the universal post service under threat; private lives and open secrets at Bletchley Park; bootless Paddington, and feline IQ

7:05AM GMT 01 Dec 2014

Comments

Irish Times:

A chara, – When did certain concerts start becoming framed with the words “An Evening with . . . so and so”?

What do those words promise that an ordinary gig doesn’t?

When I hear somebody say they spent the evening with another person, it usually conjures something intimate, a meal, long chats over a few glasses of wine and maybe more.

So what exactly do you get at An Evening with Aslan? Does Christy Dignam gently touch your hand as you both pore over a dessert menu in a dimly-lit restaurant and whisper across the table to you “It’s just great, like, being with you, but I want to know, how can I protect you in this crazy world?”

Many evenings end with a taxi home. So, imagine you had, in the innocence of your heart, bought tickets for An Evening with Christy Moore.

As the evening in question drew closer you fantasised about how it might end, like many of the best evenings of your life with a cab ride home. There, in the dark of the back seat Christy would turn to you, put his arm on your shoulder and intone in his barrel-deep Prosperous voice “Well, howz-it-goin’-dere, it’s true you ride the finest horse I’ve ever seen . . .” Of course these evenings are always a bitter disappointment.

You arrive to the agreed rendezvous, say the Olympia or Vicar Street, and you soon realise that both of these cheeky Christys are way beyond just double dating, they are in fact polygamous performers promising intimacy to a packed venue.

So you sit salty eyed through the show, jealous of the audience and realising that you are not the only one. – Is Mise, etc, BILLY Ó hANLUAIN Kimmage, Dublin 12.

Sir, – The recent revelation (“Mortgage group apologises for data breach involving over 1,000 customers,” December 1st) that lobby group New Beginnings has passed debtor information to a so-called “vulture fund” is a reminder of the power given without question to these self-appointed spokespeople.

It is incredible that a group ostensibly set up to protect the homes of Irish families from repossession is now liaising with foreign speculators while ordinary families in Ireland cannot afford to buy homes.

Similarly, we see the presumptuously titled Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation announce plans to enter the mortgage brokering business – with all of the conflicts of interest that entails.

These two organisations style themselves as representative bodies yet they do not allow membership to the public and are incorporated as limited companies. They have been allowed to portray themselves as Robin Hood-type groups – now it is clear the reality is considerably different.

Far from offering a “new beginning” their back-room dealings are reminiscent of the worst of Irish life over the last decades.

The lack of scrutiny up to now reflects poorly on Irish journalism. – Yours, etc, MATTHEW GLOVER Lucan, Co Dublin.

Sir, – Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly has attracted some criticism over the weekend for apparently over-ruling civil servants when deciding on spending on greenways, specifically with regards to the route along the disused rail line that links Mullingar to Athlone.

For too long planning of walking and cycling infrastructure has been too localised, with short bits of trails going from nowhere to nowhere and often seemingly designed to do nothing more than allow TDs to be seen to fund local projects.

I welcome the fact that a Minister had the courage to over-ride such small-minded thinking and allocate funds to allow for the construction of Ireland’s first long greenway linking Dublin to Galway, of which Mullingar-Athlone is an integral part.

Cycling tourism is a huge growth area worldwide, with cycling often described as the new golf.

A Fáilte Ireland survey in 2006 found that we had no penetration in this market, but nothing was done by successive ministers in the interim.

Survey data from this year shows that 11.5 million German tourists alone would consider taking a cycling holiday in Ireland if we had sufficient mileage of interconnected infrastructure. Because of lack of vision by government, we have just a few short cycle trails that only sustain local amenity and short-stay cycling; nobody is going to spend a week cycling up and down the Great Western Greenway like a hamster in a wheel, nice and all as that short trail may be.

Any notion that tourists or Irish leisure cyclists are interested in holidaying along main roads is clearly delusional, but that thinking still drives much of our tourism policy. We lack the off-road infrastructure that is the norm elsewhere.

That Mr Kelly had the courage and the foresight to map out a trail right across the country as a way of getting us started in this lucrative business, bringing jobs and local amenities to dozens of small places, is something to be lauded, not criticised. – Yours, etc,

JOHN MULLIGAN Kiltycreighton Boyle, Co Roscommon

Sir, – A 68 cent stamp on a letter to Santa (Letters, December 1st)?

Does this mean the Republic of Ireland has laid claim to the North . . . Pole? – Yours, etc, ERIC O’BRIEN Douglas, Cork.

Sir, – While no member of my family is or was a secondary-school teacher, and while I do not want my daughter hanging around the house today any more than any other parent does, I nevertheless feel compelled to support the teachers.

Firstly, no one doubts that a system based solely on rote learning needs reform. Presumably the main players in a consultative process with this aim would be those who are actually engaged daily in this very system. So who exactly came up with the new proposals? Patently not the teachers.

Secondly, while in theory project based learning sounds ideal, how does one really make that system objective and standardised. There is the very real problem of parental involvement, which biases the outcome towards students in areas with higher overall educational levels.

Then there is the problem of relativity. Take two children, one from an academic, affluent school, the other from an inner city disadvantaged school. If they both achieve A grades on a given project relative to the other students in the class, are these grades really comparable, or are they purely relative to the overall standard of their particular schools? Both grades represent laudable achievements , but what they do not represent is an objective standardised system, so let’s not pretend they do.

Maybe the answer is to stick with project-based learning assessed by the students’ own teachers. But let’s not call this a national Junior Certificate, because it will not be. – Yours, etc, SUSAN FITZGERALD Blackrock, Co Dublin.

Sir, – I am in favour of introducing some project work into curricula, but having too much of it could be detrimental and unmanageable, very hard to objectively access and not necessarily good for the learning process.

The fundamentals in any discipline have to be learned. Fears that the baby could be thrown out with the bathwater are very well grounded. – Yours, etc, CORA STACK, Institute of Technology Tallaght, Dublin. Sir, – Primary-level teachers, who are very close to their pupils, are able to give them all their assessments and grades, which may well influence their educational choices.

Third-level teachers, who often aren’t even trained as educators, are able to give their students all their grades that decide their level of degree and, frequently, their choice of career.

But why is it that second-level teachers, who claim to be highly-trained professionals, are unable to award even 40 per cent of the marks in an exam that is of little or no importance to students’ futures? – Yours, etc, KEVIN T RYAN, Castletroy, Limerick. A chara, As a teacher of 41 years standing, I would like to think of myself as being as fair and as unbiased as the next.

However, I would not trust my own impartiality and may be already mentally and emotionally hard-wired to favour: my immediate and extended family; the children of friends and colleagues; children from dysfunctional families who are barely able to hang on; children who have experienced trauma or bereavements; the guys who try hard but never seem to get it quite right; the witty guy who is always in good form; the fine athletes; the academically gifted who are prone to make the odd mistake and,of course the children of Johnny, the local mechanic who would never let you down. – Yours, etc, GEARÓID Ó CIARÁIN Terenure, Dublin 12.

Sir, – As a retired teacher I strongly believe that teachers and students can benefit from the proposals on assessment for Junior Certificate.

Assessment is a core teaching responsibility and an integral part of effective learning. The proposals will give teachers and schools greater ownership and responsibility for teaching and learning, thereby promoting increased teacher collaboration in schools.

My main concern is that schools and teachers be given time to do the work. The lack of structured planning time is a major weakness in our second-level system. – Yours, etc, DESMOND MOONEY Newtownforbes, Co Longford.

Sir, – Dave Kavanagh has trouble with the term “all-island”. (Letters, November 28th). Could there be a country on the face of this earth with so many options for what the totality, its regions, particularly the northern one, even for one of its cities are called?

The term “North of Ireland”, for instance, has crept into common parlance in recent years. This now seems to be a generally accepted code for those who think they are staying on-side, striking a blow for freedom by refusing to say Northern Ireland, just as some on the non-conformist wing of politics refuse to say the “Republic of Ireland”, they prefer “Free State”, “26 counties” or “the South”.

Yes, Mr Kavanagh, “all-island” is a usage which takes the sting out of the well-worn and legitimate and long-established all-Ireland label, with its sporting connotations. If there is ever to be peace on this island, perhaps a starting-point would be that we all stop using language which knowingly rubs salt into smarting wounds. The unionist population of Northern Ireland will cling to their preferred name for the place they love and call home, and all the linguistic acrobatics in the world won’t change that.

The “majority” population of the island would do well to respect that. Time we were all a wee bit kinder to each other? – Yours, etc, PADDY McEVOY Holywood, Co Down.

Sir, – The latest figures released by the HSE forecasting that the OPD [Outpatient Department] appointment delay is set to continue till 2015, and that the trolley figure is going to rise, comes as no surprise to me, a doctor working in a hospital in Dublin.

There is an elephant in the room – this country desperately needs more doctors .

Previously doctor shortage was experienced in peripheral Irish hospitals but in the last one-two years the effect is felt in major hospitals in Dublin also. OPD appointments are regularly being cancelled, clinics being shut down and no acceptable candidates are found despite repeated advertisements for new posts in so-called big hospitals in the capital.

On one hand, this country is failing to retain Irish-trained doctors due to poor working conditions. On the other hand, clauses of the Medical Practitioners Act 2007 with restrictions on training jobs for non-EU medics, and the delayed response of the Irish Medical Council to the plights of foreign doctors, prevent qualified non-EU doctors from coming to Ireland.

Often people complain of the delays and even vent their frustrations at the apparent malfunctioning of the health system on us. Unfortunately we doctors have to bear the brunt of patients’ completely understandable wrath about the health policy failure.

The only silver lining is that unlike his predecessor the current Minister for Health, Dr Leo Varadkar, seems to have identified the problem and is apparently ready to consider the amendments of the Medical Practitioners Act. The sooner the law is amended the better.

Until then unfortunately patients would suffer unless they protest and demand an urgent solution for this stalemate like what people did for water charges. – Yours, etc, DR SHAKYA BHATTACHARJEE Shanganagh Cliffs, Dublin 18.

Sir, – The Government approach to general practice in this country has achieved much media attention.

The crisis continues however and very little other than “spin” has been given to solving the crisis. Most newly-qualified GPs are leaving our shores. For the first time in the history of our State near-retirement GPs are also leaving to take up more lucrative jobs abroad.

Over 30 GP posts remain unfilled in this country today. The Government talks about primary care but what it really talks about is care without general practice. It is hoping that the foundation under which primary care works the GP is not actually needed.

This health policy will leave a generation of Irish people with poor, substandard primary care. It will increase exponentially the cost of secondary care. No doubt in 10 years we will commission another report from the very health administrators that are deciding on this course of action. – Yours, etc, DR TADHG CROWLEY Ayrfield Medical Centre, Kilkenny.

Sir, – The recall of the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to Ireland, Khalid Nasser Rashed Lootah, is to be commended (“UAE recalls ambassador who treated women ‘like slaves”, December 1st).

However, the €240,000 award made by the Employment Appeals Tribunal to three Filipina women employed by the ambassador, and his wife Mehra Metad Alghubaisi, should be paid immediately as justice delayed is justice denied. Diplomatic immunity, as claimed by the ambassador, is not acceptable in these circumstances of gross injustice.

The United Arab Emirates has the seventh largest reserves of oil in the world and the 17th largest gas reserves.

With such wealth at its disposal, there is no reason why this just award should not be paid, as a matter of urgency, to these three exploited women. – Yours, etc, BRENDAN BUTLER, Malahide, Co Dublin.

Irish Independent:

Dr Patricia Gordon, in her recent letter (Irish Independent, November 24), raises the perennial question, ‘What is the point of education’, revisiting the endless debates about what to teach and how to teach it.

In the midst of the interminable soul searching, teachers find it hard to sustain their enthusiasm, being overcome by innovation fatigue as the latest wheeze becomes the new orthodoxy.

The emphasis on life skills is admirable but tends to be rooted in all kinds of unwarranted assumptions. For example, current talk of thinking skills is based on the idea that thinking is an exercise of the mind that cuts across all subjects taught. There is a similar difficulty with the notion of problem solving. Thinking and problem solving vary in character in the different disciplines. Problem solving in art or history, for instance, is very different from problem solving in science or mathematics.

Furthermore, there is a marked distinction between theoretical and practical reasoning. The former is concerned with learning what is true about the world, whilst the latter is concerned with learning how to do something, including how to learn.

With regard to assessment, Dr Gordon rightly emphasises its function in tracking students’ attainment and in letting them know how they are progressing.

What seems more crucial, however, is the uncovering of students’ barriers to learning in order to open doors for them.

In recent years, there has been a significant emphasis on what is called Assessment for Learning. This is where assessment aims to light up the world of the pupil, focusing on how well they are engaging with what is being taught and what they could do to improve their habits of attention and perseverance.

Hitherto, the feedback provided to pupils has tended to be solely about their attainment and rarely about their learning.

However, what we all need to guard against is the belief that if new words are introduced into the education world there is a new determinate reality attached to them.

Philip O’Neill, Oxford, UK

Teachers’ strike: a student’s view

Today, the secondary schools of Ireland are closed for students. There will be no lessons learned in the classroom, but I guarantee lessons will be learned outside them.

The Department of Education and Skills will certainly learn just how unjust secondary school teachers feel the new demands on them are.

This strike is important for the teachers, but, of course, also for the students. The teachers are taking industrial action to stand up and have their say, but what about the students? Who speaks for us? Can you think of anyone or any body/organisation that does? Neither can I, because they don’t exist. Well, I’m standing up, I’m having my say.

First of all, I do not agree completely with the changes to the Junior Certificate. Having come out of the current style of examination, I have learned so much about how I, as a person, can deal with high-intensity tests, day after day, for a few weeks. It is a form of “mock” for the Leaving Certificate. The stress and panic surrounding the current Leaving Cert is already driving many adolescents to the brink – what would happen without any form of practice in this exam format in their formative years?

Secondly, I find it worrying how little knowledge and training teachers are being given in their relevant subjects. Teachers are being expected to teach what they themselves haven’t had explained to them.

Finally, I hope that major changes are made to the education system in Ireland, and soon, as most teachers would agree. However, these changes must be done right! They can’t be rushed and thrown together without enough thought. So, of course, it is accepted by everybody inside the classroom that radical changes must be made, but listen to us on what to change. Don’t ignore these protests, they’re not about money-grabbing teachers, they’re about the need for change, in the right way.

Mark Lynch (17), Co Kerry

Don’t take water for granted

Looking at the problems we are having with water today, I am reminded of my childhood growing up in rural Ireland.

We had to walk half a mile to a neighbour’s farmyard, to get water from a draw well about 50 foot deep.

When you got there, you had to lift a heavy stone slab off it (health and safety!), you then tied a rope to the handle of the bucket and threw it down to haul up the water. You usually brought two buckets home, to balance the weight, but you would be lucky if you got home safely with two half buckets of water – the rest you would have spilled down your legs and feet on the way home.

That was drinking water. We got water for washing from a barrel that collected rain water. In those days, people helped each other, we made the best of what we had, and if you did not have it, you learned to do without it.

I am not suggesting for a moment that we go back to those days, I just want to point out the pleasure that people get from helping each other.

Can I ask what are we doing when we allow women and young children to be homeless on our streets when we have greedy people wasting money hand over fist – there is something wrong here.

If we could only enjoy what we have, help people who are struggling and less well off and forget about the greed just think how much better off we would all be today.

Pat Kelly, Artane, Dublin 5

Coalition’s Sinn Fein bashing

It’s the little things that sometimes bring disaster. In 1963, in Britain, Harold Macmillan’s government was almost brought down because of a call girl’s affair with one of his ministers.

In 1972, in the USA, what seemed a small-time break in at the Watergate Building, followed by a truck load of lies, was the cause of Richard Nixon’s resignation.

The Irish Independent predicts there will be a general election next year. And, when they are defeated, Fine Gael and Labour may well have the cheek to ask ‘why were we not re-elected so that we could to inflict further pain on the electorate’?

Well, besides the new taxes every month or so, followed by Phil Hogan’s wonderful job setting up Irish Water, the way our Health Service has been handled, the care and compassion shown to the poor and homeless, and a million more things that could be added, in the end it was the attempt of the leaders of this Government to bring down Sinn Fein at all costs because of its rise in popularity that has brought them to where they are today.

The Coalition doesn’t realise that the only reason for this is that it’s the only way for the underprivileged to strike back at a Government which has broken every promise it made on its way to power.

People may not all vote for Sinn Fein come election time, but I know that they would vote for the Devil rather than this lot.

Fred Molloy, Dublin 15

In defence of Smith O’Brien

Your columnist Terry Prone really surpassed herself with her attack on William Smith O’Brien (1803-1864) 150 years after his death (Irish Independent, November 28). In my opinion, it was a “hatchet job”, with cheap shot after cheap shot: his education, treatment of his wife, political ideals, all scorned, and the coup de grace – child molester! You cannot libel the dead but you can certainly insult the memory of a noble Irishman with allegations of child abuse.

William Smith O’Brien’s place in Irish history is secure. He was an idealist who, despairing of the British government’s neglect of Ireland during the Famine, led the abortive 1848 rising, leading to his deportation to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).

John Cussen, Address with editor

Irish Independent

3 December 2014 Home

I still have arthritis in my left toe I am stricken with gout. But I manage to get round the park I wait in for District Nurse, Secom etc

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast weight up duck for tea and her tummy pain is still there. We go to see the GP

Obituary:

Guardian:

Independent:

The news that Cameron and Osborne “are winning the economic argument against Miliband and Balls” beggars belief, and surely reveals the power of the biased media (“Tories more trusted than Labour with economy…”, 2 December).

The Tories` propaganda machine did an excellent job in 2010, when they blamed Labour for the economic crisis, and stressed the subsequent need for deficit reduction and the imposition of austerity. However, the facts suggest that Tory propaganda works more smoothly than their economic policies.

Remember how the deficit had to be removed immediately? Living beyond one’s means was wrong, and failure to act would mean lumbering the next generation with massive debt? The country fell for it. Reducing the deficit was neither as essential nor as urgent as they claimed, especially as quantitative easing would soon re-capitalise the banks and kick-start the economy.

It did give them, though, the excuse they wanted to make savage cuts in government spending, which meant at least 350,000 job losses in the public sector, and huge reductions in benefits to the less fortunate; their real aim was a low-wage economy for the people and a low-tax regime for corporations and the rich.

In 2010, Osborne predicted the effect of the cuts would be to reduce the deficit to £40bn by the end of this year, but it is likely to be near £100bn. So much for Tory expertise. What about their point of it not being fair to lumber future generations with debt? Strange how this didn’t figure at all when they tripled the fees university students would have to pay.

Labour gets the blame because of all the borrowing its Blair and Brown governments had done. But when the figures are examined, which party deserves the criticism? In the past five years, the Coalition has borrowed £157.5bn, with billions more on the cards, compared with the £142.7bn borrowed by Labour in its 13 years in government; a much-vaunted long-term economic plan which fails to balance the books and leads to exponential borrowing, needs to be seen for what it is: a complete failure.

Still, we are told, because of Osborne’s shrewd handling, the economy has recovered. Really? National income is higher now than it was in the first quarter of 2008, but population has grown by 3.5m, so income per capita is down 3.4 per cent, and real wages for most are down 10 per cent. CEOs of the FTSE 100 companies earn 143 times that of their average employees.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts spending cuts of another £48bn under a Tory government. The myth that the Tories are able economists, and that the economy is safe in their hands is one that needs serious debunking.

Bernie Evans

Liverpool

Has Christmas come early? Despite a current deficit of almost £100bn and rising – some £60bn more than Mr Osborne anticipated – the Government has recently announced the following spending plans: another £3bn on the NHS; £2.3bn more for flood defences; £15bn for roads; £7bn for tax cuts; more money for social housing; possibly a lagoon power scheme. No doubt there will be more goodies to come. There is just one problem. They want the voters to accept a post-dated cheque that will expire on 8 May 2015.

John Naylor

Ascot

Fracking fisk report misleading

The quotation marks in your headline “Fracking risk ‘is similar to asbestos and thalidomide’” (29 November) are misleading. The government report does not say this – and does not imply it either.

I expect better from The Independent than completely misrepresenting expert opinion. If you want a quote from the report, how about this: “The development of shale gas will bring multiple economic benefits to the United Kingdom.”

Or, possibly the most balanced summary conclusion: “Fracking can be done safely in the United Kingdom, but not without effective regulation, careful management, robust environmental risk assessments and rigorous monitoring.” (These are actual quotes from the report.)

Mark Gugan

Dorchester, Dorset

The threat from across the Atlantic

Referring to the growing dominance of Stagecoach in mainline train services as a result of the rush to re-privatise the East Coast line before the 2015 election, Dr John Disney of Nottingham Business School writes “This is essentially a private monopoly analogous to British Rail Inter City” (letter, 1 December).

Worse will be to come if the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) US/EU trade deal is ratified: no current franchises could ever be returned to public ownership although there is growing public demand for re-nationalisation of the rail system.

Some politicians are rightly alarmed that this fate awaits the NHS, but inexplicably, most don’t care/realise that TTIP demands access by predatory US organisations to all parts of our (and EU) publicly owned utilities/companies.

TTIP in its current form must be rejected totally.

Eddie Dougall

Walsham-le-Willows, Suffolk

No one should be denied justice

Robert Morfee (letter, 1 December) is right to complain of the appalling cost of going to law in Britain.

Next year there will be celebrations of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta; but we are still waiting for the implementation of the key clause of Magna Carta promising that “to none will we sell, delay or deny justice”. We should not have to pay for justice. We have had a National Health Service for nearly 70 years – is it not time we had a National Law Service?

John Smurthwaite

Leeds

People don’t need  to ‘fight’ cancer

Thank you for Margaret McCartney’s article “Peacefully, at home” (28 November). I too have been angered by the cancer organisations stating “fight/beat cancer”.

I agree with Jenny Diski’s comments. People suffering from cancer do not need this rhetoric. They are put under pressure to keep “fighting” when what is needed is consideration and care for their final months, not medical intervention.

That is why I support the Macmillan nurses who come into your home to give that essential care and pain relief.

Hazel Burton

Broadstairs, Kent

Lebanon deserves the world’s help

Lebanon is facing its greatest challenge with a massive influx of displaced Syrians – which has produced an unparalleled humanitarian crisis in this small country.

Lebanon has become the biggest host country, per capita, in the world. And its response to the situation, despite its limited resources, has been applauded by world leaders and international organisations.

But the international community’s response to the crisis has been below needs and expectations.

A recent World Bank study revealed that the total cost to Lebanon will reach $7.5bn by the end of 2014. Lebanon is calling on the international community and donor countries to offer some much needed support.

Inaam Osseiran

Ambassador of Lebanon

London W8

Remembering Gordon Brown

The Great Clunking Fist clunks off, haunted by the three moments when his nerve failed him – ducking leadership elections against John Smith and Tony Blair and a snap 2007 election.

At Edinburgh University, when I knew him, he seemed to me, even then, a thin-skinned brooder, a grinder rather than brilliant, but possessed of the most manic ambition.

He became Prime Minister but he seemed to have no idea what to do with such power, and his failures as Chancellor cancelled out whatever good he may have done in that long decade. His two most revealing moments were when he misspoke: “We have saved the world” and when he went ballistic after his encounter with the “bigoted woman”.

He emerged from his self-imposed purdah to save a referendum which really did not need to be saved and – typically – his “vow” may, in fact, be the thing that does break up the UK.

Rev Dr John Cameron,

St Andrews, Fife

Imagine all those countless tragedies

The shock and dismay at the death of the cricketer Phil Hughes has been felt and expressed far beyond the cricketing world. There has been a visceral, almost tangible reaction to our helplessness as witnesses to a young, talented, and blameless life eclipsed at the whim of chance.

As the centenary year of the First World War draws to a close, it may be fitting to bring Phil Hughes to mind, then to conjure up the image of the poppies at the Tower Of London, and to imagine each poppy as another Phil Hughes,

George Taylor

Westmill, Hertfordshire

Times:

Sir, Apropos “Time to put the Turner out to grass” (Dec 2). Why, each time the Turner prize is awarded, does my mind irresistibly murmur the words of Ambrose Silk in Evelyn Waugh’s Put Out More Flags: “ ‘My dear,’ Ambrose had said, ‘you can positively hear her imagination creaking, as she does them, like a pair of old, old corsets, my dear, on a harridan.’ ”?
Tom McIntyre
Frome, Somerset

Sir, Samuel Gray (letter, Dec 1) suggests that we should increase our milk price to £1.50 to help support dairy farmers. We buy our milk only from farmers with whom we have been working for many years, and we pay them a market-leading price. We treat our farmers fairly.
Heather Jenkins
Waitrose

Telegraph:

The effects of mass migration; tunnel vision at Stonehenge; the real Cdr Alastair Denniston; and soft drinks to get you through a dry January

7:00AM GMT 02 Dec 2014

Comments

Irish Times

Sir, – As I was leaving the city centre in the evening a few weeks ago, I met John Corrie, the homeless man who died on the streets this week. He was with another man who was homeless and who was trying to convince John to come with him to a hostel. But neither he nor I could talk him into it. I ended up talking to them both for a while, and convincing them to at least let me get them something to eat.

John said he would stay where he was, and we could bring him something back if we wanted.

The other man went with me to get the food, talked to me for a while, told me about how long he had been out, and about some of the challenges he was facing.

In the end he thanked me and said he was going to find a hostel. But he warned me John wouldn’t. When I offered to give John money for a hostel, he flatly refused and told me I shouldn’t trust him with it – that it would only go towards him helping himself get through another day, and nothing more.

We all shook hands and two of us went in different directions. John stayed behind.

When I heard the news, I was worried that it might be John. I’m glad now that I asked for his name, and gave him mine. He seemed suspicious of my question at first, and would only ask why I wanted to know. When I told him that everyone has a name, and names should be remembered and spoken, he shook my hand and told me that he was John Corrie, 43 years-old. I will always be thankful he trusted me with that.

I know John was a troubled and complicated man. Even our brief conversation told me that, and John himself admitted it. But he was a person, and he needs to be remembered.

Even when we feel we can’t do much to help, we can remember, and we should take it as our duty to do so. – Yours, etc, KYLE HUGHES Bray. Co Wicklow. Sir, – The tragic death of a homeless person in Dublin must result in real and effective action to address the fact that our homeless hostels are usually full, and vulnerable individuals are left to fend for themselves on our streets.

Clearly more social housing units and hostels are required but what is seldom discussed is the need for a minority of homeless people – those who lack capacity because of the effects of mental illness or addiction – to have their finances managed and so ensuring that limited funds are available to pay for their basic needs.

Many agencies run shy of taking on the responsibility of acting as social welfare agents regarding this cohort, and the fact that the Capacity Bill 2013 is yet to be enacted is an additional obstacle to those who lack the capacity to access the care and support that could transform their lives in terms of both physical and mental health. – Yours, etc, FRANK BROWNE Templeogue, Dublin 16. Sir, – The horrific death of a young homeless man so close to Dáil Éireann should be a stark reminder that very little has happened since the death of Peggy and Danny, who died on the streets back in 1992 on a cold snowy December day.

It is high time that politicians set aside a full day to debate this problem. It should never happen again.We cannot be proud of our city if individuals are dying on our pavements.

Homeless people may have other social or medical problems, which for some is the reason they are not coping, and we as a Christian country have to assist them.

These individuals have been let down and while we can boast about research and quote statistics we are not giving human beings a place to sleep, keep warm and clean, eat and stay safe. We should bow our heads in shame.

There are simply no excuses.– Yours, etc, ANN MARIE McMAHON Sandymount, Dublin 4.

Sir, – It is bordering on immoral that we let homeless people die in the street while planning to spend up to €30 million on the 100th anniversary of 1916.

Why not spend four or five million on the anniversary, and use the rest to partially solve the homeless problem? – Yours etc, JOHN O’BRIEN, Churchtown, Dublin 14. Sir, – Resulting from the death of a homeless man in Dublin over the weekend there is a clamour from politicians and organisations from all sides to do something about housing such people.

The suggestion is that more housing is needed, but this surely is a long-term solution and action is needed now.

It’s time to think outside the box. Let the Government, or whichever local authority is responsible, either buy or hire a cruise liner. This would give instant accommodation with all the facilities of a hostel. Fund it properly and let one of the existing caring organisations run it.

This would give time to seriously look at the problem and consider how to house the homeless in a proper manner. – Yours, etc, GERRY BROUDER Blackrock, Co Dublin.

Sir, – Yesterday the teachers unions held the first in a potential series of strikes in protest against the reform of the Junior Cert. Gerry Quinn of the TUI has denied the strikes are related to pay and conditions. 

The unions have affirmed the strike is about the fundamental nature and philosophy of education. If we accept the need for a Department of Education, headed by an elected minister, surely it is the responsibility of the department to set the policy. Are teachers looking for a veto on all future educational reform?

What other groups will be allowed to conscientiously object to reforms? Would we accept a strike by the Garda in protest over a change in drug crimes or of the registrars following a change in marriage laws. I think not. – Yours, etc, EOGHAN Ó BRAONÁIN Claremorris, Co Mayo. Sir, – I can’t understand why secondary school teachers are kicking up such a fuss regarding internal marking of students’ continued assignments.

As a lecturer in a British university, and before that in Ireland, internal marking of students’ grades is the norm, indeed it is best practice at third-level in both countries.

The system works because of internal moderation processes and external auditing. Each batch of students’ work is first moderated by a fellow member of staff (samples from fails to firsts are moderated). Additionally, external examiners are responsible for reviewing samples of each batch of assignments and examinations during the course of the academic year. This two-way process ensures staff members are not left feeling vulnerable to accusation of bias towards a particular student.

It’s about time educators in Ireland caught up with the rest of the western world and embraced innovative learning and teaching practices. – Yours, etc, DR STEPHEN KELLY Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool.

Sir, – Could someone please explain to our Minister for Education and Skills Jan O’Sullivan that the integrity and objectivity are not things to be compromised on in assessment.

We have seen the results of light-touch regulation in the financial sector and independent quality assessment is an essential in manufacturing and service sectors.

Education needs its checks too. – Yours, etc, FERGAL CANTON Cuffesgrange, Co Kilkenny. Sir, – Geraldine Mooney Simmie (Letters, December 1st) does well to warn us against complacency regarding the increasing impact of the neo-liberal agenda on education policy.

However, her suggestion that the current Junior Cycle proposals are predicated on market values is based on some rather dubious grounds that simply do not add up.

Mooney Simmie seems to be under the mistaken impression that our education policies up to now have been untainted by market ideology. However, any schools have already been, in her own words, “finding their own way within the logic of the markets” and have been adopting “exploratory”, “adventurous” or “cautious” positions.

The Junior Cycle pilot schools, whose principals wrote so honestly in this paper recently, obviously fall into the adventurous category. To suggest these necessary and progressive changes, whose introduction was mooted 10 years ago during the Celtic Tiger era, are motivated by financial considerations is wide of the mark. – Yours, etc, PROF JIM GLEESON Australian Catholic University Brisbane.

Sir, – Complaining that tourists cannot climb the Wellington Testimonial or the Spire, Frank McNally writes, “For the city of Oscar Wilde to have one tall but useless monument is unfortunate. Two must give visitors the impression we don’t need money” (An Irishman’s Diary, November 28th).

At one time Dublin did have a monument that tourists could climb. Because it commemorated Nelson, the local patriots, showing their usual wisdom, blew it up. – Yours, etc, F HEMMENS, Sevenoaks, Kent.

Sir, – Cantillon (“Boat owners at sea over EU action on use of ‘green diesel’”, November 29th) says that boaters are bemused that the European Commission expects the Irish government to stop subsidising yacht-owners by allowing them to use green diesel in their private pleasure craft.

I am surprised that boaters failed to notice that Ireland agreed to end this subsidy in 1992. Like the UK, it was granted two derogations to allow it time to install the appropriate infrastructure. It sought a third derogation in 2006, but the European Commission’s patience had expired and it refused the request.

Ireland might, at that point, have introduced a simple regulation requiring “white diesel” be used in private pleasure craft. Instead, it introduced what Cantillon calls an honour system: voluntary taxation for the well-heeled. Yacht owners would be allowed to use cheap green diesel and at the end of each year they would pay the Revenue Commissioners the the difference in duty between green and white diesel.

The problem is that the system does not work. I do not know how many diesel-powered private pleasure craft there are, but I suspect the number is over 10,000. The numbers of owners who paid the duty were:38 in 2011 (for 2010): 41 in 2012 (for 2011): 22 in 2013 (for 2012) and 23 in 2014 (for 2013).

The European Commission knows that; its press release of November 26th, 2014 says “the low number of tax returns indicate that the minimum level of taxation is not applied”. The Government’s ludicrous pretence of compliance with the Energy Tax Directive has now been exposed.

Any boat-owners scratching their heads about the commission’s action must be trying to remove the sand in which their heads have been buried for the last 22 years.

But if more of them had paid the duty, if there had been more honour amongst yacht-owners, the Commission might not have had to act. – Yours, etc, BRIAN J GOGGIN Castleconnell, Co Limerick.

Sir, – It is high time that politicians found guilty of wrongdoing or criminality while in office should be made to forfeit their pensions.

It is galling to see fat cat corrupt politicians cream the system and then to get rewarded by their victims for doing so. – Yours, etc, PETER CAFOLLA Athy, Co Kildare.

Sir, – I am a doctoral research student at the University of Roehampton, London. My area of interest is Irish Catholic chaplains in the British army during the second World War.

Of the approximately 680 chaplains in the army, over 160 were Irish. I seek to be in contact with family members who may have letters, stories, reminiscences and artefacts recounting the wartime experience of their chaplain relative. All communications will be gladly acknowledged. – Yours, etc, RISTEARD DE BURCA Department of Humanities, Grove House, University of Roehampton Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5PJ.

Sir, – Your article (“Oil falls to four-year low as Opec maintains production levels”, November 27th) caused me to wonder what is the relative cost of road fuel (petrol and diesel) today compared with four years ago. Fortunately AA Ireland publishes average fuel figures over this period.

The average cost of diesel is just above 140 cent per litre. Four years ago in November 2010, it was 125 cent per litre and just after the last tax increase in December 2009 it was 112.4 cent per litre.

I hope we can all now expect to see fuel prices rapidly dropping to the historic levels justified by the current cost of crude oil. – Yours, etc, MICHAEL REDFERN Oranmore, Co Galway

Sir, – Nigel Ryan is alarmed by the campaign poster for the White Ribbon campaign, a male led organisation whose aim is to try to end men’s violence against women (Letters, December 2nd).

Mr Ryan finds the statement “helping end men’s violence against women” to be “a ghastly unqualified indictment and collective libel”. Perhaps his disgust would be better directed towards the statistics and facts around male violence against women. Just last week, Women’s Aid held a demonstration outside the Dáil in remembrance of the 78 women, who along with 10 children, have been murdered by their partners in Ireland since 1996.

Women’s Aid estimate that one in five women in Ireland have been affected by domestic violence at some point in their lives.

While any kind of violence, sexual or otherwise, is inexcusable, whether perpetrated by a man or a woman, the facts are that statistically, women are far more likely to suffer violence and abuse at the hands of a man.

This is what the White Ribbon campaign is trying to end.

As a woman, I would be more than happy to lend my support to any campaigns to stop gender-based violence against men. – Yours, etc, JILL MURRAY Headford, Co Galway.

Sir, – The appropriate authorities seem somewhat surprised that Dublin is losing out to cities like Amsterdam and Edinburgh as a tourist destination.

This suggests some kind of visual appreciation deficiency, as areas of long-term dereliction and decay, littering and bad road surfaces are pretty obvious.

There has to be a recognition that an experience does not just happen – it is the result of an ongoing involvement and commitment of the various stakeholders. Westport and Kinsale (Kinsale and Westport scoop national tourism awards, November 27th) won tourism experience awards and implicit to their success was a sense of place.

While appreciating that these are relatively small and naturally strong on community, it seems Dublin’s sense of place needs to be rediscovered or reinvented. Common denominators in developing and sustaining the character of a city are leadership and vision-for a city as increasingly diverse as Dublin. – Yours, etc, BRIAN ROSS Bray, Co Wicklow.

Sir, – Is the re-erection of the cross on Carrauntoohil a sign that religious fervour among the mountain-walking community in Ireland has reached new heights?

A man-made structure on the top of a mountain is a violation of the mountain walkers’ maxim: “leave no trace except your footprints”. – Yours, etc, TOM FULLER Glasnevin, Dublin 11.

Irish Independent:

I seem to be living austerity eternally – before, during and after the Celtic Tiger years and all through the ‘official’ austerity years – but that is not why I write. The €2.50 on my prescription shoved my medication of 40years onto my luxury list – now often missed. But that’s not why I write. Uisce Eireann’s form came through my door today – more expense – but that’s not why I write, either.

I write about my Free Travel Pass – my lifeline. Lorraine Courtney’s article (‘Free travel passes are pricing the rest of us out of train travel’, November 14) sent alarm bells ringing and icy cold fingers up and down my spine. With my Free Travel Pass I connect with the world. Even if I haven’t the price of a cup of coffee in my pocket (which sometimes happens) I can visit cities, enjoy walks in parks, listen to bands. I can browse in shopping centres and enjoy bracing walks on the seafronts. I can visit places that lift my spirits – the National Concert Hall, art galleries and museums. Through the windows of the train or bus I watch the seasons unfold around me in their beauty and splendour. Even more importantly – I connect with people. I use my Pass to visit family and former colleagues. I use it to visit people who can’t get out of their homes very often.

Not everyone on the train/bus is glued to a laptop, tablet, etc, so conversations take place. This contact with people is so important for mental well-being.

Transport personnel, when not rushed off their feet, have time for a chat. Local personnel have a good idea of my routine and will double-check with me if I request an unusual destination.

After a day visiting places and interacting with people I am ready to return home – physically tired and mentally content.

Without my Free Travel Pass I would be consigned to staring out the window at the same grey footpath, grey strip of asphalt and grey walls – day in, day out, endlessly – a death knell surely?

What is the solution to the cost of travel? – I don’t know. But consider me – and so many others like me – when you (the Government and electorate) think about putting an end to the Free Travel Scheme. Think of us and weigh the cost of free travel against the cost of treating mental health conditions arising out of loneliness and isolation.

Name and address with editor

Peaceful protest will win the day

Can we not see that violent marches about water charges are not only about paying for water, which is justifiable?

They are about unbridled consumerism, where the powerful rich can thumb their noses at water charges, pay up, and continue to indulge their urge for possessions without suffering, while the middle classes, often in cruelly straitened circumstances, must, unwillingly, count every cent.

The fumbling way in which the issue of water charges has been handled exasperates the public. But peaceful, dignified protest will counter-balance the agitation and confusion at Government level far more than uncontrolled anger and violence.

The public will then be seen to have maturity beyond that of the powers-that-be, thus encouraging more ethical discernment in presenting the whole matter.

Angela Macnamara

Churchtown, Dublin 14

Farmers must join the fight

Farmers need to join the protesters against water charges on December 10 to make Enda Kenny see the victimisation towards them in the amended water charge proposals.

City, towns and village households can use all the water they want to wash cars, water gardens, etc. However, if you are classified as a farmer and own an acre or two of land you will be expected to pay the county councils a meter charge over standard allowance, so it is up to members of the Irish Farmers’ Association and Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association to protest strongly and get this inequality and discrimination done away with.

T Wheeler

Limerick

In memory of Jack Kyle

On a balmy summer evening several years ago, as I turned the corner onto a deserted Kildare Street, I made out the figure of a sporting legend coming in my direction. He was carrying an overnight bag and had the look of someone intent on catching a train.

In the precious moments available, I almost physically willed myself to stretch out my hand, but, alas, courage failed me. Our eyes briefly met and Jack Kyle gave me a kindly look, as if reading my metaphorical dropped ball and unseized opportunity.

I remembered our non-verbal communication when listening to his extraordinary rendering of Yeats’ verses on radio at the weekend (Sunday with Miriam, RTE).

Oliver McGrane

Rathfarnham, Dublin 16

People paying for false promises

There is no doubt that both parties of this Government came to power on false promises. The only promises they have consistently delivered on are continuous and increased levels of austerity and emigration.

Prior to assuming office, they were well aware of the financial situation and they were rightly critical of the disastrous situation created by the previous government.

They promised a new era of politics, consisting of transparency and change. Unfortunately, the only change we got is whatever change we may have left in our pockets after having everything else stripped away. For many people it has come to the stage that the Government may as well take all their income and give them back their change.

All of their policies have been geared towards protecting the golden circle – cosseted elite, millionaires, foreign banks and bondholders – at the expense of those on lower to middle-income. This has created ever-increasing inequality, poverty, despair, depression and sadly in some cases, suicide.

For a Government that promised new politics working for the people, it has taken them more than three years to partly listen to the concerns of the people.

This pretend-listening process has only been brought about due to the increased widespread protests and resentment shown to them by the people on the streets.

Despite their somersaults and U-turns on the water charge issue, their main reaction to these protests has been to ridicule and demonise the participants so as to discredit them, both for their own benefit and in order to limit and curb their impact.

They are quite happy to continue with their austerity policies once the people are willing to take them lying down. However, at last the people have woken up to the treachery of this Government. They realise that the guiding principles of this Government are not based on democracy, but on coercion, harassment and dictatorship.

These latest mass protests are not solely about water, but about the cumulative effect of so much austerity and impoverishment over the past seven years. The people cannot take anymore.

Despite what some people say, this Government is not out of touch. They just simply do not care because they and their ilk are unaffected, they continue to be sheltered and protected.

This Government were elected to deliver fairness for the ordinary people and not to blackguard people. For too many the green shoots of recovery is only that of mildew in the far-away hills.

We now have Fianna Fail claiming credit for the austerity measures which are supposed to be contributing to that mildew, which shows that their policies are no different from the present Government. Of course, it is their policy template that has been adhered to. They both ought to make perfect future bedfellows to ensure that the rotten party political system and cronyism continues.

Christy Kelly

Templeglantine, Co Limerick

Irish Independent

4 December 2014 All clear

I still have arthritis in my left toe I am stricken with gout. But I manage to get Fluff to the vet, all clear thank goodness.

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast weight up rabbit for tea and her tummy pain is still there. We go to see the GP

Obituary:

Lady Juliet Townsend was a countrywoman and writer and for many years Lady-in-Waiting to Princess Margaret

6:19PM GMT 03 Dec 2014

Comments

Guardian:

After reading the article by Tom Gross (A modest proposal: let Gaza host the World Cup, 1 December), I had to check my diary to make sure it was not 1 April. The article is such nonsense that a considered response is not needed, but I would like to ask Mr Gross if he has been to Gaza recently, and if so whether he could point out where exactly Ismail Haniyeh lands his private jet. I think we should be told.
Jenny Tonge
House of Lords

• For many years I have bridled at the use of “strong women” to refer to any women portrayed as showing character or independent opinions, or whose roles rely on more than just their relationship to men. Jessie Burton (Strong women? They’re just women says writer, 1 December) exposes the cliche for what it is: evidence of low expectations of women and low interest in the tonal variety of women’s lives.
Barbara Crowther
Leamington, Warwickshire

• Am I your only reader who spotted the uncanny likeness between your photo of the lovely Samantha (Pass notes, 3 December) and that fellow purveyor of good taste, the mysterious restaurant reviewer of the year Marina O’Loughlin (Weekend, 29 November)? More sauce, anyone?
Alan Willson
Swansea

• I will find it hard to take your economic analyses seriously after you demonstrated your inability to count by printing a picture of three parasol mushrooms with the heading “Two fairy parasols” (Letters page, 2 December).
San Cassimally
Edinburgh

• “Balls-out”? “romcom”? “gross-out”? “celeb-stalky”? “Ob/Gyn”? “ditz”? “douchey” (TV’s most radical, G2, 2 December)? Could we have a glossary to assist your English-speaking readers?
Reginald Hall
Newcastle upon Tyne

• What’s wrong with 60/60/24/7/52/100/1000 (Letters, 2 December)? And that’s without nanoseconds or aeons. Time-wasting, perhaps?
Gareth Jones
Great Gaddesdon, Hertfordshire

Choose where you eat with care, Louise Burns (Mother humiliated after Claridge’s staff make her cover up while breastfeeding, 3 December). A couple of years ago I had lunch at Carluccio’s in Covent Garden with my breastfeeding daughter and my granddaughter. In the crowded restaurant, Antonio Carluccio came up to us and said “a warm welcome to a future customer of Carluccio’s”, and asked my daughter if she would like a cushion to lean on. Go where humanity is still important, Louise (and the food was excellent too).
Corinne Haynes
Nottingham

• Sitting in a Paris restaurant in 1957, I asked the waiter where I could feed my baby. He looked astonished. “Mais ici, Madame, ici.”
Diana Payan
London

18.32 GMT

Paul Mason (Private schools know how to game elite universities – state-educated kids don’t have this privilege, G2, 1 December) has succumbed to crude class-based generalisations, increasingly the default response in the private school v state school debate that the media is so fond of. Paul Mason claims that state-educated 16-year-olds make A-level choices based on “hearsay, myth and information that is outdated”, whereas private-school students happily rely on their teachers’ “years of practical knowledge” and “continual informal contact with elite universities”. In my experience as a recently retired deputy head of a large state school which published a successful national guide to succeeding at competitive university interviews and secured 17 Oxbridge offers last year – and as someone who has met many well-informed and committed heads of sixth and advisers in the state sector – the truth is not as simplistic.

The real division is not between state and private but between schools that provide high-quality, personalised up-to-date advice and information, and those that do not. The independent sector has quite a few of the latter, as does the state sector, which under this government has suffered devastating cuts to careers and higher education advice.

I do agree with Mr Mason’s conclusion – the system often does fail “bright kids from non-privileged backgrounds” – but let us not lazily assume the independent sector has all the answers here; state schools just need significantly increased investment in high-quality guidance, especially for 15- and 16-year-olds, for the expertise and passion for excellence and aspiration is there.
Tim Miller
London

• Paul Mason is probably right. Our society and our economy are being deprived of talent by the exclusive access to universities afforded to the privately educated. This unequal access affects not only the quality and scope of our existing and future judges, diplomats, civil servants and politicians, but also our journalists and editors, our senior broadcasters, actors and even our popular musicians. The answer is not to get a bit more information to state schools, as Mason suggests, nor to go cap in hand to the private sector, as our privately educated shadow education secretary would have us do, but to do what Margaret Drabble proposed: get rid of their charitable status. And stop pandering to the veneer presented at interview panels and auditions.
Arthur Gould
Loughborough, Leicestershire

• For too long state-school pupils have received poor advice regarding the facilitating subjects at GCSE and A-level that will help them progress to the top universities and keep their options open. To help tackle youth unemployment and ensure that students receive the degrees and qualifications that will lead to employment, Russell Group universities must develop a closer relationship with state schools and their careers advisers to ensure that accurate information about required GCSE and A-level subject choices are clear, so that students can make informed choices from as early as year 8. Often, by the time students receive this information at age 16 or 17, it may be too late.
Brenda King
Chief executive, ACDiversity

• Bravo to Michael Rosen for highlighting the hypocrisy of coalition education policy and the folly of the free school zealots (Letter from a curious parent, 2 December). Is it too much to hope that Tristram Hunt might agree with him?
Brian Donnelly
Birkby, Cumbria

• What I don’t understand is why there seems to be no one (or rather few) in Britain questioning the whole premise that choices you make aged 16 should decide your future. When I was 16 I wanted to be an actor, of course. At 16 nothing seems quite right in your life, and the idea of slipping in and out of the lives of other characters appealed to me. Well, thank goodness I didn’t have to make the choices then that kids at English schools have to. I’m from Germany and there we’re made to study around 10 subjects until the very end of school. We choose two or three subjects to take at an advanced level, but all other subjects – from sciences, to languages, politics, history, PE, ethics, etc – are still mandatory. And the qualification gained at the end enables you to apply to any university course you want. I did advanced English and German, but could have applied to do almost anything at a German university: medicine, engineering, informatics, or graphic design.

I feel that giving young people a broad, well-rounded education that will enable them to turn to almost any subject in their higher education has greater value than forcing them to make decisions when lots of them will not be ready (how could they be?), and that could go on to restrict what they can apply to do at university.
Anita Klingler
Griesheim, Hesse, Germany

Roger Ridey

18.30 GMT

Roger Ridey writes: The transformation of Frankie Fraser from East End gangster to media character can be attributed in large part to Willie Donaldson, writer of The Henry Root Letters, who often referred to their “friendship” in his column for the Independent, William Donaldson’s Week, in the early 1990s.

In March 1994, he announced his plans to stage An Evening With Frankie Fraser at The Goat in Boots pub in the Fulham Road, south-west London. Three years later, An Evening With Mad Frankie Fraser opened at the Jermyn Street theatre and subsequently toured the pubs and working men’s clubs up and down the country for years.

Donaldson also gave Fraser a part in his infamous 1996 Radio 4 series A Retiring Fellow, in which he played Willie’s guide to Marbella. No doubt the mischievous Donaldson would have been proud of Fraser’s success, while wondering why he never got his cut.

Independent:

Times:

Sir, Let us remember today the death 500 years ago of Richard Hunne, a London merchant who, on the morning of December 4, was found hanging in the Bishop of London’s prison. As a victim of the religious tensions that surfaced in the run-up to the English Reformation, Hunne reminds us of the bitter consequences of doctrinal intolerance — whether this be within or between the great religions of the world.

Richard Dale

Emeritus professor,
Southampton University

Sir, I felt my age when I heard that most voters want gas and railways renationalised (News, Dec 2). Many younger people of voting age must be unaware that when these bodies were nationalised they were a byword for poor service and the butt of jokes.
Richard Tweed
Croydon

Sir, As a Spurs supporter it sticks in the throat to defend Mario Balotelli (“Race storm”, Dec 2), but is it likely that someone brought up by a Jewish foster mother (of whom he is clearly fond) would intend to make an antisemitic post? This was simply the action by one of the many who tweet before they think — and all this on a day when a real antisemite was welcomed back into the fashion world.
David Citrine
Enfield, Middx

Telegraph:

er’s EU destiny

The Iron Lady was pro-Europe, argue 90 prominent Liberal Democrats.

6:00AM GMT 03 Dec 2014

Comments

7:00AM GMT 03 Dec 2014

Comments

Irish Times:

Sir, – In an interview on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme, I heard Brother Kevin Crowley of the Capuchin Day Centre say that in 50 years time people will look back and compare the neglect of homeless people in a similar way that we look back on the scandal of the Magdalene Laundries.

I have to disagree with him. More than 40 years ago along with Séamus Ó’Cinnéide I carried out the first census of homeless people in Dublin for the the Simon Community. The level of homelessness then was nothing compared with today and we certainly found no families or children sleeping out.

It was the expectation then that as the economy improved the problem would be solved or at least seriously ameliorated. As a society, despite the recent recession, we are considerably wealthier than we were in 1971 and we have managed not merely to solve the homeless crisis but we have made it worse. We can blame governments and politicians but we all have to take some responsibility as a community.

I hope Brother Kevin is right and the problem will have been solved but reflecting on the last forty years I am not hopeful. – Yours, etc PETER MOONEY. Cabra, Dublin 7.

Sir, – Apparently there are significant numbers of dwellings boarded up because they do not meet current housing regulations.

Homelessness is a glaring emergency, so there should be political will to find a mechanism to accommodate otherwise homeless people in such unused dwellings, until enough units are upgraded, built or the housing regulations are adapted to meet demand. Regulations are supposed to serve the people, not vice versa. Standards for rented houses that result in people sleeping rough are an obscenity. – Is mise, etc, CLAIRE WHEELER Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.

Sir – An endangered species, a loggerhead turtle, lost her way in a storm and is nursed back to health for a year, then flown to the Canaries (“Leona the turtle has landed in Las Palmas after flying economy class from Dublin”, December 2nd)

A man who lost his way in life’s storm is left to languish and die beside the seat of power of the State. Is humanity endangered? – Yours, etc, FIONNUALA McGEE Rathgar, Dublin 6 Sir, – It has taken the death of a man opposite the gates of our national parliament to focus official attention on the problem of homelessness.

Why is public policy in Ireland always formulated against the backdrop of extreme crisis and outrage rather than as a response to emerging trends and potential future problems?

Homelessness did not receive adequate official attention before John Corrie died. A properly functioning political system would have recognised this during his life. – Yours, etc, MARK COEN Spencer Dock, Dublin 1. A chara, – Is the special forum on homelessness to be convened due to the death of a man or the death of a man on the Dáil’s doorstep? Advocates for people marginalised by our system will have nothing new to say at a forum, special or otherwise.

I’m sure Fr Peter McVerry would take a call from An Taoiseach, as would all other seasoned and committed people who could advise him, should he wish to get sound counsel without pomp or ceremony. I’m sure they would willingly say, yet again, what they have been saying for years.

Austerity augmented the mental and financial vulnerability of thousands. State imposed poverty, in many cases, was a direct cause of homelessness.

As a mark of respect in memory of Mr Corrie, could the Government consider its position, rather than merely deferring the switching on of the Christmas lights in Leinster House? – Is mise, etc, ANNMARIE LEONARD Donabate, Co Dublin.

Sir, – As a 10-year-old boy in February 1955 I attended the England v Ireland rugby encounter with my Dad. I stood tall at the Havelock Square end on a Jacob’s Biscuit tin so I could see all the action.

Jackie Kyle was faster over that first 10 yards than Usain Bolt. I was enthralled with his majestic contribution to the 6- 6 draw in front of a huge crowd. I became a dedicated young fan and went to all the major games. As an avid follower I sought out the players’ autographs, a prized possession of young followers.

Then as a 12-year-old, well into my stride, I was waiting with anticipation the overseas Australian tourists of 1957 to arrive. My hero was to play in a club game against Lansdowne RFC in September. In the relative quiet of the after-match dressing room I nervously approached my champion. I mentioned the upcoming Ulster clash with the tourists in November. As he would be playing he would have access to a game programme. I asked would he give me his address as I wanted to write to him, and the next day I sent him a letter and enclosed a shilling for a programme.

A week after the game, our postman delivered a large envelope with a letter from Jackie. They had lost 9-0 but he enclosed the programme autographed by all the tourists and the Ulster squad. He also sent the menu for the dinner that evening, autographed by all. But the inspirational piece came in the last paragraph of the letter. He said “please find enclosed your shilling. As I was selected on the team they gave me a free programme.” Signed Jackie Kyle. What a gentleman. – Yours, etc, MIKE PARLE Leixlip, Co Kildare.

A Chara, – Conor O’Clery, in his very interesting article (“Did the end of the Cold War sow the seeds for a new one?” November 29th), tells us that with the end of the cold war “the threat of a nuclear holocaust became history”.

Unfortunately this is not the case. There are approximately 20,000 nuclear weapons owned by a growing number of states and until they are all decommissioned the threat of a nuclear holocaust will remain.

What has happened however, is, as Donald Clarke pointed out (“Should we continue to fear another world war?’, August 9th), that “the fear has largely gone away”.

Clarke tells us that nuclear holocaust is no longer deemed terrifying enough as subject matter for Hollywood’s apocalypse movies, and he adds that “The denial of collective death continues. We don’t even whistle in the dark any more. Almost nobody seems to notice the dark. Can we get away with our hubris forever?”. Can we? – Yours, etc, MARY McCARRICK ICND (Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) PO Box 6327, Dublin 6

Sir, – My 25-year-old daughter brought her 16 years old car, for the NCT. It failed on emissions and some rust in the spare tyre compartment of the boot. Is the NCT about putting older cars off the road or safety? When the last person was killed by emissions or flying spare wheels from under cars. Why penalise older cars.

The NCT is a cash cow for everybody in the motoring trade, new car dealers and repair garages. I am all for safety and looking after our environment. Surely it makes more sense to keep good cars going for as long as possible instead of buying new cars and the emission and energy that goes with producing them? – Yours, etc,

PHILIP ROCHFORD,

Kilmannon Cross Roads,

Cleariestown,

Co Wexford.

Sir, – I am amazed that throughout all the talk regarding Junior Cycle reform, nobody has thought to ask students, who have completed the examination in recent years, what they think of the exam.

As a sixth-year student, currently preparing for my Leaving Certificate, I do not think that two or three years of work should be tested in a three-hour exam. Continuous assessment is the way forward and work should be externally corrected.

The education system is so geared toward fact drilling and rote memorisation that students often exit with a head-full of dates and formulas, but without the ability to constructively think. If we readjusted the testing and educational system to focus on critical reasoning rather than memorisation, then even if we knew fewer facts off the top of our heads, we would be smarter overall. We would take a step towards doubt and a step towards thinking for ourselves. – Yours, etc, GAVIN COLL Carrickmines, Dublin 18. Sir, – Geraldine Mooney Simmie (Letters, December 1st) offers a caricature of the proposed Junior Cycle reform, claiming that it will “shatter the conception of education as a public good for all”. Dr Mooney associates the reform of the Junior Cycle with a European “liberal agenda” which seeks to reduce the role of the State in the delivery of public services.

This certainly does not do justice to the proposed Junior Cycle reform, which seeks to enhance the autonomy of teachers by giving them a greater role through school-based assessment of their students. This is very different from the education “reform” measures adopted in a number of developed countries, including Britain, which have promoted standardisation of courses, greater monitoring of teachers and more rigid official control over schools.

The current proposal by the Minister for Education involves the retention of a certificate issued by the State and allocates 60 per cent of the assessment to a final examination marked by the State Examinations Commission. This is hardly a revolutionary change – school-based assessment is already a reality in other areas of the post-primary system, notably the Leaving Certificate Applied programme.

Certainly there are real threats to the concept of education as a public good, but reform of the Junior Certificate is not one of them. Opponents of the reform should be careful what they wish for – it is rare for a government department to offer to share some of its powers and even more unusual for educators to make the case for State control of education. – Yours etc.

DR JOHN WALSH

School of Education,

Trinity College Dublin,

Dublin 2. Sir, – It is alarming to read Prof Tom Collins’s apologia for getting rid of what he calls “brutal” external assessment from the second-level educational system (“Why Junior Cert reform is best for students’ education,” December 3rd).

He overlooks that what he calls “light touch external examiner oversight” would be totally inadequate to ensure the fairness of the second-level system.

Getting rid of an exam system, which has integrity, from second level is a backward step. It will leave it open to the influence of every power-monger from the over-ambitious, influential parent down.

If it leads to greater equality, as Prof Collins is arguing, it will only do so by bringing everyone down to the lowest common denominator. – Yours, etc, A LEAVY Sutton, Dublin 13.

Sir, – Your editorial (“Too many managers”, December, 1st) concentrated its fury on an area of public-health administration that constitutes just 1.1 per cent of the total number of staff employed in our health services.

The number of health service senior managers has remained at around this level since 2007 as the overall numbers employed in health have declined. Any increase or decrease among such a relatively small group of staff is going to present as a much greater movement when expressed as a proportion of their total number.

Your editorial also states that the HSE employs 48,000 people. However, according to the HSE’s own figures (to September 2014), the total number employed in our health services is just over 97,000, with just over 61,500 of those employed directly by the HSE itself.

It remains the most enduring myth of our health services that it is overburdened with clerical, administrative and management staff.

Between 2009 and 2013, numbers of staff employed in these categories fell by more than any other (apart from “general support staff”). A greater challenge for our health service is to ensure the crippling costs of agency staff are reversed, and that budgets can be used to employ more staff in areas where they are needed. This will increase the capacity of the service and, ultimately, improve the outcome for everyone who uses our health services. – Yours, etc, LOUISE O’DONNELL National Secretary, Health & Welfare division IMPACT Nerney’s Court Dublin 1

Sir, – Surely the reason for the increase in the number of managers in the HSE is as a direct result of the increase in paper work across the health sector . When will someone look at the more important issue of time spent with patients versus time spent writing about patients. Reduce this paper trail of form filling, checklists, ticking of boxes and the need for clip-board management will be reduced. – Yours, etc, MG Storey, RGN, RPN Glencar, Co Sligo.

Irish Independent:

As a 10-year-old boy in February 1955 I attended the England vs Ireland rugby encounter with my Dad. I stood tall at the Havelock Square end on a Jacob’s Biscuits tin so I could see all the action. I first saw a talented man that day they called Jackie Kyle. He was faster over that first 10 yards than Usain Bolt.

I was captivated and enthralled with his majestic, strategic contribution to the 6 – 6 draw in front of a huge crowd.

I was captured as a follower of the rugby game in that first few hours. I became a dedicated young fan. I went to all the major games and sought out the player’s autographs, a prized possession of young followers.

Competitors like John Bowman, of ‘Questions and Answers’ fame, were there standing in line waiting. The stack of programmes he came with almost toppled him over, he had so many.

Then as a 12-year-old, well into my stride, I was waiting with eager anticipation for the Australian tourists of 1957 to arrive here. I looked forward to adding to my autograph and programme collection.

Jack Kyle was to play in an ordinary inter-club game for NIFC against Lansdowne RFC in September.

In the relative quiet of the after match dressing room, I nervously approached my hero. Could he, would he sign my many programmes? He was kindness itself and was ready to help a young boy. Gaining confidence, I mentioned the upcoming Ulster clash with the tourists in November. As he would be playing, he would have access to a game programme. He astounded me with his modesty by saying that as the Ulster team had not yet been selected, he might not be at Ravenhill.

I asked would he give me his address, as I wanted to write to him about the match programme. He willingly complied and headed off to meet the teams for a chat and a cuppa.

The next day I sent him a letter and enclosed a shilling for a programme. A week after the game our postman delivered a large brown envelope with a handwritten letter from Jackie. They had unfortunately lost 9 – 0 but he enclosed a game programme autographed by all the tourists along with the full Ulster squad and the menu for the after-game dinner, also autographed by all.

But the inspirational thing came in the last paragraph of the letter. He wrote, “please find enclosed your shilling. As I was selected on the team they gave me a free programme.”

What a gentleman to be so kind to an insignificant little boy, now in his 70th year.

The following January, Ireland, guided by the great man, beat Australia 9 – 6. What a day, what a great man.

Mike Parle

Leixlip, Co Kildare

We have failed the homeless

While it is right that the abject failure of all Irish governments, especially this one, to tackle homelessness should be highlighted, it is also important to remember that it wasn’t just on this occasion that the State failed one of its citizens.

Jonathan Corrie, who died almost at the gates of Leinster House, wasn’t born homeless, or with drug and alcohol problems. We can but hope Mr Corrie’s loved ones can take some comfort in the fact he must now be at peace and that if there is a God, then he will have embraced Mr Corrie at the gates of Heaven.

But that must not absolve us of the shame that a death like his can take place anywhere in Ireland in 2014. We hear talk about long-term plans to address homelessness but can it really be beyond the wit of our well-fed and overpaid ministers and their myriad advisers, to find locations where even suitable pre-fab accommodation can be put up? That at the very least can provide access to services and facilities for homeless people, be they on the street or any of the many family units left homeless, due to the brutal policies of Fine Gael and Labour using the money the State generates to prioritise protecting the well-off at the expense of those who are most marginalised.

Locations that are clean, safe and suitable where homeless people can at least have time to think while longer-term solutions are put in place.

Addressing the emotional needs of some of these people will not be done overnight but providing for their physical needs can be solved overnight by this Government at the stroke of a pen.

If Enda Kenny’s Government cannot even solve a problem as demanding of humanity as homelessness, then it is not up to the job.

Desmond FitzGerald

Canary Wharf, London

A homeless man freezes to death while sleeping on a Dublin street, close to our national parliament and at the start of the holy festival of Christmas of 2014. The fact that the man’s name, Jonathan Corrie, bears the initials JC is of some significance because they are the same initials as that of Jesus Christ, whose birth we’re supposed to be celebrating in the weeks ahead.

The reaction to this tragedy and manner of this man’s death has rightly stirred the conscience of people in high office in both church and State, with Lord Mayor Christy Burke and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin promising to do something once and for all to begin to deal with the scandal of people forced to dwell on the streets of our cities and towns.

We Irish have traditionally been upfront when it comes to sorting out other people’s problems in other lands; this is an opportunity to prove that we are capable of looking out for our own distressed people who have fallen upon hard times.

Paddy O’Brien

Balbriggan, Co Dublin

Loneliness: invisible but endemic

David McWilliams’s article on homelessness (Irish Independent, December 3) was both thought- provoking and constructive.

However, Mr McWilliams seems to think that loneliness is, somehow, below homelessness in the league of human suffering. He is wrong about this.

The despair of loneliness can kill someone, just as homelessness can. Both loneliness and homelessness are now endemic in our society. Despite this, they are both “invisible”.

Loneliness and homelessness are in all parts of our society, both rural and urban, and they both demand our greatest attention.

Ireland has become a ‘desert’, when it comes to human contact, i.e. real human contact.

We are now more selfish and more closed off from each other, than we’ve ever been before.

More and more of us are deliberately cutting ourselves off from any kind of human contact.

People are cutting themselves off by consuming high levels of alcohol (at home) and also with Facebook, headphones, texting and other kinds of escapist technology.

Thus we have more and more lonely people and, in addition, almost total apathy towards the homeless.

Tim Buckley

White Street, Cork city

Statues don’t retire

As a proud Kilkenny man, apprehensive adrenalin ran through my body as I read Teddy Walsh’s letter (Irish Independent, November 27) concerning the real birthplace of Fr Theobold Matthew – Thomastown, Golden, Tipperary.

Now Teddy, I am sure you know that it’s hard to get anything back off a Cat once it is given a catch, but on this occasion, I think we must concede to our great hurling neighbours. You see, Teddy, I thought Fr Matthew was retiring, not moving.

But sure I should have known that statues don’t retire, do they?

Jerry Dunne

Co Kilkenny

Irish Independent

5 December 2014 Home

I still have arthritis in my left toe I am stricken with gout. But I manage to get to the post box

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast weight up gammon for tea and her tummy pain is still there. We go to see the GP

Obituary:

Jeremy Thorpe was a charismatic leader of the Liberal Party who fell from grace in one of the most spectacular political scandals of the 20th century

6:02PM GMT 04 Dec 2014

Comments

Guardian:

19.37 GMT

Has the Turner prize-winning Marxist Duncan Campbell (Politics seeps into everything, 3 December) read Marx’s notebooks and his hero’s riff to the effect that under capitalism the worker is debased, degraded and “reduced to the level of the Irish”? When railing against the British Museum, is he aware that Marx (who worked for much of his life in the museum’s former reading room) could not complete his great intended meta-system because he failed to account for the fact that the classical art produced in the backward, slave-owning society of ancient Greece remained superior to that of the more modern and technically “advanced” societies of his day? Does he think that Marxian economics expired with the collapse of communism or is he of the opinion that it is yet to be applied and tested? Does he have plans to take his film to North Korea?
Michael Daley
Director, ArtWatch UK

In equating jihadists with those who went to fight fascism in Spain, Michael Leeder (Letters, 3 December) somehow can’t see the crucial difference between them. Ralph Fox and his colleagues did not intend to return home in order to blow up people in this country.
Adam Czerniawski
Monmouth

• Michael Dixon of the NHS Alliance proclaims that general practitioners are on their knees (Letters, 4 December). It was revealed earlier this year that over 16,000 GPs earn more than £100,000 a year and that more than 600 have annual salaries in excess of £200,000. One wonders how many members of the public would like to adopt a posture like that of Dr Dixon and his colleagues.
Colin Armstrong
Belfast

• I was also, like Tim Dowling (2 December), plagued by vishing, although I didn’t know it was called that. I found an even easier solution than not answering the landline; I had it removed. After all, how quaint it seems now to telephone a building and hope that the person to whom you wish to speak might actually be there.
Ian Churchill
Leeds

• The government announces £15bn to be spend on roads (Hold on to your ley lines, 1 December). “Clegg pledges £200m to encourage cycling” (27 November) “in an attempt to make Britain a nation that loves its bicycles”. The discrepancy is stark, and puts paid to any notion that the government wants to make us a healthier nation.
Raymond Fisher
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

• Intrigued by the proposed Belfast Urban Motorway (Why coalition’s planned roads may go nowhere, 2 December). Even more fascinated to hear that the Bum project would have “created a large ring of free-flowing traffic”. Now that’s one 1970s project I’m glad they didn’t follow through on…
Sebastian St John Clarke
Diss, Norfolk

15.19 GMT

The changes within higher education introduced by the government in 2011 acknowledged that educating students at a university level is not exclusively the public sector’s role; private provision can make an equally positive contribution.

This week’s report by the National Audit Office highlights dropout rates (Report, 2 December), which it suggests are higher in the private sector. However, when private colleges give mature students from disadvantaged backgrounds the opportunity to return to education, a completion rate of over 80% is surely a positive outcome. This stands comparison with other publicly funded London institutions where the non-continuation rate on similar courses can be up to 24.5%, according to government figures.

This school is working to establish statistical comparisons between private and public colleges on a like-for-like basis and benchmarks similar to those developed for public colleges by the Higher Education Funding Council. Without that information, comparisons such as the NAO’s of the performance of students on private HND courses with those on public undergraduate degree courses are like comparing apples to oranges.

The NAO report will be valuable if it stimulates debate about what matters in education. It’s about empowering individuals, regardless of their ethnicity, age or background, and giving them the best opportunities. When students tell me that they never imagined they would be able to go to college, it fills me with confidence that this private college is doing something important and right.
Professor Maurits van Rooijen
Rector and chief executive officer, London School of Business and Finance

Independent:

Times:

Sir, Apropos bad art (letter, Dec 3), the artist Angus Lordie in Alexander McCall-Smith’s novel 44 Scotland Street takes his dog Cyril for a walk, points at the ground, and gives the command “Turner Prize!”.
Anne Nethercott
Godalming, Surrey

Sir, Your presentation of facts and figures on immigration (Nov 28) was excellent. It was a reminder that, as we approach the general election, discussions should be based on facts not guesswork or fear. It was a surprise that net migration includes 50,000 returning British citizens, and revealing to see that net migration includes 170,000 overseas students; also that there were more immigrants from China, Spain, India and Australia than from Poland.

Clarity demands that the Office for National Statistics separates returning British citizens and overseas students from the figures, which would give a much more accurate picture.
The Right Rev Patrick Lynch
Office for Migration Policy

Sir, As the mother of a 13-year-old boy who tried to hang himself after years (unknown to us) of “banter” from his peers, I applaud Mike Stuchbery’s stand (Education, Nov 28). Comments meant to cause offence or discomfort are not banter but bullying. We are bringing up a generation who either think it is fun to humiliate and hurt, or who are so psychologically scarred they can barely function.
Michelle Gent
Winchester

Telegraph:

Legacy of the Aghan conflict; Thatcher’s stance on Europe; human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo; calendars for dogs, and a poem for Herman van Rompuy

7:00AM GMT 04 Dec 2014

Comments

Irish Times:

Sir, – 2014 has been a remarkable year for Irish writing by any standards.

Writers in all genres have produced work that has gained attention and recognition at home and internationally. And Irish publishing continues to produce poetry, non-fiction, fiction for children and adults of the highest quality. This newspaper recently published a profile of Michael O’Brien whose O’Brien Press celebrated 40 years of publishing this year. “Down the years, the company has broken new ground for the domestic trade in the fields of culture, conservation and environment, true crime and, most strikingly, children’s literature,” Mick Heaney commented in his profile.

How disappointing then to learn that the Arts Council has chosen to reward this 40 years of achievement by handing the press an 84 per cent reduction in its grant – from €63,000 in 2014 to a mere €10,000 in 2015.

It achieved this drastic cut by moving the publisher from regular funding to the Title-by-Title Scheme, a scheme designed to support the costs of individual titles by publishers not in receipt of any other funding.

Of the 14 titles submitted by O’Brien Press, a mere two were funded. The clear signal from the council is that Ireland’s leading publisher of children’s books, and one of Ireland’s leading publishers of adult books is undeserving of serious support.

Perhaps it feels that Irish writers are best served by UK or US publishers and that publishing, unlike music, dance, theatre or film, is a relatively low priority.

We would argue that, on the contrary, Ireland needs a strong publishing industry, exactly as it needs other forms of creative endeavour, unless we’re to return to the bad old days of cultural cringe when all validation had to be external and we didn’t trust or support our own creativity.

We therefore urge the Arts Council to reconsider its almost total cut in O’Brien Press’s funding and to restore it immediately to regular funding at a level at least equal to its 2014 grant. – Yours, etc PETER SIRR Greenville Avenue, Dublin 8 FRANK McGUINNESS, JOHN BOYNE, ÉILÍS NÍ DHUIBHNE ROBERT DUNBAR MARITA CONLON-McKENNA DERMOT BOLGER ALICE TAYLOR MARY MORRISSY SUSAN LANIGAN

Sir, – In response to Anthea McTeirnan (“Good God, Hozier. What were you thinking?” December 3rd) , I would imagine that Hozier was thinking that being a feminist resides in considering women as equals to men. That being a feminist includes supporting a conscious decision to have a career in lingerie modelling as much as it does supporting the rights of women to achieve the same level of education as men, to achieve the same positions in the highest board rooms and as world leaders.

I would imagine that he thought being a feminist is more than just being vehemently opposed to the “objectification” of the female body but maybe being in support of ownership of that body. Not hiding that body. Just like not hiding an opinion in a board room. Or in a university lecture theatre.

But maybe I’m speculating, because surely it is considered a loss of one’s morals to have sang at, participated in or attended a show like the Victoria’s Secret one.

Maybe we should just ensure that women dress head to toe in black and cover up. That they aren’t seen in public. Because no society has ever done more for feminism than the one that tells women “no, you may not wear what you like and no, you must cover your skin”.

An independent decision by a woman about how she controls her own body, is surely not what Anthea McTeirnan is in favour of? – Yours, etc.

ROB IVORY

Spears Road,

London

Sir, – The recent study published by the Irish Medical Journal and reported in The Irish Times (“Sexually confused young people more vulnerable”, November 26th) clearly shows that young LGBT people are hurting.

Young people with concerns around sexual orientation, it says, are “14-times more likely to attempt suicide” and “16-times more likely to have been sexually assaulted” than their peers.

These figures are appalling and show urgent action is needed to ensure that these young people have every support they need from church and state to help them navigate what is an extremely difficult time in their lives.

One of the practical supports that we as LGBT people need is legal recognition for our longterm relationships. A recognition which will be put to a vote next year in the referendum on marriage equality.

It is therefore disappointing to read that Bishop Kevin Doran (“Bishop says opposition to same-sex marriage not about homosexuality”, November 28th) has stepped into the national arena to oppose such a legal recognition.

This opposition mistakenly suggests that the primary issue from a Catholic perspective is a legal one. It’s not. The primary issue here for the Catholic Church is not legal, it is pastoral.

The question is, do we as a church care about LGBT people who are suffering greatly as the study mentioned above, and others like it suggest? Have we put in place any pastoral care plan to respond to the needs of these vulnerable young LGBT people?

The fundamental question for the Catholic Church is: “Do we love our LGBT people?” What the LGBT community needs from Bishop Doran and the other bishops in the run-up to the referendum is a witness to the love that God has for the LGBT community and not instructions on how to vote in a referendum. – Yours, etc, DAVE DONNELLAN Secretary Gay Catholic Voice Ireland, Rialto, Dublin 8 .

Sir, – In Dáil Éireann yesterday Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald used the cover of parliamentary privilege to name a number of individuals said to be listed in an official report prepared by an official of the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation dealing, inter alia, with allegations of tax evasion.

The naming of private individuals who have no opportunity to defend their good name is a privilege that should be used sparingly and only when the matter is one of the utmost seriousness and where there is no alternative means of having allegations properly investigated.

It is far from clear that the present case meets these criteria. One wonders why Ms McDonald or her leader have not felt that a similar resort to parliamentary privilege is not justified in the case of the allegations made by Máiria Cahill about sexual abuse perpetrated by senior IRA figures in Northern Ireland as well as the cover-up of these crimes by the wider republican movement.

It would appear that Sinn Féin applies a separate and tighter regime of privileged protection to the “good name” of IRA paedophiles. – Yours, etc, PADDY BARRY, Killiney, Co Dublin.

Sir, – Which is the greater wrong? That individuals have had their good names impugned by being named in the Dáil, or that allegations of tax evasion by senior politicians and members of the elite made 10 years ago had not been thoroughly investigated with the findings made public.

The reputation of the political system has been damaged. The reputation of politicians, the political system and many state agencies has been confirmed – self-serving and corrupt. – Yours, etc,

FINTAN REDDY

Castleknock,

Dublin 15. Sir, – I hold no brief for Sinn Féin. However, the naming of alleged Ansbacher account-holders by Mary Lou McDonald is to be applauded.

There is still a horrible culture of secrecy and cute hoorism in Ireland. Time to sweep away the dusty net curtains and let the sunshine in.– Yours, etc, PATRICIA R MOYNIHAN Castaheany, Co Dublin.

Sir, – Edinburgh, with a population of less than half a million people ( less than the population of Dublin) had at the latest official count, between April 2013 and March 2014, four hundred and thirty eight people sleeping rough on city streets, before they applied for assistance from the council.

According to new Scottish Government statistics, 363 people slept rough on the streets of its capital in just one night. In Dublin the latest and highest figure stands at 168.

While I don’t wish to excuse the lack of facilities for homeless people sleeping rough on Dublin’s streets, I do think a bit of perspective is needed. Ongoing lectures from holier-than-thou leaders of numerous advocacy groups are counter productive and much of the rhetoric one hears seems self indulgent.

Dublin for all its faults, and indeed the country as a whole, has a much better record in its dealings with the ever present scourge of homelessness and deprivation than most of the globes capitals. Credit where credit is due, please. –

Yours, etc,

NIALL GINTY Killester Dublin 5

Sir, – I refer to Paul Cullen’s article, “Cost of delaying dental care will be felt in the future” (December 2nd). I too have some concerns about the costs which will be paid in the future due to lack of dental screening for children.

In April 2013 The Irish Times published a report based on a Europe-wide study which found that people who drank sugar-sweetened drinks were at higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

For every additional regular can-sized, sugar-sweetened drink per day there is a 22 per cent increased risk of developing the disease.

The medical profession regularly warns of the impending “epidemic” that is diabetes.

Dental screening is a simple and effective method of determining potential risks of future diseases such as diabetes which are not otherwise easily detected.

Cullen’s article refers to the financial costs of remedial dental work, thankfully this is possible even at a price; we enjoy no such luxury with diabetes.

The main political interest in dentistry in this country is on state provision of orthodontic services.

For the lucky few who receive state-funded orthodontic treatment, there is no provision of follow-up care and maintenance. The result is that it is now a regular occurrence for dentists to extract decayed teeth for patients for whom the state has provided orthodontic treatment a few years earlier.

The title of Cullen’s article may indeed be prophetic for more reasons than he describes. –Yours, etc,

PÁDRAIG Ó REACHTAGÁIN

Dental Surgeon,

Castle Street,

Roscrea,

Sir, – I want to reply to comments made by Prof Jim Gleeson in relation to my letter on Junior Cycle changes (Letters, December 2nd).

Jim suggests that the changes mooted for the Junior Cycle are “necessary and progressive” and that my suggestion that the changes are “motivated by financial considerations is wide of the mark”.

While the changes in themselves might be “progressive”, and there is no shortage of evidence from the rest of Europe to question this claim, their mode of introduction was far from progressive and involved no debate with stakeholders in the context of Ireland and no effort was made to relate with teachers as progressive curriculum makers – it was presented as a straightforward top-down reform by former minister for education Ruaírí Quinn.

All I can say to the suggestion that the changes are not in any way related to “financial considerations” is that a quick re-read of the Lisbon Agreement and GATS agreement might remind Jim that education has been singled out as a lucrative public service for exploitation by corporate interests and that Ireland is a signatory to this. – Yours, etc, GERALDINE MOONEY SIMMIE Lecturer in Education, University of Limerick. Sir, – As any teacher worth their salt knows, student assessment is an essential part of the job, and it serves many purposes. Determining whether or not the individual “passes” or “fails” is only one, and arguably the least, of these.

Assessment allows the instructor to give the student feedback and suggestions for improvement; it lets both the student and the teacher gauge progress, and can alert to potential problems or difficulties before they become critical; it can offer encouragement and additional incentive to work that bit harder where needed; and it is thus a core part of the dialogue that all educators engage in with their students.

Like the proverbial iceberg, the public perception of the teacher’s roles tends to focus on the more visible parts.

The numbers of pupils who gain university places is often seen as an indicator of our own professional abilities, ignoring the often harder-won achievements of getting less promising students to achieve better than they might otherwise have done.

Perhaps if there was more explicit recognition of the broader role of student assessment, the contribution it makes to pedagogy as a whole, and the responsibilities it places on the part of the instructor to get it right, then at least some of the causes of the present dispute could be alleviated. – Yours, etc. DARIUS BARTLETT Department of Geography University College Cork.

Sir, – Tom Collins (Opinion & Analysis, December 3rd) argues how it is standard practice for third-level teachers to design their own course, teach and examine it and why should second-level teachers fear the same process.

Perhaps it hasn’t struck him that maybe it’s not fear at all, but the realisation that Irish universities languish in the lower strata of top colleges in the world .

Maybe rigorous external examination is exactly what our universities need to ensure that current standards will increase and they can hobnob with Harvard et al! – Yours, etc, AILEEN HOOPER, Stoneybatter, Dublin 7.

Sir, – Rosita Boland’s interview with Kay Maloney Caball about her book, The Kerry Girls’ (December 1st) was a fascinating insight into a little-known aspect of transportation to Australia during the Famine years. But unfortunate female paupers from all corners of Ireland suffered a similar cruel fate.

In Banbridge, Co Down we are particularly proud of our girls, 17 of whom travelled on the first sailing arriving in Sydney on October 6th, 1848. While the Belfast girls on the ship were described as “notoriously bad in every sense of the word,” in evidence before a committee of inquiry, the matron on The Earl Grey praised the Banbridge girls for their exemplary behaviour! – Yours, etc. DAVID GRIFFIN Banbridge, Co Down

Irish Independent:

December 10 is intended to be the biggest eruption of popular anger in recent Irish history. With the assistance of Government ineptitude this popular anger will gradually destroy the Coalition’s electoral strategy. It will prevent this Coalition’s re-election and – quite possibly – make the post-general election formation of a new coalition of Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and the rags of Labour very difficult.

The protest phenomenon is understandable. Even justified. But it offers no possibility of an agreed constructive alternative programme outside the realms of fantasy.

So what happens? Particularly if the Coalition’s economic strategy goes pear-shaped in the context of European and global realities.

Like most of your readers I need an assurance for which I can vote – that the incoming Government and Oireachtas might have what was absent from Kennyism: common sense, communication, proportionality of burden-carrying and European and global vision.

In the next Dail and Seanad we need to have a cohesive group of voices (however few can be mustered in the limited time available). These figures need to be articulate and organised enough to have some influence on what increasingly looks like being a mad house of discordant fragments.

The once-bitten twice-shy scepticism of the lenders and investors we will still need to put food on the national table.

There is the real possibility of an acute dysfunction of politics and governance from which the only ones to profit are those organised and ready to take over.

When Joan Burton was given a Gilmore-sent opportunity to bring Labour back into the 21st century, she threw back the ladder and continued digging frenetically at the hole to oblivion. The current Coalition may still break out of its cocoon of denial.

Alternatively, a new politics is still possible. Pioneered by a necessarily small but effective new grouping. Something for which we could vote. Maybe even campaign .

Maurice O’Connell

Tralee, Co Kerry

McDonald goes too far

In the 1700s the Age of Enlightenment writer and philosopher Francois-Marie Arouet (better known as Voltaire) is reputed to have said “With great power comes great responsibility”. This is as relevant today as it was all those years ago. It should be written in large letters over the doors of our parliament so all our parliamentarians could read and take notice as they enter the Dail chambers.

To stand up, as Sinn Fein deputy party leader Mary Lou McDonald did and refer to past and current members of Dail Eireann as possible tax evaders is a total abdication of her responsibilities as a parliamentarian and flies in the face of what any ordinary person would consider natural justice. Innocent until proven guilty.

Many of these men and women have given a lifetime of service to this country and deserve a fair hearing, not a political stunt designed to deflect the public gaze away from Sinn Fein’s troubles.

I would ask you, Ms McDonald, to stand up and immediately apologize to all of those whose reputations you have undoubtedly damaged. You should also consider your position on the public accounts committee, as it is apparent the weight of responsibility that comes with your position is too heavy of a burden for you to carry.

Eugene McGuinness

Kilkenny city

Action needed on homelessness

Groups like Simon, Threshold and the SVP have done great work in supporting those homeless or at risk of homelessness, but the issue needs urgency and serious debate in the Dail, which is there to represent all the people and to encourage the government to take quick action on crisis issues of the day.

The death of a homeless man in a doorway in Molesworth Street, 50 metres away from the Dail gates made RTE’s Six One News. It came at a time when rent supplements or low salaries not being enough to meet increasing high rents in Dublin was also in the news. I heard of a case where a lady and her children will have to leave their home soon, because the landlord will no longer accept rent allowance. The landlord explained the rent supplement was no longer high enough to help them meet their bills.

There is a need to bring in some form of rent control regulation, such as that that exists, I think, in Canada.

Homelessness is a serious issue and can happen to anyone when things go wrong in life. It isn’t always due to alcohol or drug addiction. It is affecting families and single parents with children and has been at crisis point all this year.

The media have done great work in highlighting this and the Government could perhaps bring in flexible rent control for starters. It is not a perfect solution, but it could help.

Mary Sullivan

Cork

Carrauntoohil cross

Statements by various, prominent atheistic individuals and groups that the culturally iconic cross on Carrauntoohil’s summit that was recently cut down and rightly re-instated “does not represent the whole community” are total red herrings.

Has anything in the grand entirety of human history ever represented the whole community that erected it? Moreover, are we now to destroy everything that doesn’t meet that impossibly arduous standard?

Killian Foley-Walsh

Kilkenny city

A new way of assessing students

Since the two major teachers’ unions have suggested that parents may bribe teachers to give their child a good grade and teachers basically cannot be trusted to be fair in their accessing of children, permit me to make the following suggestion.

I taught in the California secondary school system for over 35 years and graded/assessed my students twice a year – January and June. I assigned grades to approximately 160 students on seven subjects taught each day – in my case American Politics and Economics.

There were two major problems that resulted from this system. First, if any teacher gave too many failing grades many of his peers and administrators believed there was something lacking in that teacher’s ability to teach. Second, if, on the other hand, the teacher gave too many A grades, the same people believed that that teacher was “too easy and a pushover for students”.

So my suggestion to the Irish assessing of students goes like this. For example, on May 30 students in School A take the French exam beginning at 10am and ending at noon. At noon the students’ papers are picked up with their assigned exam number and are taken to School B for grading.

Within 96 hours – more or less depending on the amount of time needed to grade the particular subject – the papers are returned to school A for distribution to the students. And vice versa.

Advantages: Students get their results within seven days and the taxpayer is saved millions of euro over the school year.

Vincent J Lavery

Dalkey, Co Dublin

Irish Independent

6 December 2014 Joans books

I still have arthritis in my left toe I am stricken with gout. But I manage to get to the post office, Chemist and Co op. And Collects some books and Cat lit from Sandy at Joan’s house.

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast weight up trout for tea and her tummy pain is still there.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Monrovia, 22 October 2014. Photograph: Stringer/REUTERS

The continuing US embargo on Cuba (Cuba’s extraordinary global medical record shames the US blockade, 4 December) says much about diplomacy and democracy in the world. The US’s only ally at the UN regarding the embargo is Israel (three Pacific islands abstained), as monolithic in the Middle East as the US is in the world. That Britain refuses to condemn Israel on Gaza yet votes with the 188 to remove the embargo, then lauds our special relationship with the US, says something else. That Cuba quietly leads the world in medical assistance to west Africa is hardly surprising. If it results in closer relationships between the US and Cuba that can only be good. An opportunity for British diplomacy?
Graham Ullathorne
Chesterfield, Derbyshire

• More than 160 Cuban health workers were already in west Africa by early October at a time when western countries were just beginning to consider what support to offer in the Ebola crisis – and the remainder of the promised total of 461 have been arriving in the weeks since then. The scale of Cuban support has been impressive both in terms of absolute numbers and in proportion to its own population of 11 million. And yet we hardly hear about their presence there or the impact they are having. Perhaps western media can’t stomach the fact that “the west” en bloc doesn’t have a monopoly of good intentions in relation to humanitarian intervention.
Gillian Dalley
London

• During a recent visit to Cuba, I encountered people openly opposed to the regime, but who in a crisis would rally round Fidel and co because they have stuck two fingers up to the US for 50 years. So not only is the blockade cruel and vindictive – it is also counter-productive.
David Rainbird
Wallasey, Wirral

Independent:

By far the biggest tax hike of recent times for most people was the increase of VAT, by one-seventh, imposed in 2010. This has had a much bigger effect on most people’s standard of living than minor tinkering with tax thresholds.

Tax avoidance by multi-nationals has increased as the result of a number of other Coalition measures, in particular the 2012 Controlled Foreign Company rules which massively widens opportunities to gain from tax exemptions and which the Government shows no sign of repealing

Corporation tax has now been cut from 28 to 21 and soon to 20 per cent under this Government, and exemptions expanded.

The result of all this is that the UK Government now raises substantially more from indirect tax than from tax on income and capital. Hence the current discussion of income tax is really beside the point.

Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby
University of Kent, Canterbury

Fears have been expressed that stamp duty could become a “stealth tax” (5 December). It has long been a stealth tax. When first introduced in its modern form in the 1950s the threshold was set so that only the most expensive houses would attract the duty. At a time when a three-bedroom house in London cost in the region of £5,000, the threshold for stamp-duty liability was £30,000 – the equivalent of a £3m house now. As house prices rose, successive governments left the threshold as it was, so that virtually all house sales attracted the duty.

The introduction of banding goes some way to redress the balance but stamp duty is now seen as a revenue stream rather than a redistributive mechanism to transfer wealth from the mega-wealthy to society as a whole.

Patrick Cleary
Honiton, Devon

A projected £55bn or more of cuts in government expenditure is likely to hit “welfare” hardest (the disabled, unemployed, and those unable to pay rising rents). Either that or there will be a huge increase in personal debt, leading to another disastrous financial collapse, like that of 2008.

Meanwhile, a totally useless project sails on, immune and protected – the £50-£100bn Trident missile project. No political party has the guts to confront this obscenity.

Instead they are all quite happy to ruin people’s lives, the economy and the very future of the United Kingdom in attempts to pay off the government debt mountain. We are insane to stand for this.

Allan Williams
London E8

One realises that we remain a deeply socially divided society when even a writer in The Independent (Andy McSmith, 5 December) can say of Jeremy Thorpe, vis à vis Harold Wilson and Edward Heath: “Intellectually he was their equal, while socially he was a cut above them”.

This is a sorry attitude in this day and age. Socially he may have been very different, but to imply  that this difference  means better goes a long way to explaining the problems with this country.

Witness an Autumn Statement that essentially takes from the poorer sections of society and gives to the better-off as a solution to our mainly banker-created debt.

Tom Simpson
Bristol

With his insistence on off-balance-sheet PFI (private finance initiative), Gordon Brown loaded what is effectively the nation’s credit card. Now George Osborne hopes that we will emulate the ex-chancellor’s imprudence in our personal finances and thus make him appear competent.

S Lawton
Kirtlington,  Oxfordshire

pupils suffering over  a-level uncertainty MP Graham Stuart’s contribution to the debate surrounding A-level reform has added further confusion to the educational landscape (“Senior Tory’s U-turn on proposal to scrap AS-levels, 4 December).

 The situation we find ourselves in is somewhere between Pythonesque and Kafkaesque; during the course of one night next May, the entire educational landscape will be shaped. As of now, a Labour government will retain A-levels in their current form, whereas a Conservative government will implement reform for some subjects but not others, against the advice of teachers, universities and now, it seems, their own party.

Right now, we have pupils and parents in the position of choosing A-levels without knowing what they will look like; teachers choosing between syllabuses that may not come into existence, and careers staff who are unable to give proper guidance on how universities will go about admitting youngsters in less than two years’ time.

Next year’s election is unlikely to be won or lost on A-level reform. But – though it sounds melodramatic to say it – we are playing politics with pupils’ futures. It is in the national interest to remove the chaos and uncertainty of the current position.

Can both parties and Ofqual not come to a sensible arrangement and agree on a common timetable for A-level reform so that pupils and teachers can plan for the future properly?

Kieran McLaughlin
Headmaster, Durham School, Durham

Graham Stuart’s revised view of the value of AS- levels was fascinating if only for his reported statement: “My instinct originally was the same as [Gove’s] until I talked to headteachers in my constituency”. Well, that would have been a good place to start, wouldn’t it, rather than relying on instinct or, worse, on the hectoring Gove rhetoric?

Beryl Wall
London W4

Paracetamol prescriptions

Rosie Millard’s call for a halt to the prescription of paracetamol (29 November) initially seems attractive. But things are not so simple.

As a former GP,  I sometimes prescribed paracetamol, most often in liquid form for children with distressing conditions such as earache. Done with clear explanation that the child required pain relief rather than antibiotics, this has several benefits. Avoidance of unnecessary                  use of antibiotics both saves money and decreases the risk of the worrying spread of antibiotic resistance.

Prescription validates rather than dismisses the symptoms and the concerns they engender, but gives an opportunity to demonstrate that in the future similar illness can be safely managed at home with identical medicine (with the usual warnings to seek help if the pattern of illness is unusual or prolonged).

The prescription can only be dispensed by a pharmacy, where advice on the management of minor illness is readily available and from where the identical medication can be purchased for similar episodes in the future. Prescription is an endorsement of paracetamol as a real and effective medicine used by professionals. These are all steps that encourage people’s self-reliance and help limit demand on overstretched primary care services in the future.

Charles Campion-Smith
Dorchester

Why the fuss about arms sales to Israel?

Such a show of heart-searching that the UK should be selling arms to Israel (report, 24 November). And to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Iran, China, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe and countless other paragons of human rights – 45 repressive states in all.

The bottom line is: we sell arms! So why single out Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East with a free press and universal suffrage and under an existential threat for the past 70 years? Benjamin Netanyahu said that if the Arabs were to lay down their arms, peace would break out, but if Israel were to lay down hers, she would be obliterated. It certainly looks that way.

Gillian Cook
Brighton, East Sussex

I am angry and ashamed that a luxury dinner for arms dealers was held at the Tower of London, just days after the ending of the poppy display (report, 28 November). It will be followed by an arms fair in London next September, promoting sales of arms, bombs and torture equipment. How many exhibitors would be willing to show us how “good” their products are by giving a personal demonstration,  as a victim?

Joy Watson
Carlisle

Short-sighted policy

You report (5 December) that the Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical commissioning group will be providing only one hearing aid to people with hearing difficulties. I have worn two hearing aids for 20 years and I also wear spectacles. How would most people manage if their optician prescribed  a monocle?

Janette Ward
Tarrington, Herefordshire

Women get a dressing down

Men do have dress-code challenges, but are they really equivalent to women’s? (Letters, 5 December.) Are men told to take responsibility for their own sexual assaults, sometimes by the police, because of their choice of clothing? Or that their female colleagues’ poor behaviour towards them is caused by their choice of trousers?

Samantha Chung
Cambridge

Times:

Telegraph:

7:00AM GMT 05 Dec 2014

Comments

Irish Times:

Sir, – I have read and closely observed Irish politics for over 40 years. Over this period the term “sophisticated electorate” has been ascribed to the Irish voting public by media commentators, analysts and opinion formers on many poccasions.

I have never subscribed to such a flattering description of ourselves. Nor am I about to change my mind given the results of the latest Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll.

We have a well established penchant for being taken in and being bought by populist rhetoric and facile solutions to current problems which themselves are the result of such past cynicism.

Hence I believe successive cycles of boom and (mostly) bust and our failure to build real sustainable prosperity for our people, notwithstanding our enormous riches in human capital and natural resources.

It is natural to fulminate and rail against the politicians but we mustn’t forget it is we who elect them. For reasons for our condition we should look in the mirror. Casting one’s vote is an important responsibility not to be taken without thought and reflection. The next general election will provide us with yet another opportunity to demonstrate how really sophisticated we are. – Yours etc, PJ McDERMOTT, Westport, Co Mayo. Sir, – The results of the Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll are nothing short of sensational. For the first time, probably in history of this State, the establishment parties which have been running the State from its inception cannot even muster the support of half the electorate: Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour combined now have only 46 per cent of support.

Rather than a recognition of the Independents as the new white knights, the results indicate the level of disillusionment with “the politics as usual” the current Government has continued to pursue after its predecessors were voted out of office.

Will the Government take more note of these findings than of previous ones which show the same unmistakable trend?

If not, could they at least stop repeating that worn-out cliché of that latter-day Irish saint, Bill Clinton, that it is only “the economy, stupid”. Quite clearly, it isn’t. – Yours, etc, JOACHIM FISCHER Ballina, Co Tipperary Sir, – When it comes to getting elected, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour appear to accept without question Bill Clinton’s slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid”. For the sake of a questionable Thatcherite philosophy, the Irish people are expected to accept reductions in taxation for people on higher incomes, and at the same time have water charges applied to 300,000 Irish people who are close to, or are, living in poverty.

It appears obvious to me that the Irish people have a philosophy which is totally at variance with the Thatcherism of these three parties, and this is why they are doing so badly in the polls.

Our politicians need to learn that we have decided “It’s the society, stupid”. – Yours, etc,

BRENDAN O’DONOGHUE

Killerig,

Carlow.

Sir, – It is hard to know what purpose Nail Ginty (December 5th) was seeking to serve by comparing homeless figures in Dublin and Edinburgh, but it had all the appearance of trying to make a case that the Dublin crisis is somehow okay on the basis that the problem is worse elsewhere.

I am sure that the Scots are well capable of addressing any problems that they may have. Given the protracted history of the problem in Dublin, it is safer to conclude that the will to tackle the crisis may not exist here, and seeking to emolliate the extent of the problem with spurious comparisons will do nothing to get the relevant authorities off their backsides and deal with this shameful issue once and for all. – Yours, etc,

JIM O’SULLIVAN

Rathedmond,

Sligo. Sir, – The key cost in providing new homes is the price of land. In particular in Dublin city centre and its immediate area which is “suffering” from spiralling inflation.

In every major city globally, in which land is at a premium, the closer to the city you get, property has gone in one direction. Towards the sky. If we want to house people in an affordable manner, in close proximity of the city centre, we simply have to go up and beyond the maximum four storeys we allow for residential buildings. We need to learn from the past with no repeats of building high-rise slums, which happened in the 1960s in the UK and Ireland.

We need to build quality, with a mix of family units and single-person units. We cannot leave this in the hands of developers to create expensive high-rise apartments for privileged classes who want a city pad, and we must not build social housing which can be speculatively sold off in a social-housing sell-off, another error of the past we need not repeat.

To fit the housing we need on the footprint of land we have in Dublin, we have to think beyond what we have now and look to the sky. – Yours, etc, BRENDAN QUINN Enniscrone, Co Sligo.

Sir, – I see the cross-Border bid for Ireland to stage the 2023 Rugby World Cup has received the enthusiastic backing of Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. Could Mr McGuinness’s fervent support for the splendid initiative be regarded as a tacit acceptance by him and his party that the Border will remain in existence for some time yet? – Yours, etc, PAUL DELANEY, Dalkey, Co Dublin.

Sir, – I would have thought that second level teachers would be up in arms about their professional integrity being called into question by their own union executive.

Apparently teachers cannot be trusted to be impartial when correcting pupils’ work.

Third-level lecturers have been marking their own students since time immemorial, and hand out grades from first-class honours down to fail. Assessment mid-cycle in secondary school is very useful to both pupil and teacher, but few would argue that Junior Cert results would be as significant to a career path as would those at Leaving Cert or degree level.

I have been a member of the TUI for over 30 years. My union’s position in the matter of correction now seems to be quite discriminatory. Third-level teachers are trusted whereas second level are not.

The only issues I have ever heard discussed in TUI in relation to our “self-correcting” have been to do with work load or rates of payment. Neither bias nor lack of professionalism has ever been an issue.

I am just coming to the end of three weeks’ assessment of essays, debates and written tests. The feedback emanating from these is extremely useful to both my teaching and my students. I am utterly impartial in my marking, and in all other dealings with my students. If I was not I could not call myself a professional, and therefore should not be teaching. – Yours etc, BRIAN MORRIS Dundalk Institute of Technology, Co Louth Sir, – The article by Dr Tom Collins (“Junior Cert reform vital to building level playing pitch”, December 3rd) reminds me of an opposition politician’s speech at election time.

All the faults of the past are highlighted with some exaggeration and the good points ignored with studied indifference. There is, however, a more frightening similarity.

There is a vague promise that reform of the Junior Cert, and in particular school-based assessment, will solve one of life’s most intractable problems – inequality.

Two unproven assertions are made. The first is that external assessment sustains inequality in the education system and the second is that school-based assessment will remedy this.

This level of discussion might be acceptable coming from politicians whose promises and policies we have come to suspect. A more thorough and nuanced response to the debate might be expected from an expert in the field.

If Dr Collins is correct then he should produce the evidence where this has happened or is happening and outline the inequalities which have been eradicated. Yes reform, but not a political campaign which owes more to the usual than to rigorous intelligent research and debate. – Yours, etc, DAN MALONEY Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin. A chara, – Does the proposed reform of the Junior Cert make a mockery of the “mock exams”?

If I get a C in my mocks, and an A in the State exams, which is most correct? For parents and pupils, does external assessment not serve a useful quality assessment of the teachers, and for the teachers, does it not serve a useful appraisal of their performance? – Is mise, etc, CORMAC O’CULAIN Blackhorse Avenue, Dublin 7

Sir, – Michael Redfern (Letters, December 3rd) rightly pointed to anomalies between the falling price of crude oil and the cost of transport fuel.

In the past, when oil prices rose, utility providers were sharply out of the blocks demanding increases to utility charges, while during the months of falling prices they have been remarkably quiet. But then so too has the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER).

One of the duties for the CER is to ensure that prices charged to consumers are fair and reasonable. It is now time for the CER to act on behalf of the people it is supposed to represent and force these companies – some of which make huge annual profits – to reduce their utility rates. We all could do with a little austerity respite. – Yours, etc, JOHN BELLEW Dunleer, Co Louth.

Irish Independent:

Firstly, I want to pass on my deepest condolences to the family of the late Jonathan Corrie on his sad and tragic passing – may he rest in peace.

Are we to wait until our children start dying on our streets before the homeless situation is dealt with in any meaningful way? This will happen if the relevant authority doesn’t act immediately and make homes (not emergency accommodation) available to all who – for whatever reason – find themselves living on the streets.

Emergency accommodation is important in the short term, but it’s not the answer to this crisis. Having children put out of their hotel rooms on these bitterly-cold winter mornings and not allowed to return until the evening must not be allowed continue.

There are many, many other downsides to emergency accommodation – far too many for me to cover here. Yes, it is a start, but my fear would be that once all of our homeless are accommodated in emergency accommodation then the urgency on homelessness will not be urgent any more.

Let’s face it – it wasn’t the night that Jonathan Corrie died alone on a freezing-cold winter’s night on a street of our capital city that homelessness became an emergency.

There was never a plan in place to deal with the situation. It wasn’t taken in hand and dealt with before it reached crisis situation. The homeless didn’t matter to the authorities responsible for providing social housing – that is obvious. The homeless do not have a vote – need I say more?

Let’s hope that the death of Mr Corrie is a wake-up call to all. We took to the streets in our thousands to protest about water charges and, prior to that, did likewise when the old-age pension was in danger of being cut.

Perhaps now we should all look deep down into our hearts and ask ourselves if maybe we might just have our priorities all wrong.

Please God, there will be nobody living on the streets soon and certainly not by Christmas Day. If we cannot provide that basic right to which all citizens of this state are entitled – doesn’t that speak volumes of what sort of society we have become?

Phyl Mhic Oscair

Baile Atha Cliath 9

Sign of Enda times

The Christmas season has cranked up a few gears, with a regular dose of seasonal songs now being audible. Perhaps a modern version of an old favourite might be appropriate at the FG sing-song for Enda.

“Enda the Red’ will reign dear. He has a very smiley pose .

“And if you want a selfie , put the iPhone to his nose .

“All his Santa’s little helpers, would like to give him the heave-ho.

“But ‘Enda the Red’ will reign dear. The Mayo-master just won’t go.

“Then one foggy Christmas Eve , Merkel came to say,

“‘Enda, don’t you give rebates. Charge the peasants water rates’.

“Then all the helpers shoved him, as they mouthed-off with glee,

“Enda the Red won’t reign dear. He’s consigned to history.”

Actually on a serious note, what this country needs is someone who knows what this country needs!

A happy and cheery Christmas to all the witty/humorous contributors who grace this page.

Sean Kelly

Tramore, Co Waterford

Our water needs to remain ours

A recent report shows that the 19 British water firms made profits of more than £2.05bn in 2013, handed out £1.86bn to shareholders, but paid just £74m in tax. Seven of them paid no corporation tax at all.

As water bills for British customers steadily increase, the most common utility people have arrears on is water. Just over two million people are in water arrears. Private water firms know that they can continue to ratchet up charges, as water is the one service no one can ever do without. Ireland has been a world leader in progressive legislation, such as the smoking ban and the plastic bag tax. We now have an opportunity to lead by example in facing down the predatory power of the multinationals, by enshrining our inalienable rights to ownership and control of our natural resources through a constitutional referendum.

Maeve Halpin

Ranelagh, Dublin 6

Age of austerity should end

The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, the international Monetary Fund, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development are all in favour of continued austerity. Do they have any idea how it is affecting people? Do they even care?

People can barely manage as it is, with costs rising and salaries, pensions and unemployment benefit all static. The plan for the immediate future needs to change direction and give people some breathing space.

D Murphy

Portmarnock, Co Dublin

Santa Claus for thought

For many hard-pressed parents this season is surely a case of ‘dear’ Santa…?

Tom Gilsenan

Beaumont, Dublin 9

Canvas opinion

Being an art lover, I was horrified when a Claude Monet painting was damaged in the National Art Gallery. It seemed malicious. But, bloody hell, six years in prison? It’s a bloody painting. We live in a country where white-collar crime is rampant .

We have people living on our streets and children going hungry – and yet it’s appropriate to send someone to prison for six years for damaging a piece of art. I wonder what Monet would say.

Darren Williams

Sandyford, Dublin 18

Giving something special

I am a senior person – very much so – not particularly well-off, just getting by without any frills, but lucky enough to have a small roof over my head, for myself, and for passing to my family.

In all my years, despite at times feeling great frustration and fury at how my beloved country was being mismanaged, I have never once written to a newspaper to complain/to give vent to my anger, feeling, “what the hell, it won’t do any good anyway”.

But now, looking at TV images showing the misery our poor homeless people are enduring on our freezing streets, I feel that I have to give expression to my thoughts, by at least making a suggestion which, if taken up, will, I fell sure, do some good, in even a small way.

Suppose, if instead of giving each other gifts at Christmas – continuing a custom supposedly started by three wise men a long time ago – we were to forego giving our family and friends gifts, and instead donate the value of what those gifts would have been to the charities (like say, the Simon Community, Focus Ireland, and others) working to help the poor unfortunates on our streets?

I have explained to my own family that instead of giving them gifts this year, I will be donating their monetary value to the above named charities.

I also requested that monies to the value of gifts intended for me should, likewise, be donated for this charitable purpose – for my part, I will feel “a happier Christmas” because of this, rather than whatever pleasure I would have derived from receiving a gift. The monetary value of the intended gifts should not be disclosed.

If one believes the family story from times past of the couple who could not “find room at the inn”, at least they had the roof of a stable over their heads and the breaths of the animals to keep them warm – a lot more comfort than very many people living on our streets have today.

Name and address with editor

Irish Independent

7 December 2014 Foot

I still have arthritis in my left toe I am stricken with gout. But I manage to get Joan’s books upstairs.

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast weight up duck for tea and her tummy pain is still there.

Obituary:

Guardian:

Independent:

Times:

Mental health organisations want to see a fair distribution to psychiatric services of the £2bn the chancellor has promised the NHS in his autumn statement

Overstretched mental health services need funding boost

THE health regulator Monitor and NHS England recently recommended cuts of 1.5% to mental health services that have been chronically underfunded and subject to real-terms cuts for the past three years. The case last month in Devon of a teenage girl with mental illness being held in a police cell showed how overstretched mental health services are.

And demand is rising. Recent figures show the number of people in contact with secondary mental health services increased last year by nearly 10%. We know times are tough for the NHS, but for people with mental health problems life has been a lot tougher for a lot longer.

Last week the chancellor promised an extra £2bn in funding for the NHS in the autumn statement and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to valuing people’s mental and physical wellbeing equally.

Now we need to see these promises reflected in a fairer proportion of funding committed to mental health — and locally commissioners also need to do the right thing and invest in services.
Sean Duggan, Chief Executive, Centre for Mental Health; Jenny Edwards, Chief Executive, Mental Health Foundation; Stephen Dalton, Chief Executive, Mental Health Network; Paul Farmer, Chief Executive, Mind; Mark Winstanley, Chief Executive, Rethink Mental Illness; Simon Wessely, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

BIRTH FEARS

Offering a woman a birth in an isolated midwifery centre as opposed to a fully equipped maternity unit is like asking her to partake in a game of chance (“Doctors’ fears over midwife birth centres”, News, last week). If the labour and delivery proceed smoothly, as in the majority of cases, it is wonderful.

However, should there be complications, especially in the second stage or the immediate aftermath — and far removed from obstetric or intensive intervention — the price could be very high. It boils down to personal choice. I know what mine would be.
Tim Coltart, Consultant Obstetrician (retired),
Guy’s Hospital and Queen Charlotte’s Hospital for Women

FOOD FIGHT

In “Osborne to throw NHS £2bn lifeline” (News, last week) the government is again attacking the symptoms (NHS overload) instead of attacking the cause (widespread obesity and ill health). The most recent evidence tells us the cause of so much inflammatory illness is our diet of processed food.

Food manufacturers make their profits from converting a small range of cheap processed bulk crops plus lots of additives into addictive, palatable foods. They will use their economic power to deny the problem and resist change, just as the tobacco firms did. Nonetheless, to stop us sinking under the weight of escalating healthcare costs, there must be change.
Stephen Dockray, Torquay

My friends don’t fear the m-word, Mariella

I HAVE enjoyed Mariella Frostrup’s book programmes and have agreed with her views on women’s issues but I was disappointed by her interview (“I’m glad my hot flushes are causing a few blushes”, News Review, last week).

I don’t know what exclusive circles Frostrup must move in, where women blush at the thought of discussing the menopause. In the world I inhabit they discuss it freely, but the thought of having health insurance to cover treatment for its symptoms would never occur to us. The photo with the article also made my blood boil.

Maureen A Jeffs, Nottingham

SEEKING TREATMENT

Some women sail through the menopause almost untroubled, while many have severe symptoms, and I would sympathise with any of them seeking help. If Frostrup wishes to discuss her options for treatment, any half-competent GP could help her.

However, should her health insurer pay for private treatment? Such companies generally do not cover maternity care, regarding this as “natural” too. Should they pay for male pattern baldness or middle-age spread in men? I am sure these cause distress. I don’t think insurers are sexist. And most payouts are for new hips, knees and suchlike in older patients, so they’re hardly ageist either.

Dr Peter O’Donnell (retired GP) Epsom, Surrey

Developer riding roughshod over community

THE property developer Gladman claims to respect the planning system and local communities but this bears no resemblance to our experience of the company (“Green fields hit by ‘no win, no fee’ developers”, News, last week).

A resident objecting to the application to build a large estate outside their town was met with laughter from its spokesman, who asserted that the company would win because it would appeal to the highest level, and there was a suggestion that objectors do not have the money to take it on.

The coalition needs to remove any presumption in favour of sustainable development, curtail the expenses claimable on appeal and introduce a greenfield levy to subsidise brownfield developments.

Ann Gray, Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire

OFF PLAN

The number of houses required will be built, and built where the local population has agreed for them to be constructed. Gladman is pre-empting this by pushing through plans in the Stroud district council area that are not for sites within the local plan, namely Baxter’s Field in Stroud and Mankley Field in Leonard Stanley.

In short, the developer is overriding the democratic process and the government is complicit in its total disregard for local democracy.

Diane Odell, Leonard Stanley Gloucestershire

CONDEMNED BUILDING

Because of the government’s aggressive planning policy of favourin g development and the lack of any local plan by the district council, Wellesbourne has had in the past five years an increase of nearly 400 houses either being built or planned to be built. In our village it will not be green fields that are lost but a flourishing and historic airfield — home to a number of associated businesses — which will be covered with a virtual new settlement containing 1,500 houses, larger than all but one of the developments highlighted in your article.

The village of Wellesbourne is some five miles east of Stratford-upon-Avon. The 2011 census recorded a population of just under 6,000 residents, with about 2,500 dwellings. What will a further 1,500 houses do — an increase of more than 50% in the size of the village? George Osborne in his autumn statement is likely to be encouraging even more housebuilding.

David Close, Chairman, Wellesbourne and Walton Parish Council, Warwickshire

Points

DEGREES OF GUILT

What an outrageous comment by Cardinal Vincent Nichols about the proportion of child abuse committed by Catholic priests (“Church abuse is ‘minor part’ of problem”, News, last week). That it is a “minor part” goes without saying, considering what a vanishingly small part of the population the priesthood represents. His refusal to acknowledge guilt suggests a continuing denial of the church’s crimes. Any priest convicted of this sort of

abuse should suffer at least the same penalty as was handed down last week to Myles Bradbury, the doctor imprisoned for 22 years for child sex offences. It seems the attitude of the church authorities can be compared to that of the bankers: they just don’t get it.

Martin Howe, Chelmsford

BEYOND THE PALIN

The vitriol directed towards Michael Palin by AA Gill (“I don’t give this one a ghost of a chance”, Culture, last week) vindicates my decision not to waste time reading critics. Gill asks if anyone would notice if Palin “ceased to exist”. Would anybody notice if Gill ceased to exist?

Paul Chapman, Wellingborough

STUFF AND NONSENSE

Rod Liddle mentions signs in the back of cabs stating cab drivers’ right to go about their work without being verbally or physically abused. He then asserts that it is a truism that all places that have similar notices are places where the public get royally stuffed (“Shut up, you canting cabbies — swearing is bloody good for you”, Comment, last week). Liddle has obviously never been in a hospital, the back of an ambulance or similar location where the staff are trying to do their best not to stuff the public — indeed, quite the opposite. As someone who works in one of these places and regularly has to put up with unprovoked verbal and physical violence, I find Liddle’s comments almost as distasteful as Mr Mellor’s.

Trevor Bechtel, Perthshire

NORTHERN EXPOSURE

With regard to the South Yorkshire model Sam Rollinson (“Doncaster lass to be catwalk queen”, News, last week) — by ’eck, it were only a few week ago she were boilin’ ferrets and coolin’ the faggots and tripe wi’ her da’s flat cap. Give the north -of-England stereotype a rest, me old china.

Chris Greenwell, Darlington

SILLY QUESTION

I presume Jeremy Paxman did not have to be asked 12 times if he would accept £1m for his memoirs (“Paxman nets a million for his BBC memoirs”, News, last week).

Frank Greaney, Formby, Merseyside

ALMS AND THE MAN

The Sunday Times’s Save Syria’s Children Christmas appeal need not be concerned about any ill feeling with regard to Tony Blair being honoured by Save the Children (“Blair award”, Letters, last week). Given his outstanding contribution in helping to lighten Africa’s load, Blair’s accolade is long overdue. Unlike your correspondent who has allowed his sanctimony to punish Syrian youngsters by not donating to the charity, I will now be forwarding cash for the first time in years.

Ian Hoyle, Rotherham

LANGUAGE LESSON

As an avid — and Jewish — reader of Dominic Lawson, I have always admired his masterly use of the English language. However, as far as Yiddish is concerned, I hope he won’t mind me offering an alternative — and in my view more accurate — translation of the word “nebbish” in his column (“If you want No 10, turn off the Milibrain and bring us sunshine”, Comment, November 23). I was brought up in London’s East End at a time when it was occupied more or less exclusively by the Jewish community and “nebbish” was a word used to express a pejorative view of a fellow Jew. My understanding was that it meant a “nobody” or “a person of no worth”.

Dr G Sandler, Sheffield

CLEAN SLATE

The reference in the correspondence “Fee paying” (Letters, last week) to the “grubby world of agents who place the students of overseas parents” is intemperate and ignorant. I run an education consultancy that operates as an agency in Kuala Lumpur and in Ho Chi Minh City. Universities and schools would not employ us, and students and their parents would not call on our services, if we were “grubby”. We are similar to any other private company offering a service to the public, such as solicitors and accountants. I have two overseas offices that have to be paid for. My employees travel to the UK once a year to visit our client universities to check on updates and meet staff. We also try to ensure that all students are bona fide with regard to their visa applications.

Geoff Notcutt, Education Consultant, Bedford, Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh City

POLLS APART

Monique Sanders (“Not so decisive”, Letters, last week) makes the mistake of believing she knows the views of people who do not vote.

It cannot be assumed the 15.4% who did not vote in the Scottish referendum opposed independence. Consequently, her premise is false and her calculation incorrect.

Steuart Campbell, Edinburgh

TAKING THE TITBISCUIT

Why does Camilla Long insist on using ludicrous nonsensical phrases such as “suppurating human loofah” and last weekend’s particularly egregious example, “seeping billionaire titbiscuit”? What are they meant to convey? Am I missing something? Please find someone who can write without using these senseless aggregations of words — if “titbiscuit” is indeed a word.

Bryan Johnson, By email

Corrections and clarifications

The general pictured with the article “Far write: France finds its voice in Mr 1950s” is not Charles de Gaulle but Philippe Leclerc. The picture was wrongly captioned by Agence France-Presse. We apologise for the error.

The story “Four from same family ‘join Isis’” (News, last week) incorrectly stated that Istanbul was the Turkish capital. We apologise for the error.

The article “Hasidic teacher accused of slapping pupils” (News, November 23) should have stated that the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community is “mainly” based in Stamford Hill in London and in Salford.

Last week’s Glass House column on apps (Magazine) incorrectly described a personal tax scheme called Ingenious as illegal. We accept that this would have been understood as a reference to Ingenious Media’s film investment schemes. These are not illegal, and 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 complaints section for full details of how to lodge a complaint.

Birthdays

Nicole Appleton, singer, 40; Emily Browning, actress, 26; Noam Chomsky, philosopher, 86; Luke Donald, golfer, 37; Anne Fine, novelist, 67; Colin Hendry, footballer, 49; Nicholas Hoult, actor, 25; Sue Johnston, actress, 71; John Terry, footballer, 34; Tom Waits, singer, 65; Jeffrey Wright, actor, 49

Anniversaries

1732 opening of the Theatre Royal, now the Royal Opera House, in Covent Garden; 1941 Japan bombs US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; 1972 launch of final US moon mission, Apollo 17; 2006 tornado in Kensal Rise, northwest London, injures six people and damages at least 100 properties.

Telegraph:

George Osborne’s relief measures for businesses; modern-day slavery; Gordon Brown’s legacy; pigs and prehistoric monuments; prospects for those not yet tired of London

7:00AM GMT 06 Dec 2014

Comments

Irish Times:

Irish Independent:

Madam – For years we have been listening to various governments urging us to help the economy by buying Irish if at all possible. I recently went shopping for fruit and veg and decided I would not look at the labels before purchasing.

I was not surprised to see bananas from Belize, pears from Portugal, oranges from Cuba, kiwis from New Zealand and tomatoes from Holland.

However I was disappointed to see apples from Poland and France, and I was annoyed to see potatoes from Israel, onions and scallions from Spain, turnips from France, and, worst of all, carrots and  lovely heads of green cabbage from Spain  and parsnips from Portugal

Surely to God we have the ideal climate in Ireland to grow potatoes, scallions, turnips, cabbage, carrots and parsnips as well as apples of every colour.

Many people used to be proud to keep a good vegetable garden, but nowadays people shrug and say: “ You can buy it cheaper in the supermarket.”

At least my mushrooms were Irish grown.

Murt Hunt, Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo

Madam – A jolly big Santa’s welcome to all the visitors and sightseers coming to our capital city this month. Please enjoy the markets, the craic and the hospitality Dublin always provides. Go out wrapped up in warm coats, scarves and jumpers, have a hot toddy or glass of mulled wine. Flit from shop to shop and get immersed in the seasonal merriment. And when you have got tired and weary of the artificial yuletide atmosphere, have a nice hot meal in an upmarket restaurant.

   If perhaps reality rears its ugly head, save a thought for the many homeless people who are gathered around in the shadow of the Christmas lights.   These hungry and destitute misfortunates are faced with having to endure sub-zero temperatures while sleeping on a concrete mattress, using a doorstep as a pillow and being treated as little more than an inconvenient nuisance.

Vincent O’Connell, New Ross, Co Wexford

Homeless plight betrays State ideals

Madam – It is appalling to bear witness to the tragedy of current day Dublin street life.  It is appalling that the principles and ideals of the State’s founding fathers have been desecrated mere metres from the main institution of that State.  It is appalling that the members of that istitution have bestowed a greater worth on the Troika and bondholders than on the lives of our citizens.  It is appalling and hypocritical that organs of state congregate in a comfortable, roomy, well heated mansion to ‘consider a response’ to the ignominious death of the homeless Mr. Corry, within eye shot of Leinster House.

It took sacrifice of life and a revolution to establish our State.  It is a tragedy that the State has been subverted by self-interest.  Sacrifice of life has again occurred and a revolution is again needed – a social revolution to re-claim the principle of government of the citizens by the citizens for the citizens.  God bless the memory of Mr. Corry.  His death has exposed the dysfunction of Government and the hypocrisy of society.  His life may have achieved a great and noble end – the tragedy is that he wont know about it.

Tom Beckett, Limerick

Why the fuss over Delaney’s song?

Madam – So what has the fuss been about regarding John Delaney singing a ballad about an IRA hunger striker. In last Sunday’s edition of your paper Richard Sadlier states that Delaney has been damaged beyond repair. Dion Fanning states that he “can’t be an ordinary Irishman singing an Irish song and CEO of the FAI.” Three letter writers to the paper are equally critical of the man.

However Niamh Horan’s article, “Delaney can be utterly adored and hated – all in the same night,” gives us an insight into the man and leads to a better understanding of what occurred. Ms Horan states “For such a big wage packet (€350,000), in many ways, Delaney has managed to stay close to the fans on the ground.” I met John Delaney once at a function in Galway and asked if I could have my picture taken with him. He had no idea who I was but he was very courteous and obliged.

I have less respect for whoever made the recording and later released it. In the overall scheme of things, what John Delaney did was trivial.  He has apologised so let’s move on.

Thomas Roddy, Galway

Delaney would’ve loved my session

Madam – The ballad sung by John Delaney in a Sandymount pub recently brings back memories of days long ago. It was an evening at Coleraine Football Club in the spring of 1968 or 69, when that club entertained Cork Celtic in a Blaxnit Cup match, the North/South competition of its time.

After the match we had a memorable evening. We sang the Sash Me Father Wore, Kevin Barry et cetera. The star attraction was the famous Irish traditional singer, Eileen Donaghy. In the attendance among other local dignitaries were  a Superintendent of the RUC in Coleraine and the then President of the FAI, the late Sam Prole.  At the end we all stood to attention for “God Save the Queen”.

John Delaney, you would have loved it, as I did. Has the doctrine of political correctness begun to outstay its welcome?

Sean Deegan, Rochfortbridge, Co Westmeath

Did I see the same play as Emer?

Madam – When I read Emer O’Kelly’s review of “Returning to Haifa,”  I was left wondering if I had seen the same play. She hadn’t one good word to say about it, nor about the people involved. What I saw and heard was an intriguing story, based on fact, which was well acted and directed, and never less than absorbing. I have no connection with the theatre company, nor do I take sides in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, while proportionately condemning atrocities by either side.

I might have reluctantly deferred to Ms. O’Kelly’s superior professional knowledge of the theatre if I hadn’t come across a review by another critic which gave a much more positive opinion of the play and those involved. He called it a “supple and thought-provoking piece”. I agree

James Evans, Dublin 14

Respect for all is the key

Madam – While not subscribing to its ethos, I have long admired the courage of the group Atheist Ireland in seeking respect for its sincerely held non-belief in a Supreme Creator of the universe.

But I am deeply disappointed with its objection to the re-instatement of the vandalised metal cross on the summit of Carrauntoohil.

Yes, it is a symbol of one of the major religions, but the fact that it was vandalised was reason enough to repair and re-install it, as otherwise the vandals would have succeeded. Apart from that it was a familiar landmark and an integral part of the local community heritage.

I would equally applaud the restoration of an ancient Druidic or other pre-Christian icon or representation or indeed any cherished atheistic symbol of unbelief in a Deity, if that had been vandalised.

John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co Kilkenny

Journalists should be impartial

Madam –  As a general comment on your columnist , Emer O’Kelly’s recent article (Sunday Independent, 30 November): A journalist/broadcaster ceases to be an impartial chair and instead becomes an ‘advocator’ when they begin stating their support for one side in any debate on any topic. This leads whether consciously or unconsciously to at least a bias in their questioning in a debate. This has in the past and will have in the future an effect in swaying undecided opinion by leading the public instead of informing the public. As a worst case it can be as serious as the final RTE Presidential debate and directly affect the democratic process.

Criostoir McGrath, Clonmel, Co Tipperary

Will IMPACT members protest?

Madam – It seems SIPTU has now agreed to join with other trade unions in protesting against the water charges.  I wonder will its sister union, IMPACT, be joining them too?  Perhaps then IMPACT can explain its part in the secret negotiations it held with the government parties in setting out the manning levels, and pay and conditions of Irish Water employees and the mass transfer of local authority employees to the company, many of whom received redundancy payments and pensions before transferring into further well-paid and pensionable employment.  Perhaps IMPACT can further explain why half of the new positions were not advertised. Finally as IMPACT is a member of the Irish Water Consultative Group, did it have any part in setting the level of charges?

Patrick Pidgeon, Blessington, Co Wicklow

Opportunists should keep away

Madam – I am all in favour of legitimate protest and welcome in particular the many who have for the first time in their lives

taken to the streets and marched in protest against perceived injustice. I do not, however, welcome

the exploitation by some opportunists whose only interest is in causing maximum disruption and undermining the institutions of the State. If they  succeeded, they’d  cause  suffering to  those who depend on the State for welfare payments.

Willie Crowley, Newbridge, Kildare

December 2014 Compost

I still have arthritis in my left toe I am stricken with gout. But I manage to get the bin emptied.

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast weight up trout for tea and her tummy pain is still there.

Obituary:

Guardian:

19.25 GMT

In loaning the Parthenon marbles statue of Ilissos to Russia (Loan shatters Elgin marbles claim, says Athens, 6 December), the British Museum has acted insensitively and foolishly. It is unseemly and squalid, after unanswered Greek requests for the marbles’ return, for the statue’s first move outside Britain to be to a country we ourselves have placed under sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine. At a stroke the museum has legitimised Putin’s Russia at a time when the latter’s unpredictable aggression threatens Ukraine’s existence and Europe’s wider security.

Does the museum think itself exempt from the dynamics of contemporary European politics, and that cultural diplomacy will smooth over the current crisis? Consider this: right now the Netherlands is refusing to return Scythian gold, loaned before the illegal annexation of Crimea, to four museums now under Russian control there. What is to stop Russia holding Ilissos hostage in return? In April the Russian Itar-Tass agency reported that the refusal to return the gold would result in non-cooperation between Russian and EU museums. The British Museum may well have placed one of its most priceless artefacts in serious danger. Putin has shown himself indifferent about far more.
Tony King
Barnt Green, Worcestershire

• If British people want to understand the point of view of the Greeks on the so-called “Elgin marbles”, please consider this hypothetical scenario: in the 15th century, Britain is occupied by the French. British people fall under oppressive French rule. Four centuries later, the Greek Mr Papadopoulos buys permission from French authorities to care for Big Ben. He moves half of it to his estate in Greece. Twenty years later, the British people start a revolution against the French and soon they acquire their independence. At the end of the 20th century, Britain asks for the repatriation of the “Papadopoulos steel”. Greece refuses to talk. The “Greek Museum” causes irreparable damage in the 1930s (see the Guardian, 14 April 2001), organises glamorous parties in the rooms where Big Ben (sorry: Papadopoulos Steel) is displayed in 1999 (see the Guardian, 8 November 1999) and it even gives some objects (say, the number 10 from the clock face) as a loan to a Chinese museum in 2014, while refusing to sit down with Unesco to discuss an offer of mediation on the issue in October 2013.

The director of the Greek Museum says publicly that the British government should be “delighted” with the loan, and that “the greatest things in the world should be shared and enjoyed by as many people in as many countries as possible”. Well done, Mr Director. The British public would certainly appreciate your views.
Andreas Stalidis
Bath

• Greece’s prime minister Antonis Samaras fulminates about Britain’s retention of parts of the Parthenon frieze. Meanwhile, one of the fragments of the frieze that remained in Greece, newly mounted in the Acropolis museum, is eroded by pollution and so horribly neglected by that long independent country that it can hardly be recognised.

Apart from other issues surrounding the marbles, how dare Greece put that sorry fragment on display and try to take the moral high ground about custodianship of the rest of the marbles? What is more, after years of overseas funding assistance, the Acropolis itself, the most famous archeological site in the western world, is still a dusty, un-energetic-looking, and disappointing mess. Where has all the money gone?
Richard Wilson
Oxford

• If someone stole my family heirlooms (don’t worry, I don’t have any) I’d be unimpressed if the thief then loaned them to someone else, on condition that they went back to the thief after two months. I’d be even less impressed if the thief asked me if I’d like to borrow them, so long as I returned them all safely to him.
Alan Burkitt-Gray
London

• I’m wondering if the British Museum has checked on the potential for Greece to initiate legal proceedings in Russia to recover this item of the Elgin marbles. Does anyone out there really believe that Vladimir Putin thinks like a museum curator? The French have already said he can’t have the brand new French-built carrier that has been undergoing sea trials, with Russian sailors on board; they are contractually obliged to hand that over to Russia, but are refusing to do so.
Vaughan Thomas
Norwich

• British Museum lends Elgin marbles to Hermitage; later, Putin forwards it to Athens: two fingers to London. You read it here first.
John Smith
Lindfield, West Sussex

• The British Museum’s attempts to improve the “frosty relations between Russia and the west in the wake of the invasion of eastern Ukraine” would have had more impact if the works of art loaned to the Hermitage museum actually belonged to Britain. Lending the Parthenon marbles, instead of, for example, some Turner landscapes or samples from the royal family’s vast collection, is simply provocative, and will do nothing but cause resentment in Greece, and display our hypocrisy to the world. How quick we are to offer judgments when Jewish-owned artwork is discovered in ex-Nazis’ homes (Modernist art haul, ‘looted by Nazis’, recovered by German police, 4 November).

Jonathan Jones has rightly argued that British museums must “face up to reality” and that “cultural imperialism” belongs in history’s dustbin, but clearly his passionate plea fell on deaf ears (The art world’s shame: why Britain must give its colonial booty back, 4 November). How can anyone justify, in the 21st century, the looting of Greek treasure by a greedy, profiteering British aristocrat, 210 years ago?

The return of the marbles is long overdue, would provide a welcome boost to an impoverished Greek economy, and would display some British acceptance of guilt for its imperial past. Lending some of the pieces to Russia is simply shameful, and questions must be asked about the role played in this by the secretary of state for culture.

Any political party with a sense of decency would include a promise to return the marbles to their rightful home in its election manifesto.
Bernie Evans
Liverpool

Christmas cards are handmade and decorated by the women of Sreepur village.

Apart from the worthy cause that Sreepur represents, what an extraordinarily beautiful photograph you showed of the women at the orphanage making their cards for sale, with children looking on (Greetings from Sreepur in Bangladesh, 6 December). It has a Renaissance quality that speaks a thousand words and made me immediately go to the website (sreepurcards.org) – congratulations to the photographer.
Catharine Thompson
Edinburgh

• Regarding the difficulty in imagining a Christmas card cause more ludicrous than an emergency rescue scheme for Scottish terriers (Letters, 6 December), I wonder how the Scottish Labour party’s seasonal fundraising is progressing.
Simon Blackburn
Penzance

• I am 70 and I’d be more disturbed to see Nigel Farage in public than I would any female mammal feeding her offspring (Just sit in the corner. Farage advice to breastfeeders, 6 December). It’s best to think before making unsubstantiated statements about what disturbs us oldies.
Angus Doulton
Bere Ferrers, Devon

• Philip Davies MP says the international development bill is “a handout to make a few middle-class, Guardian-reading, sandal-wearing, lentil-eating do-gooders with a misguided guilt complex feel better about themselves” (Report, 5 December). Doesn’t he know we all eat quinoa now?
Joe English
London

• Has the world fallen in (Report, 5 December)? Yes, George, yes it absolutely has, for so many many people. But not of course for you, and not for the people who pulled it down in their greed and selfishness. Crass, supercilious and careless, everything one could want from a chancellor…
Alison Gardner
St Albans, Hertfordshire

Both your correspondents’ replies (Letters, 6 December) to the article by David Baddiel actually illustrate his point.

Phillip Goodall’s removes the agency of Jews to discuss antisemitism, as gentiles have often done historically, by stating that Jews can be victimisers themselves when they call out antisemitism. The antisemite often claims to be the real victim of those who accuse them of their antisemitism with the explicit idea that Jews cannot be trusted on the subject as they are not objective enough. So gentiles must decide what does or does not constitute antisemitism in a way that white people would never publicly do over racism in general. No white letter writer would write such a letter around racism suggesting that black people, for instance, should develop thicker skins and be mindful of coming over as coercive.

Jules Townshend says that Baddiel implies that criticism of Israel is antisemitic. He does no such thing. But implying that he does, while ignoring his wider point, illustrates the issue he raises about assumptions on “the left” beautifully: that the only engagement with Jews that many on “the left” have is around Israel. Yasser Arafat could see the links between antisemitism and Zionism; that the failure to fight antisemitism just strengthens the Zionist argument. And one cannot fight antisemitism without engaging with Jews as they actually are, rather than how we might like them to be. Now there’s a challenge for “the left”.
Andy Armstrong
Manchester

• Phillip Goodall has a curious notion of what constitutes “cultural differences”. Applying that term to Jews’ alleged “sharpness with money” sanitises an age-old smear which contributed to the history of pogroms and the Holocaust. These tragedies were not inflicted on the other examples of cultural difference he cites, laughably comparing antisemitism with offensive generalisations about the French, Italians, Scots and English.

His suggestion that “for Jewish people”, of whom I am one, “to be so quick to be thin-skinned is not good either, and is in danger of seeming coercive” would be insulting if it were not beyond parody.
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords

The late Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe. Photograph: PA/Wire

Dominic Carman (Opinion, 6 December) helpfully shows that the late Jeremy Thorpe was as much on trial for his homosexuality as for murder. This anniversary year of Alan Turing’s death has similarly revealed how he and thousands of others suffered discrimination from individuals and governments alike, reflecting a long history of hate towards LGBTI people. As we approach the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which took the first important step of decriminalising homosexual acts, is it time to ensure a memorial goes outside parliament to mark this legislation in memory of all those who suffered in so many ways? There is still a lot to do in countering homophobia, not least in my own C of E and in the laws of many Commonwealth countries, and to mark this anniversary in stone will be a strong signpost for the way ahead.
Canon Mark Oakley (@CanonOakley)
London

Independent:

So, Nigel Farage is a breast pest, on top of everything else.

Over quarter of a century ago I was elected to Newcastle City Council. As a young mother I regularly breastfed my baby at committee meetings and council meetings, even once while chairing a housing committee meeting. Back then Newcastle City Council wasn’t exactly “enlightened” and some of the other councillors were old enough to be my grandparents. No one complained.

In just now many ways are we going to let this dreadful man drag us down?  Maybe children should work up chimneys?

Amanda Baker

Edinburgh

Nigel Farage’s comment suggesting breastfeeding mothers should “find a corner to prevent making people uncomfortable” is simply outrageous. People that find this most natural of human functions embarrassing should look away, and, more importantly, seek psychiatric help to overcome their perversions.

Paul Garrod

Southsea, Hampshire

As Nigel Farage clearly disapproves of a woman’s breasts being visible in public, I assume he also supports the campaign to ban Page 3 of The Sun.

Pete Dorey

Bath

If we left the EU, what about British expats?

I have just retired and returned to England, from being the Anglican Vicar on the Island of Madeira, a Portuguese territory in the Atlantic. The ministry of the Church there is, as it is in the Diocese of Europe as a whole, to English residents and visitors.

Most of the British residents in Portugal are older and retired. This is also true of the hundreds of thousands of British citizens who live throughout the Iberian peninsula, and I imagine other parts of southern Europe. For the most part they are not rich and depend on British pensions.

Like people of their own age living in Britain, they are just as reliant on all the services provided by a compassionate state – home helps, district nurses, and  free hospital care. The property they own only has value so long as there is a viable international property market.

Were Britain to leave the European Union, their situation could become intolerable. Medical care and social support may very well not be available except through private insurance, which most could not afford. Their property would have little value, and even if they were able to sell up, property prices in Britain are far higher than in most parts of Europe, certainly in Spain and Portugal. They could not afford to live where they are and could not return to the UK.

This would follow, should Ukip’s irresponsible ideas become official policy. If the aptly named Mark Reckless, who retained his parliamentary seat in the Rochester by-election,  had his way and all European citizens be required to leave Britain following a British departure from the Union, the elderly retired would be joined in their predicament by the rest of the two million British citizens now living and working in Europe.

Mr Reckless approaches the question of Europe with a completely open mouth and, as far as I can see, with an entirely empty head.

The Revd Neil Dawson

London SE27

Given that Owen Paterson and many of his fellow Conservative MPs have no interest whatsoever in remaining in the EU, should they not be referred to as the Europhobes they are? This would distinguish them from those “sceptics”, who have legitimate concerns that they genuinely want to see addressed.

Robin Stafford

Frensham, Surrey

Bouncers deserve a red card

Earlier this year (11 August) you published my letter asking why bouncers, which are intended to hurt, are encouraged in cricket, as opposed to a system of red cards in football and penalties in boxing for below-the-belt blows.

I am not for a moment suggesting that the demise of Phil Hughes was due to deliberate intent; it appears to have been an accident. I know how the bowler must be feeling. However, the time has now come to crack down on intimidatory bowling in cricket.

Ramji Abinashi

Amersham, Buckinghamshire

More austerity to fund Osborne’s tax cuts

You have to give George Osborne his due – he is a brilliant salesman. Who else could have made an Autumn Statement relatively popular when its main message was that it would reduce government spending on services for its people to the level of 1938, according to the Social Market Foundation.

Those of us who grew up in the post-war era, as a caring and economically successful society was being built, should be appalled. Offering a few attractive tax reductions, which admittedly may be good ideas in times of economic success, hardly seems appropriate when even more austerity is in prospect.

Of course there is no detail of what the service cuts will be. Unfortunately the Labour Party doesn’t seem to have the nerve to be straight with the electorate either. Isn’t it time someone said there are alternatives to destroying the public services – higher taxes are inevitable, but they need to be fair, and surely a small increase for all taxpayers would bring in more than targetting specific groups. Also there are some economists who say that getting the budget down as quickly as possible is not necessarily essential.

When will our top politicians start to debate the real issues?

Derek Martin

Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire

Osborne’s Autumn Statement is a disaster of economic thinking. Faced with a severe drop in tax take, want does he suggest? Tax cuts.

The suggestion that there will be a huge cut in central government spending means only one thing – privatisation on a hitherto unheard-of scale, heralding yet more failed projects, massive subsidies and huge profit rake-offs instead of investment.

If this government is re-elected, the “kids in the sweet shop” will finally have put this country on to its knees, while they swan off to the Cotswolds to enjoy their blissful, pension-protected retirement, with the odd directorship to alleviate the boredom.

Alan Gent

Cheadle, Cheshire

Professor Taylor-Goodby’s letter (6 December) calls to mind the graded form of purchase tax of the Attlee period.

Taxable goods sold at a basic price determined by the Board of Trade attracted no tax. More expensive items were taxed according to the amount by which they exceeded the basic price. The rates of tax varied according to the perceived utility of the item. Curtain rings, for example, were untaxed, however luxurious. Rucksacks, on the other hand, were taxed at 66 per cent.

This  meant that those who could only afford basic items paid very little, tax. The better off could indulge their taste for luxury, but were taxed more heavily. The system seemed fair at the time – people were taxed according to their ability to pay.

It was, of course, a cumbersome system, giving rise to much fag-packet calculating and mental arithmetic. The Tories scrapped it the minute they got back into power, and introduced a 5 per cent blanket purchase tax which, as with VAT, fell more heavily on the poor.

It strikes me that, with today’s sophisticated computer systems, something like it could easily be brought in. Not much hope, though, with this lot.

John Pollock

Beccles, Suffolk

The voters of Atherstone whom your reporter interviewed (4 December) expressed disillusionment with Labour. The attraction of Ukip is it appears to be a party that will “sort out this country”, even though many of its policies are more right-wing than the Tories’ and would make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

How should Labour increase its chances of winning the coming general election? Oddly, for a party that seems to assiduously follow opinion polls to help it determine policies, Labour ignores the results from these self-same polls.

Eighty-four per cent polled want the NHS in public hands; 68 per cent want energy companies nationalised and 67 per cent and 66 per cent want the same policies for Royal Mail and railways, respectively.

When the polls repeatedly show these levels of support for public ownership, it is baffling why Labour doesn’t adopt them. That would be the real difference between them and the Tories and Ukip.

The crisis is bad and from the Autumn Statement is going to get worse with the same austerity medicine. Boldness is required from Labour.

John Pinkerton

Milton Keynes

In his Autumn Statement the Chancellor outlined his proposals for yet more outsourcing of the business of running the country. At the next election, why do we not cut out the middle man and instead vote directly for Serco, G4S or Capita?

Gyles Cooper

Times:

14

Sir, There was something vaguely familiar about your front-page photograph (Dec 4) of Messers Osborne and Alexander appearing at the same time through an open doorway, and then I remembered: the last “still” of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Oh dear . . .
John Lloyd Jones
Tywyn, Gwynedd

Telegraph:

The costs of departure from the EU; caring for those with Alzheimer’s; survival of the village cricket clubs; failed immigration promises, and imported table manners

7:00AM GMT 07 Dec 2014

Comments

Irish Times:

Sir, – Before the last general election, would-be TD’s begged us to come out and vote for them, promising all sorts of reform. Now those who were elected do not bother to come in and take their seats and take part in debates. Meanwhile the ordinary people of Ireland, who go to work daily if they have a job, have to pay for the heating of the Dáil chamber.

Some yards away from this well-heated and comfortable place a man has died on the cold street. As a symbol of solidarity with the electorate and especially with the homeless, let the heating be turned off in the Dáil and in all offices and bars in Leinster House and let it not close for Christmas and no TD go home until there are sufficient emergency beds for every homeless person in Ireland. – Yours, etc, LYDIA GILLEN Skerries, Co Dublin.

Sir, – Contrary to the insinuation of Cantillon (“NCC becomes a force in wind energy debate”, December 4th) that the wind sector will be stung by the comments of the National Competitiveness Council (NCC), we in the National Offshore Wind Association of Ireland (NOW Ireland) agree wholeheartedly that Ireland should undertake a cost-benefit analysis of energy policy options before it commits to 2030 emissions targets.

Government policy is that Ireland will meet its renewable energy targets from onshore renewables and that offshore wind is only available for export. This provides Ireland with the opportunity for it to develop a new indigenous export sector based around offshore wind which ultimately could rival agri-food and tourism. Such export would happen at no cost to the exchequer as the price support is paid for by the importing country.

Ireland is in the fortunate position of having strong offshore winds, shallow water and favourable sea bed conditions. This gives a cost advantage over most of our European peers.

After this it is a question of supply and demand. If Europe or the UK want our renewable energy, we sell it to them, starting with the export of our offshore wind.

The State will benefit in a number of ways. Jobs will be created from the construction of the windfarms and through longer term operation and maintenance. The State will receive a lease fee for the rent of the foreshore. The State will generate substantial revenues from corporation tax, employment taxes and other taxation instruments, while also stimulating a supply chain.

Finally, it will also help improve Ireland’s balance of payments. Any risk lies with the industry and investors.

The Irish offshore industry would welcome a cost-benefit analysis which, we believe, will show the true potential for Ireland from the development of an offshore resource which is among the best in the world, a resource which is currently being wasted. All that is required to make it happen is for the Government to confirm that it is seeking to develop this resource. – Yours, etc,

BRIAN BRITTON

NOW Ireland,

2 Marine Court,

Sir, – Peter McGuire’s article (“How your address affects your chances of going to college”, November 27th) provided an interesting insight into the impact of location on the progression to third-level education. It is good to see spatial accessibility to higher education more prominent in the policy debate.

While the school-level analysis provided by Mr McGuire is to be welcomed, the nature of the data analysed and the county-level analysis provided masks some additional important issues.

First, given the roles of a variety of factors in influencing participation decisions, it is important to consider the interplay between where an individual lives and their socio-economic situation.

Second, it is also pertinent to look at the impact of these factors on more specific higher-education outcomes, such as choices of higher-education institution type, degree level and field of study. It is also especially relevant with regard to issues of income inequality and social mobility.

The influence of geographic accessibility, social class and other factors on a range of higher-education outcomes have formed the basis of an on-going collaborative programme of research we are engaged in.

The results support the assertion made by Mr McGuire that travel distance can have a negative impact on participation, but crucially our analysis also demonstrates that these travel distance effects only matter for schoolleavers from lower social classes.

There is no negative impact from living far away from a higher-education institution on the likelihood of participation for a school-leaver from a higher social class.

We also show that the negative effects of distance are most pronounced for students with lower CAO points from lower social classes. Even with the same CAO points and similar geographic accessibility to a university, those from a “low” social class had virtually zero chance of pursing a medical degree compared to someone from a “high” social class.

Mr McGuire’s use of the feeder school list to consider such issues is to be commended and the combination of his analysis with our own research shows that where a young person lives can play a significant role in their higher-education outcomes.

While the student grant scheme is designed to alleviate these inequalities, they unfortunately continue to persist. A more efficient scheme, with increasing, stepwise grants at greater distances, may help better alleviate the costs of living further from a higher education institution and thus provide better equality of access for young people across Ireland. – Yours, etc, DR DARRAGH FLANNERY Department of Economics, University of Limerick.

Sir, – I refer Fr Brian D’Arcy’s call for a five-year moratorium on the closure of the RTÉ One long wave service (Fr Brian D’Arcy calls on RTÉ to suspend long wave radio closure”, December 1st).

Whilst long wave transmissions have poor aerial efficiency, and so require powerful transmitters, they do provide a significant coverage footprint and so the transmission from Athlone is well-received over the UK.

The suggestion that the transmission may be received through digital TV sets is not universally the case.

Most UK viewers use Freeview for their digital terrestrial TV reception and no RTÉ services are carried by Freeview.

A minority of viewers equipped with Freesat can receive RTÉ via their TV sets.

DAB or digital radio occupies the frequencies on VHF vacated by European broadcasters following the European adoption of UHF frequencies for TV broadcasting. Unlike FM radio broadcasting which fades in areas of weak signal, digital radio cuts out completely for several seconds until signal strength improves and so is inconsistent when received in cars for example.

Reception of RTÉ One on long wave such as BBC Radio 4 provides simple-to-tune long-range coverage free from co-channel interference experienced on medium wave (especially at night) using simple portable equipment like a transistor radio or car radio.

RTÉ One listenership in the UK is not just confined to an ex-patriot geriatocracy but to a wider audience.

RTÉ should reflect on the benefits of continuing the transmission on long wave by running it in parallel with DAB and FM transmissions.

This could be with a view to offering programmes, in addition to the likes of Morning Ireland, that would appeal to ex-patriots and those of us who wish to continue to easily receive objective and informed news from Ireland. – Yours, etc, GRAHAM SMITH, Merseyside, UK.

Sir, – I don’t think TV advertisements for new cars ought to portray the car as one’s own personal disco with passengers and the driver bopping up and down, while singing their brains out, and totally oblivious to the inherent dangers attached to such behavior . Cars are not the new disco and should not be portrayed as a fun palace.

I am somewhat surprised that the Road Safety Authority (RSA) has made no comment, or is such behavior acceptable while driving now? – Yours, etc. THOMAS J CLARKE Ayrfield, Dublin 13

Sir, – I was surprised that your editorial (“Analysis: Where will extra €1.1bn for departments come from?” December 5th) on property tax did not address the real issue.

This tax, entitled Local Property Tax (LPT), is designed to raise funds for local services. In other jurisdictions such taxes are known as rates or council taxes. In the UK this tax is the liability of the occupier who is the beneficiary of the services. In France, as I understand it, the tax is divided 50/50 between the occupier and the owner. Our LPT ensures that tenants, whether private or local authority, do not pay anything for these services.

Our basis for assessing LPT is currently “market value” whereby a three-bed semi in Dublin is liable to a higher tax than a detached much larger house in the Taoiseach’s constituency in Mayo.

Then to add insult to injury, part of the overtaxed Dublin owner’s payment is hived off to other local authorities.

A very simple solution to this obvious inequity is that all houses are assessed on a rate per square metre. This simple change would spread the tax equally across the population. And rates are a tax-deductible expense in business.

However, we have decided that this does not apply to private landlords.

I am sure that Dublin voters will take this injustice into account when voting in the next election. – Yours, etc, SEÁN BURKE Clonskeagh, Dublin 14.

Sir, – The Government has allocated €22 million to fund commemorations of the 1916 rising. The week of the Rising was undoubtedly a seminal period in our history, but a week nonetheless.

Meanwhile, funding is cut to €11.5 million for our National Museum, an institution that commemorates, preserves and tells the stories of 9,000 years of our history and culture.

This funding reduction is threatening the museum’s existence.

We have been left a wonderful legacy of language, landscapes, objects and stories by the people of this island, a people that lived here long before the influence of British Imperialism or Irish nationalism.

The volunteers of 1916 fought so we could determine our own destiny and cherish our unique history and culture.

It would be a disservice to those men and women to commemorate their deeds but let the culture they fought and died for wither on the vine. – Yours, etc, BARRY DEVON Stepaside, Dublin 18.

Sir, – In relation to Ms Hooper’s letter ( December 5th), in which she asserts that what universities need is more rigorous, external examination, I wish to point out the following: As head of a department that will be examined on two occasions by an external professional body in 2015; will be assessed by an international quality review panel of experts from within and outwith the discipline in 2015 and that as part of normal external assessment will be reviewed by no less than a dozen externally appointed examiners, perhaps we should look to other issues that impact negatively on university performance. – Yours, etc,

DR PATRICK RYAN Director of Clinical Psychology University of Limerick

Sir, – Some of the letters last week in The Irish Times on the death of Jonathan Corrie were most instructive.

I now know that Ireland is the “best little country” to be homeless in and also that there is such a thing as too much charity.

Should I impart this wisdom to the next poor unfortunate who asks for my spare change? – Yours, etc, P SMYTH Mulranny, Co Mayo.

Sir, – Paddy Barry’s efforts (Letters, December 5th) to restrict the parliamentary privilege of TDs and senators has no basis in the Constitution.

Bunreacht na hÉireann makes no mention of using the privilege, “sparingly” or “only when the matter is one of the utmost seriousness” or indeed, “where no alternative” is available.

It says simply that comments in the House are “not amenable to any court or any authority, other than the House itself”.

Mr Barry’s version of parliamentary privilege would gag and stymie public representatives and force them to speak in euphemisms and circumlocutions.

I commend Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald’s intervention in this instance as it has placed on the public record a question of importance.

Anything less will see us repeat past patterns of everyone supposedly knowing something but no-one daring to say anything.

Legally and morally, Ms McDonald has no case to answer. – Yours, etc, CORMAC McMAHON Victoria, Australia.

Irish Independent:

The season of hypocrisy, insincerity and excess is upon us once again. It seems to creep up on us earlier each year. Some supermarkets were actually selling Christmas puddings and mince pies at the end of August with use-by dates well before Christmas.

I am a pensioner, and have lived alone since my wife died more than 50 years ago. I am quite happy to live alone. I get annoyed, fed up and deeply resent it when interfering do-gooders, albeit (allegedly) well-intentioned ones, come around telling me that I am lonely and depressed.

They try to get me to join social groups or link up with other people in my position. I’m sure their motive is to make themselves feel good or to show others how really wonderful they are. I tell them politely and firmly that I am quite happy with my lot and to leave me alone. They then go away to polish their halos until next year.

The people from the local church stopped disturbing me years ago. When they were collecting for Father Joseph O’Blogs Christmas present I told them that, as he lives rent free in the priest’s house and gets paid enough to buy his own presents, they would be better off collecting for St Vincent de Paul or a homeless charity!

A week before the festivities start, I stock up with food, books and DVDs, don’t answer the front door, switch off the phone and only emerge briefly on December 26 for the sales, then go back into hiding until the hostilities are over.

Brian Webb

Address with editor

Dysfunction of Dail clear to see

In the 1950s a TD caused laughter in the Dail with his heartfelt declaration: “The country is in a state of chous”. His inability to pronounce “chaos” is no reflection on the man’s integrity as a politician, nor as a decent caring human being.

Today the Dail is replete with well-educated TDs, who are not alone capable of pronouncing words correctly, but more than able to articulate their point of view. Alas, for some reason, many on the Government side of the chamber publicly give the impression they are merely capable of jeering at those opposite them.

Your paper’s political correspondent, Fionnan Sheahan, reported it has been suggested to Taoiseach Enda Kenny, should his leadership be called into question, that he request the President to dissolve the government.

Such childish threats by Enda Kenny and his closest advisers illustrate they don’t understand the situation the government is in.

Mr Kenny is a decent person, alas he is not officer material. Ireland, at this point in time, requires a leader who can bring the nation with them.

I have observed closely from afar for many years now. The younger generation think vastly differently about politics and government than in my time. Today, people want common sense and lucid, respectful explanations from government.

Sadly since March 2011, neither clarity, or reason has been placed before the people in the Dail. Instead the democratically-elected TDs on the opposition benches and, by extension, the people, are ritually affronted by smarmy smirks, put-downs, and half-baked truth posing as integrity.

Declan Foley

Berwick, Australia

Jack Kyle an example to us all

As a youngster growing up in Dublin the hero of all the males in my family and school was Jackie Kyle. I used to go to Lansdowne Road, stand in the schoolboy stand and watch him mesmerise the opposition with his jinking runs and he seemed to single-handedly orchestrate their defeat.

After the match I would wait for him to come out of the dressing room to get his autograph. He never complained that this was, as he probably knew, the tenth autograph he had signed for me. He just asked “What’s your name son?” and signed “To Jimmy, best wishes, Jackie Kyle”. I was devastated when he retired.

Years later and I am in my 40sand working with John O’Shea in Goal. John arranges sports events to raise money for the Third World and there is a star-studded group of rugby players helping at various functions.

One night I hear that among those helping will be, yes you’ve guessed it, Jackie Kyle. I can’t wait to meet him and talk about all the tries he scored and all those moments we shared.

I do meet him and he is very gracious and pleasant, but he doesn’t seem to want to talk about rugby.

All he wants to talk about is the great work John O’Shea is doing through sport in Goal. Despite my initial disappointment I began later to realise that by seeing things this way and by his own life’s dedication to the poor in Africa he was an even bigger hero than I had initially thought.

Jimmy Casey

Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin

Questions over legal system

I wish to make a comparison of how two court cases were dealt with during the week.

A young man was kicked in the head while lying on the ground, leaving him with a severe head injury which necessitated a stay in three different hospitals. He is still on anti-seizure medication and was out of work for a year. His attackers received a two-and-a half year suspended sentence.

On the other hand a man was given six years in prison for damaging a painting. I don’t care how valuable the painting was, but one was left wondering if damage to a painting is a more serious crime than damage to a human head. If so, our legal system needs a serious overhaul.

E Murphy

Killeshandra, Co Cavan

Austerity has its place

D Murphy complains that those “in favour of continued austerity” should shut up and the “age of austerity should end” [Letters, December 6].

I would like to inform D Murphy that in 2014 the Irish government will spend nearly €8bn more than it collects in taxes.

The Irish Government will have to borrow that to balance the books. Ireland now owes over a trillion euro and, since our services cost more than we are collecting in taxes, it is increasing.

If those who are complaining at having to pay the water charge and similar austerity measures have their way the Government will have to borrow much more.

The reason for the present austerity is that this country was bankrupt by reckless decisions made by the powerful people who were running the most important institutions in the country during the boom. The rest of us were not told what was happening until it was too late.

The present hysteria about ‘austerity’ is just as reckless and irresponsible as the recklessness which bankrupt the country during the boom.

The least we can expect is that, unlike what happened during the boom, the consequences of giving in to the present anti-austerity hysteria be spelled out. That is that we will have even worse austerity unless the borrowing stops.

A Leavy

Sutton, Dublin 13

Pensioners feel the pain

Last Friday, we got 25pc of the old Christmas Gift – Hallelujah!

We pensioners have not had a rise since 2009 but, in the meantime, we have lost: (1) That same Christmas Gift; (2) free telephone rental; (3) free refuse collection. In that time, we have had imposed on us (4) €2 per item on our prescriptions (and most of us need medicaments to ease all agonies); (5) property Tax; (6) water charges.

Where – and why – in the name of God, are we expected to find all this money to save the country?

We are mostly the savers from the old ‘Hard Times’ whose parents had to pay for our education and whose taxes paid for the education of the current workers and shirkers.

Cal Hyland

Rosscarbery, West Cork

Irish Independent

9 December 2014 Dentist

I still have arthritis in my left toe I am stricken with gout. But I manage to get to Joans to empty my rubbish the Post Office and M&S and books up an appointment at the dentist.

Mary’s back much better today, breakfast weight up mussels for tea and her tummy pain is still there.

Obituary:

McMichael shared a Nobel prize

Published at 12:01AM, December 9 2014

Guardian:

20.35 GMT

It would be a grave disservice to students “to ditch religious studies in school” (Loose canon, 5 December) and to trivialise multifaith religious education as “mushy relativism” is unjust. Educators from Bosnia visiting our comprehensive school were amazed and envious of the opportunity to explore and appreciate diversity in religion.

A student told our guests that she had “always thought fundamentalists were Muslims. Now I realise that newspapers stereotype people and are prejudiced, as other religions have fundamentalists too. I shall read more carefully now and try and come to my own conclusions.” This is far from Giles Fraser’s “suffocation of curiosity”.

Another student added: “I’m not sure about religion and God but am not really an atheist. I’m still sort of fumbling for a faith. It’s been really good to learn about people of other religions, because the unknown leads to fear and when you know, you can relate. I’ve also realised how fundamentalists are in all religions. The American right has fundamentalists too. I was really surprised to read about their views on evolution.”

Yet another had “always thought of fundamentalists as bad but now I understand more why people become fundamentalists … The Sufis are lovely and yet they are fundamentalists. This course has really made me see and think.”

Maybe it takes guests from countries suffering daily religious strife to realise the inestimable value of multifaith religious education in our schools.
Liz Byrne
Letchworth, Hertfordshire

• The great strength of the 1988 Educational Reform Act which introduced the national curriculum was the emphasis on spiritual and moral development of pupils and of society. I chaired the National Curriculum Council in 1990-92 and regard religious education as a vital part of the curriculum. The act set out that pupils should be introduced to Christianity and all the other major religions of the world, and has been the foundation of British values which underpin our multifaith society.

I have recently stepped down as chairman of a large secondary school in Tower Hamlets which has a Christian foundation with 85% Muslim pupils, none of whom opt out of the broadly Christian act of worship. As a result the pupils are educated in total harmony, with outstanding results.

At a time when religious understanding has never been more important, to call for the abolition of religious education is deeply disturbing.
David Pascall
London

• Giles Fraser is right about religious studies. I have taught the subject in public and state schools, and spent 30 years with Christian Aid, in the course of which I often visited schools to do as he says: “to help children to think, to question, to argue”. A perceptive teacher once asked me how I got away with that. The last thing our present government wants is a generation that does its social analysis and will not be told who to hate and what to buy.

Can we teach students to understand Jesus as a Jewish prophet who taught people not to hate and how to live lightly on the Earth? Can we teach other faiths in the same light? If not, better shut up shop.
Tony Graham
Crawley, Sussex

• I do enjoy Giles Fraser’s columns, and his writing in general, but his suggestion that it’s time to ditch religious studies in school is utter nonsense. The reason some (and I stress some) RS teaching is so poor is because it has been marginalised in schools, and, as Giles points out, ends up being taught by non-specialists. Yet in schools where the subject is valued, where specialists are hired and have access to regular training, it can be hugely enjoyable and encourages pupils to become engaged with, and question, complex and thought-provoking ideas, theories and morals.

I too am concerned about the changes being proposed to GCSE & A-level, but scrapping the subject won’t help anyone. What’s needed is firm support for the subject from senior management in schools, and the promotion of, as Giles himself points out, an opportunity for children to think, to question, to argue. I’m lucky enough to teach in a school where this is the case, and RS has rapidly expanded into one of the most popular choices at both GCSE and A-level. And Giles will be pleased to hear that no colouring in is required at all at key stage 4 and key stage 5.
Richard Meyrick
Coleford, Somerset

• And while we’re about it, can we please abolish the absurd anachronism of “faith schools”? Religious studies is one thing; the notion that any one religion should be solely responsible for all studies has “inevitable partiality” and “future conflict” embedded into its heart.
Fr Alec Mitchell
Manchester

20.31 GMT

As a regular London theatregoer I often look round at my fellow audience members to see how many are not, like me, a white, female pensioner. In January this year I saw Drawing the Line at Hampstead theatre and was intrigued to note that this play about the partition of India had apparently failed to attract anyone from the Indian subcontinent. This particular theatre is certainly not inward looking in its choice of plays and casting – the Indian roles were clearly played by ethnically correct actors – so I wonder what an establishment has to do to encourage a more diverse audience (Place greater diversity centre stage or risk losing funding, arts organisations warned, 8 December). More happily, Behind the Beautiful Forevers at the National had a good sprinkling of non-white faces the night I went.
Sandra Grant
London

20.24 GMT

Once again the fabulously wealthy Duke of Northumberland is selling a family treasure that will go to a foreign owner unless public funds and donations can be raised to keep it in this country (Report, 6 December). The £6.8m auction price achieved in July for The Garden of Eden With the Fall of Man by Jan Brueghel the Elder was double the estimate – probably inflated by media hype – and it will now apparently take more to prevent the painting going abroad.

I remember an earlier example of this kind of blackmail by the duke in 2003, when we had to buy his Raphael, The Madonna of the Pinks, to prevent it going to the Getty Museum in California, I went to see the picture at the National Gallery and was happy to stump up a contribution, as it is ravishingly beautiful and I would go and look at it every day if I could.

But repeating this is a step too far for me – the duke wins wherever the picture finishes up and I will content myself with looking at it online. I certainly would not have tried to get a glimpse by visiting his home at Alnwick Castle, the monstrous requirements of which exert a malign influence on the town and countryside around it.

We have plenty of Flemish works in this country and Belgium’s museums are not far away. Let this one go and spend public money on something we’re short of.
Jane Kelly
London

• Gaby Hinsliff writes well about the defeatism implicit in support for measures that increase inheritance (Opinion, 5 December). However, I disagree that “it’s only natural” that parents want to provide for their own children, even to the detriment of others.

It was once thought “natural” that non-white people are not quite human and women are less intelligent than men. In fact, these ideas, and many others like them, were originally promoted as part of “divide and rule” – the fundamental strategy central to all exploitative societies, including our own.

The message is, grab what you can before someone else does. Once this fear is promoted enough, it takes on a life of its own, and it has now come to operate on every scale from nation states down to interpersonal relationships. But the truth is that, under the fear, all people want meaningful lives where they help others and are helped in turn.
Karl Lam
Burwell, Cambridgeshire

20.00 GMT

What is most sickening about the fraudulent recruitment of students at the public expense by so-called “private higher education providers” (Thousands of ‘fake’ students at new colleges, 2 December) is that they do not seem to be subject to the draconian security monitoring and anti-student visa restrictions imposed on the UK’s mainstream universities. At the University of Sussex’s Institute of Development Studies, for instance, one of Britain’s top international universities, we have had to stop recruiting senior Indian civil servants for our MA programme because they got fed up with constant visa difficulties and being treated like criminals trying to get into some backstreet bogus language school. One of my PhD students from Ghana, who had spent four years studying full-time in the UK, on a Commonwealth scholarship, was last year refused a visa to come back for his own graduation.

Universities are one of Britain’s top export earners, yet they are being undermined and harassed by the excessive “anti-terror” monitoring requirements and by routine refusal to grant visas, in the name of an immigration control policy that is clearly driven by populist anti-foreigner hysteria and now the rise of Ukip. Yet the private, clearly fraudulent, colleges continue to evade these controls – and get public subsidy into the bargain.
Richard Crook
Brighton

Independent:

The Education Secretary’s idea of placing more ex-soldiers in schools to instil values such as character, resilience and determination are a risible, cheap gimmick.

There is no evidence that having some sort of “pep talk” from an ex-soldier can result in the desired outcomes. Children are influenced by a multitude of factors inside and outside school. These might include sport, youth clubs, secure housing, attentive parents, household income, and access to early intervention services focused on their emotional well-being.

But when you are living on a deprived estate, in poverty, with parents trying to cope on minimum wages, using a food bank and suffering drug and alcohol abuse due to mental illness, then the odds are stacked against you.

Using Army veterans is at best tokenism, at worst an abuse of soldiers who have served their country, and report that they feel discarded, unsupported and left to cope with mental health problems.

Steven Walker

Retired Psychotherapist

Walton on Naze, Essex

Richard Garner contends that “the CBI first drew attention to the need [for schools] to produce more ‘rounded and grounded’ human beings” (“Former soldiers will be drafted into schools to help build pupils’ character”, 8 December).

Colleagues I worked with during my career from 1980 onwards complained bitterly about the attempts by successive governments to turn state schools into exam factories. In 1985 we saw the introduction of the directed time initiative (I ran out of my directed hours for the academic year by April and went on strike for the first and only time).

The National Curriculum followed in 1988 and although a sensible attempt to rationalise what was taught, it quickly became a straitjacket and a bar to anything not considered by ministers to be “important” subjects.

The sell-off of sports grounds in the 1990s further damaged the “rounding” curriculum in many schools and colleges, and league tables put the final nail in the coffin.

My own state school education in the 1960s and 1970s, allegedly a time of incompetent teachers and hours wasted on wishy-washy pupil-centred education, was a rich experience of music, art, cookery, nature trails and sport, in addition to Latin, modern languages and three separate sciences.

Successive leaders of industry, in cahoots with a variety of governments, helped to do for the liberal arts type of education I was lucky enough to receive, through their demands for “better qualified” drones. Teachers of my generation have fought long and bitterly to retain the “rounding and grounding” activities that existed when we first began work, and have been told times without number that they were an excuse to avoid the hard work required to “raise  standards”, and that we are an obstacle to providing pupils “equipped for the modern world”.

We should be grateful that the CBI has seen the light, but it is galling in the extreme that for 30 years the voices of people who know what it is like to educate young people have been ignored.

Kathy Moyse

Cobham, Surrey

Labour, be radical, edgy and bold

John Pinkerton asks why Labour does not adopt more radical policies (letter, 8 December). I am equally baffled, and now despairing. I am beginning to think that a vote for Labour is a wasted vote: the say-nothing, do-nothing, mean-nothing party.

As a Labour Party member since 1983 I wonder why it is that, in 2014, Labour has not found an authentic voice that chimes with ordinary people’s life experiences. For Labour the next general election should be a walk in the park, with the right-wing vote split and the Lib Dems disappearing: but it is Labour that struggles to be heard.

So Labour, abandon the soft clichés, the feeble, fragile attempts at tinkering at the edges of society’s ills. Be radical, be edgy, be bold, wake up, and wake up the population of Britain by putting ordinary people first. Then the voters will take notice. They may not agree but at least they would have noticed you.

Frank Jacobs

London E3

Osborne ducks fuel price challenge

I despair. The Chancellor has once again actively taken the step of not applying the fuel escalator, even though the price  of  petrol is in decline and is likely to remain much reduced for the foreseeable future.

What will be the result of this? An increase in the likelihood of disastrous consequences for the future of the world’s climate, and a failure to collect much-needed revenue.

And what would have been the consequences had he not taken this step: merely short-term unpopularity, soon forgotten as the motorist fails to see a persistent rise in price.

What does this say about the Chancellor’s values, even given the degree of self-interest to which we have become accustomed in many of our  politicians.

Richard Wilton

Kilspindie, Perthshire

Holocaust  in Africa

In his interesting reflection on the Armenian Holocaust (1 December), Robert Fisk notes the involvement of members of the Kaiser’s army who later turned up in Hitler’s Wehrmacht “helping to organise the mass killing of Jews”, thus illustrating an instructive German involvement in the two holocausts.

However, he overlooks the first holocaust of the 20th century – which was not in Armenia but German South West Africa (now Namibia), where the indigenous Herero people were systematically rounded up into concentration camps and massacred to make way for the Kaiser’s “place in the sun”. The Reichskommissar in charge of creating this German Lebensraum (living space) was Heinrich Goering, whose son, Hermann, would become Hitler’s Reichsmarschall.

Nor was it a coincidence that many Nazi functionaries who learnt their trade in the German colonies would – in the words of Viktor Bottcher, Governor of Posen in 1939 (and a former civil servant in the German Cameroon) – go on “to perform in the east of the Reich the constructive work they had once carried out in Africa”.

Thus the holocausts of the 20th century reveal a sinister link in the mentality of colonial contempt for supposedly “inferior” people.

Dominic Kirkham

Manchester

Rank-and-file bankers share the guilt

Simone Stanbrook (letter, 5 December) asks that we treat the rank and file of the banking system differently from the “fat cats” of the higher echelons.

Yet it was these ordinary bankers in my local branch who caused me to be crippled with outgoings of nearly £200 a month for payment protection insurance while trying to build a modest business in a difficult climate down here in the South-west.

It was a rank-and-file man who instructed me to take out an expensive life policy to support a business overdraft because “we don’t like to have to go after your relatives should anything unfortunate happen to you”.

There’s something about the defence of “We were only following orders” that doesn’t quite hit the spot for me.

John Hade

Totnes, Devon

Party with the guts to confront Trident

Allan Williams (letter, 6 December) is right about the vile nature of the awful Trident renewal programme, but not quite right in asserting that no political party has the guts to confront that obscenity.

The Green Party’s policy on peace and defence explicitly states that the party “rejects any reliance on nuclear weapons. This rejection means that we will decommission UK’s own nuclear weapons and insist on the removal of US nuclear bases.” Now there’s something to cheer for.

Richard Carter

London SW15

Your article (3 December) on the massive growth in Green Party membership is welcome. But please note that actually our figures are even better than you have said.

Our party membership totals 36,000 once one includes Scottish and Northern Ireland Green Party members too. For they number 8,000, taking us very close to Ukip’s membership total.

The Scottish and Northern Irish Greens have separate parties because we practice what we preach, genuinely believing in independence and devolution.

Dr Rupert Read

Green Parliamentary Candidate for Cambridge. 

School of Philosophy, Politics and Languages, University of East Anglia

Ban this bullying of suppliers

“The news that Premier Foods could be forcing its suppliers into controversial ‘pay to stay’ arrangements is deeply disturbing,” said the director general of the Institute of Directors (“Premier is shot down for ‘pointing gun’ at suppliers”, 6 December). It is more than that, it is reverse bribery under duress and there should be a law against it.

Geoff Naylor

Times:

Telegraph:

Irish Times:

Sir, – Brian Morris (December 6th) writes that he has just spent three weeks assessing essays, debates and written tests undertaken by his students. He further states that he is utterly impartial in his marking and in all other dealings with his students, and I have no doubt that this is true. But here is the crux. How does he know that the grade that he awards is of the same equivalency as that awarded in another third-level institute or even by another lecturer in his own college? What system of cross-moderation is used in third-level colleges teaching similar courses or even between faculty members in the same college?

This is a serious issue and cannot be answered by a random perusal of some scripts by an external examiner, or by the often expressed view that “We are professionals and we just know”. The second-level teachers are right to insist on the continuance of external moderation of any new assessment methods that are proposed by the Department of Education. – Yours, etc,

LOUIS O’FLAHERTY,

Santry,

Dublin 9.

Sir, – Brian Morris asks why it is accepted that third-level lecturers can impartially correct their students’ major exams, but not secondary teachers.

In university, lecturers do not have much, if any, sort of “relationship” with their students in general, except for just lecturing a few hundred anonymous individuals in a big lecture hall, unless for the few that are motivated enough to come to the lecturers afterwards to ask them about something.

A secondary teacher, on the other hand, teaches classes of up to 35 students, and unlike a university lecturer, would not only recognise their pupils by name, but would also be likely to know much about their family backgrounds.

In addition, unmotivated students in university simply don’t turn up for lectures; in school, such students tend to disrupt classes instead.

Despite what Mr Morris suggests, having a personal bias is not simply a sign of being “unprofessional”. Such biases are human nature when you have the sort of daily interaction that occurs between a teacher and a pupil at second level. – Yours, etc,

TOMÁS M CREAMER,

Ballinamore, Co Leitrim.

Sir, – Brian Morris argues that secondary teachers should trust their professional integrity and mark their own students’ work, noting this as the common practice at third level. This analysis neglects a key and fundamental difference between second and third level. Secondary schools are a child-centred environment, where parents may exert a powerful influence on any individual teacher. By contrast, third-level education is an adult place of learning, where parents are not involved, and therefore unable to exert undue influence on teaching staff. – Yours, etc,

Dr PEADAR GRANT,

Dundalk,

Co Louth.

Sir, – Similarities can be drawn between the second-level teacher strike of late and the suffrage movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of the strongest opponents to this emancipating movement were women. Grace Duffield Goodwin wrote Anti-Suffrage: Ten Good Reasons in 1912. In this she pointed out that women are exempted from political and legal responsibilities such as serving in the army or sitting on juries. Women are spared from many responsibilities like “providing for family, paying debts and going to jail for minor crimes. If a wife engages in illegal business the law holds [the husband] responsible, and not her. Why would women want to give up that kind of legal protection for equal voting rights?”

Comparable arguments are being put forward by the teacher unions for rejecting greater professional autonomy, ie the need to “maintain educational standards” as printed on so many placards last Tuesday. In other words, it appears they are arguing that at the moment the system has the public trust and if something goes wrong, if a student isn’t demonstrating that they have grown or learned, if the curriculum is overloaded, or if the backwash effect of state examinations is restricting pedagogy, etc, well then it is the system or the State Examination Commission that are responsible. Why would teachers want to give up that kind of protection?

Unfortunately it is often not until our freedom and autonomy have been attacked that we really value them. However, this requires exposure to the potential of such freedom in the first place. The historical and cultural context in Ireland has given prominence to state exams. As a result, there are now Stockholm syndrome-like symptoms emerging where teachers are positively disposed to the exam that many acknowledge has held them hostage for so many years. – Yours, etc,

Dr RAYMOND LYNCH,

Lecturer,

Department of Education

and Professional Studies,

University of Limerick.

Sir, – Una Mullally is a passionate supporter of the legalising of gay marriage (“Who does the BAI ruling on marriage equality serve?”, Opinion & Analysis, December 8th). She appears to advocate that she and her fellow proponents of that view be given time on the airwaves unchallenged by those who seek to uphold the status quo in regard to the definition of marriage. This is a call for restricted debate or no debate. At the same time she asserts that “We need debate. But we also need truth …”, regarding a decision of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

One can argue as to the sources of truth but giving both sides equal opportunity in terms of time and representation is a necessary requirement for exploring factual and moral questions in a democracy. This is a price we pay for democracy. It has to apply in terms of a national referendum.

The Chris Donoghue example is instructive. He espouses one side and so any of his off-the-cuff remarks on the issue will be made accordingly. That is why people in his profession are required to conduct debate according to BAI guidelines. The guidelines are necessary, but not necessarily productive of equality. In some instances producers or presenters afford equal time to each side but line up three advocates of one side against one for the other. All this, of course, assumes the power of media to form public opinion.

There are a number of ways of conducting the national debate. Give each side equal unchallenged slots of time or have them put their case face to face, or some combination of both. But democracy requires that the equality Ms Mullally advocates in one instance must apply in all instances. – Yours, etc,

NEIL BRAY,

Cappamore,

Sir, – Further to Karlin Lillington’s “State sanctions phone and email tapping” (Front Page, December 6th), one might be forgiven for forgetting that one of the main responsibilities of our Government is to defend our sovereignty. Therefore it is with alarm that we should react to the Minister for Justice signing away, with the stroke of a pen, and without any public debate, our control over our cyberspace. What next, our airspace?

It is even more shameful when one considers, as revealed by Edward Snowden, that a foreign power had already pre-empted this surrender by taking onto itself the right to spy on our cyberspace without any legal provision being in place. So they infringe on a part of our sovereignty and our response is to give it away to them? Some way to start our commemorations of 1916. – Yours, etc,

MIKE SCOTT,

Ballybough,

Sir, – The results of the latest Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll show Independents/Others are now more popular than any one of the four main parties, on 32 per cent (excluding undecideds).

With this in mind, might it be time for opinion polls to start giving a more detailed breakdown on Independents/Others?

What portion of this support is going to Independent candidates who stand on primarily local issues, and what portion to those with national profiles and concerns? What portion is going to socialist Independents and what portion to free-market independents, to social conservatives or to social liberals? At the very least it should be possible to provide a breakdown of support for the main political groupings of the “Others”: the Greens, People Before Profit, Anti-Austerity Alliance, Reform Alliance, United Left and so on. Given that Independents and smaller parties are likely to play an important role in the formation of the next government, it would be useful for the public to have more detailed information on their levels of support, rather than just for the amorphous blob of “Independents and Others”. – Yours, etc,

CEARBHALL TURRAOIN,

Dublin 1.

Sir, – The decision by Willie Frazer, who represents the group Fair (Families Acting for Innocent Relatives), to seek permission to hold a second “Love Ulster” march in Dublin early next year is regrettable (“Loyalists planning Love Ulster march in Dublin early next year”, December 6th).

While I fully endorse one’s right to assemble and march, within the parameters of the law and due recognition given to accepted civilised behaviour, the inclusion of loyalist bandsmen appears to be a deliberate attempt by Mr Frazer to provoke a reaction.  If this proposed march, as Mr Frazer claims, is to highlight the suffering of innocent victims of violence in the North, why is it confined to Protestant victims only?  Why are Catholic victims of violence excluded? Surely if Mr Frazer is to be consistent in applying principles of justice, fairness and equality in both life and death, all suffering should be recognised?

If the Garda concede to Mr Frazer’s request and grant permission for the march to proceed, restrictions must be put in place to avoid a recurrence of the civil disorder witnessed on the previous occasion Mr Frazer’s group marched in Dublin.

Under no circumstances should this group be allowed to parade with sectarian flags and emblems or should loyalist bandsmen be allowed to play sectarian tunes.

Most importantly of all they must not be allowed to parade in the vicinity of where the Dublin bombings of May 1974 took place.

I look forward to the day when all the victims of the Troubles can be remembered with equal respect and dignity, regardless of creed or political status, collectively. I take the view that Mr Frazer’s narrow focus in representing Protestant victims has only set that day back. – Yours, etc,

TOM COOPER,

Templeogue,

Dublin 6W.

Sir, – Optics aside, it is difficult to see the value of an external review by an accountancy firm on issues of patient safety (“Savita hospital review finds ‘reasonable compliance’”, December 5th). The central issue in the Savita tragedy was poor medical management of a sick patient. Unfortunately, the inevitability of such poor outcomes remains the case in the vast majority of Irish hospitals.

The reasons for this have been clearly identified and reported in The Irish Times over the last few months. First, the grossly inadequate provision of intensive-care units and critical-care beds has never been addressed. All the so-called “early warning systems” can hope to achieve is to underline this fact on a daily basis. If the alarms keep going off, people stop listening.

Second, as stated by the recently departed head of Health Information and Quality Authority, while there are pockets of excellence in Irish healthcare, there are no clear standards of care and we do not know how many patients are being killed or harmed (her words not mine) because it is not being measured. Finally, the total lack of accountability of HSE management for poor clinical outcomes is appalling.

Where I work now, there is no public vs private nonsense. Patients are treated free at the point of care on an as-needed basis. Each person has a unique patient identifier; care is provided by consultants or the institution doesn’t get paid; I am responsible for every clinical decision I make, and there is a permanent electronic record of diagnostic tests, consultation letters and other reports. If a patient has an adverse outcome, all providers involved must attend the relevant morbidity and mortality meeting, which are held routinely. – Yours, etc,

Dr PAUL MacMULLAN,

Clinical Assistant

Professor Division

of Rheumatology,

University of Calgary,

Sir, – Laya Healthcare has just announced up to a 19 per cent reduction in health premiums for some plans and fixed its prices over two years. While this will be welcomed by consumer groups, it should not be a surprise. Laya recently cut reimbursements to doctors by 5 per cent across the board and in many instances by much greater amounts. Since 2008 health insurers have cut fees to consultants by 20 per cent or more, reducing them to the levels of over 10 years ago. During this time consultants costs have skyrocketed – the costs of any small business such as staff, utilities, and consumables. Most notable of these is the cost of medical indemnity insurance which the Medical Protection Society has increased by nearly 100 per cent in the past two years. This, it says, is due to the high incidence of litigation in Irish society and the sums being paid out in settlements. This increase in indemnity premiums is on the back of serial increases over several years. Some doctors are now paying over 40 per cent of their income in medical indemnity. This is unsustainable for any business.

The only solution for many doctors will be to increase consultation fees or to opt out of the full participation schemes that the majority of hospital consultants are currently signed up for with the healthcare insurers. While this is unlikely to improve their public image, for many it is the only pathway to survival. This will more than undo any consumer benefit that may accrue from these recent cuts in health insurance premiums. The young Irish medical graduates are looking at this and opting out at source. Not only are they leaving in droves, it looks like they are not coming back any time soon. – Yours, etc,

GREG FULTON,

Douglas,

Cork.

Sir, – I do not represent the O’Brien Press, nor am I attempting to speak for it. Nonetheless, as a writer, I was astounded to learn (December 5th) that the Arts Council had reduced grant aid to this publisher by a whopping 84 per cent. Now correct me if I am wrong, but is this the same council that has had a hand in initiating the very first Irish fiction laureateship? Do they not do irony in Merrion Square?

 For more than four decades, the O’Brien Press has been a leading Irish publisher of poetry, fiction and children’s books. It does not need me to sing its praises or trumpet its achievements. But no doubt the Arts Council would wish to be praised for its own mighty work in highlighting Ireland’s literary profile.

The council has exercised a “scorched earth” policy concerning literature for quite some time, reducing or killing off even the most modest of grants to literature festivals, scuppering the hopes of small but energetic publishers.

The grant to the O’Brien Press should be restored to what it was formerly and as soon as possible. The reduction of the grant is as disgraceful as it is inexplicable. One might wonder yet again whether the council is not merely interested in an exportable cultural image rather than the promotion of literature. This latest Merrion Square fiasco makes an utter nonsense of the much-heralded, God help us, Irish fiction laureateship. – Yours, etc,

FRED JOHNSTON,

Sir, – Approximately 48 hours in advance of another national demonstration against water charges and The Irish Times runs an article stating that the Government has given the troika a dressing down over the same issue (“Troika rebuked over water charges”, December 8th). Considering that it is a number of weeks since the troika officials were in town, why is this news only emerging now? – Yours, etc,

GILES FOX,

Kilmacud,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – The US closing prices in the Business section give stock prices for most of the main US companies in Ireland, with one notable exception.

Should we just “Google” it? – Yours, etc,

COLIN ROGAN,

Terenure, Dublin 6W.

Irish Independent:

The spotlight on the issue of homelessness and the dangerous plight of those living on our hostile streets or in temporary accommodation is high on the radar of the public consciousness.

More so in recent times following the deaths of “homeless persons”. Only after their lonely demise were the labels removed and names, histories, contexts given to their “homeless” faces.

How many times has the thought crossed our minds, when we see someone appearing or behaving detached from reality in some way, that their street-living was a result of their own selfish actions? They must have done something wrong to have been expelled from their family/society in general to find themselves in their situation?

The harsh reality is that behind many issues of homelessness lies a legacy of survival, trying to get through each and every day, within a context of involvement in social services and/or medical and treatment services. Behind each case of homelessness can lie mental health issues, substance abuse, family issues, or financial difficulties, which are everyday features of some lives.

What this realisation tells us about ourselves is that we are never too far away from an emotional, physical or social challenge which can be so overwhelming for us, we find ourselves unable to manage.

Each of us has an inbuilt drive to survive. What this level of survival looks like to each of us will be different – for some, it is financial survival, saving our business or home or getting enough together to put food on the table. For others, it will be enough to get from one end of the day to the other, avoiding harm along the way.

It may be time to consider that the broader issues faced by some of us, however uncomfortable they may be, are a living reality for others and need to be acknowledged and not judged, so that the possibilities of life-supporting interventions and choices can be made more accessible to those who need them.

Jo-Anne Sexton, Donnycarney, Dublin 9

Christmas is about more than toys

There is a growing realisation that children are given far too many toys, thus eliminating the possibility of the use of their imagination to invent games and play activities.

Children are targets for ruthless marketing, where wants are confused with needs. Sales are stimulated by manufacturing bogus scarcity and bogus urgency.

Recently, I visited a leading toy store and found it packed with shelf after shelf of items that must have been designed by people who have lost all sense of the children who will be the recipients of their wares, but are acutely aware of their purchasing power.

The great philosopher Plato believed that children become their surroundings. One can only hope that the minds and hearts of our children are not shaped by the offerings in some toy shops.

Perhaps the worst offenders are those who persuade gullible parents that in an age of the computers children need to engage in the endless playing of mindless computer games so as to become ‘computer literate’.

The RTE ‘Toy Show,’ where children are unwittingly engaged in the business of promoting the pre-Christmas sale of toys, takes Christmas advertising to a new level, matched appropriately by the lunacy of Black Friday, when civility is thrown to the winds.

This drift into mindless acquisitiveness has become the defining characteristic of Christmas. I am reminded of the child who when expressing the hope that he would get lots of toys from Father Christmas was told that he should think more about giving than getting. He responded to this moral reminder by praying that Father Christmas would give him lots of presents.

Philip O’Neill, Oxford, OX1 4QB, UK

D’Arcy’s €500k ‘homecoming’

RTE has plenty of excellent broadcasting talent in-house whose remuneration packages are not so exorbitant as to make sensational national headline news.

But according to an Irish Independent report on December 8, RTE intends to recruit broadcaster Ray D’Arcy with a pay package close to €500,000 – a headline reminiscent of the Camelot years of ludicrous pay levels and extravagant operating costs at the heavily loss-making State broadcaster.

The 2013 Annual Report of RTE reveals that its commercial revenue has declined from €240m to €145m over the preceding five years. Annual television licence revenue received by RTE is €19m million lower over this period.

The Department of Communications reported that the TV licence evasion levels in Ireland, at 17pc of chargeable domestic households and businesses, is very high by European standards. The latest annual report of An Post indicates no material progress in curtailing TV licence evasion levels since 2008.

RTE returned a modest surplus of €700,000 last year following an era of very substantial losses.

How can the board of RTE afford to pay one individual with a package equivalent to 65pc of 2013 profits, when its capacity to make a decent profit and grow revenue is so uncertain?

D’Arcy is quoted as saying that his return to RTE is “a bit like coming home”, but is the viability of this homecoming to be based on a very hefty increase in the TV licence fee, or the hope that An Post will become more effective as a TV licence fee collector – a prospect defined by RTE “as a key priority for 2014″?

Myles Duffy, Glenageary, Co Dublin

12 pubs, or pay the water charge?

Regarding the trend of the 12 pubs of Christmas: say 12 drinks at €5 each, that’s €60 in one night. The same price as the water charge for a single household for one year.

There should be a nationwide protest at the cost! Ho, ho, ho.

Brendan Chapman, Booterstown, Dublin

Set a minimum price for alcohol

The decision to proceed with a Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) policy for alcohol in Northern Ireland reflects the increasing conviction of policy makers of the effectiveness of price in the fight against alcohol harm.

The challenge to Scotland’s bid to introduce a MUP of 50p remains tied up in the European courts, but there is confidence that this challenge by the drinks industry will be overcome.

The consequences of alcohol harm in Ireland are catastrophic. The death rate from liver cirrhosis has doubled in both men and women in the last 20 years, reflecting the doubling of per capita intake of alcohol in the last 50 years.

MUP, which establishes a floor price below which alcohol cannot be sold, has proven to have had significant positive and rapid benefits on health and crime in Canada, where MUP has already been introduced. The Northern Irish Department of Health estimates that introduction of MUP there could save 63 lives a year; in the Republic the figure for lives saved would be much higher.

Those who argue against MUP suggest that moderate drinkers would be penalised. This is quite simply not the case. MUP will in fact have the greatest impact on harmful and hazardous drinkers. A recent UK study of patients with liver disease demonstrated that the impact of a minimum unit price of 50p/unit on spending on alcohol would be 200 times higher for patients with liver disease who were drinking at harmful levels than for low-risk drinkers.

If we take a MUP price of 60c in the Republic of Ireland, this would not change the price anyone pays for a drink in a pub or restaurant, as these, for the most part, already sell at well above that MUP. A bottle of wine costing €8 at present, or a 700ml bottle of spirits at €14 would still cost the same. What would change is the price of the cheapest and strongest wine, cider and beer, mainly or completely in the supermarket and off-license sector.

Prof Frank Murray, President and Chair of Alcohol Policy Group, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland

Irish Independent

10 December 2014 Listing

I still have arthritis in my left toe I am stricken with gout. But I manage to get to start listing Joans‘ books .

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

Obituary:

Margaret Aston Photo: Sophie Buxton

Guardian:

I would once again like to thank the Guardian for its outstanding reporting of Feeding Britain (Confront the simple fact that hunger stalks Britain, report urges ministers, 8 December). But might I also respond to the assertions made by some commentators about our recommendations?

We do not support or propose the institutionalisation of food banks in their current form. This would, I believe, amount to a new Poor Law-style system which none of us wants to see. Food banks shouldn’t be given the job of the heavy lifting in our fight back against hunger.

Our proposals seek instead to reduce as soon as possible the number of people having to rely on food banks. Hence our proposals to boost wages at the bottom, to improve the delivery of benefits, and to keep more money in poorer families’ pockets by tackling the rip-off charges they currently face on household essentials.

But even if each of these reforms does come to pass, we cannot escape the fact that some of our fellow citizens would still be hungry: those who don’t have a roof over their head, for example, or who have the weight of an enormous debt hanging around their neck. Our inquiry showed that, for these people, food is the best chance we have of helping them to turn their lives around. What good would it do for them if food banks were to be abolished? A recurring message in our evidence was that churches and other groups providing food assistance are adept at “reaching the hardest to reach”, who often struggle to make and maintain contact with statutory services. These are individuals who, for one reason or another, are isolated and in desperate need of an arm around their shoulder. Their hunger, as our report highlights, predated the recession and will outlast the recovery.

So Feeding Britain issues a rallying cry on two fronts. First, that we put to use the scandalous amount of good food that is thrown to waste, instead to engage with our most vulnerable citizens through a reformed food bank model that gets to the root of people’s problems, and offers them a way out of the rut they are in. Second, and running concurrently, to reduce immediately demand for food banks.

I hope your readers will join us in pursuit of our goal of a hunger-free country.
Frank Field MP
Labour, Birkenhead

• There is a real danger that the proposed solutions in the Feeding Britain report deflect from the political urgency of addressing the structural and underlying issues of poverty. Instead, the issue is portrayed as one that can be solved by a more effective redistribution of “food waste” to the poor. Food is a social marker (one of the reasons why many people refuse to use food banks), and the idea that food waste is suitable for a particular category of (poor) people is deeply problematical as it reinforces the dominating media rhetoric that those on benefits are somehow less deserving, harking back to days of “less eligibility”.

We should start by questioning why the enshrined right to food is disregarded. The international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (ratified by the UK in 1976 and rooted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) sets out a right to adequate food – this, the relevant UN committee spelled out later, means that countries should ensure “the availability of food in a quantity and quality sufficient to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals, free from adverse substances, and acceptable within a given culture”.

If the justiciability of the right to food is to be regarded as anything more than illusory, it is critical that we look upstream at addressing the adequacy of wages and social security. If not, we will find that emergency food is rapidly institutionalised in the UK (as it already is in other neoliberal states) as the appropriate response to hunger.
Richard Bridge (@richardbridge7)
York

• What do we need to do to get the government to listen and attend to the warnings of the archbishop of Canterbury concerning the shameful level of poverty endured by children and their families in the UK (Church v state rift over hunger, 8 December)?

As Jewish religious leaders, we share the archbishop’s concerns. We live in a time of gross injustice in which the rich are getting richer and the poor only becoming poorer. We watch with increasing incredulity phenomena such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, leading to overconsumption and waste, while too many others are forced into diluting milk or missing meals so that their children are able to eat.

We must think critically how changes to the benefits system are impacting on poor families, many of whom are in work yet do not earn enough to sustain themselves and their families. The answer lies not in creating more food banks, for these should never be allowed to become a permanent feature of British life. We must instead change the conditions which make food banks necessary.
Rabbi Alexandra Wright, Rabbi Charley Baginsky Rabbinic Conference, Liberal Judaism, Rabbi Sybil Sheridan Chair of the Assembly of Rabbis, Movement for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Rachel Benjamin, Rabbi Miriam Berger, Rabbi Dr Barbara Borts, Rabbi Douglas Charing, Rabbi Cliff Cohen, Rabbi Howard Cooper, Rabbi Frank Dabba Smith, Rabbi Janet Darley, Rabbi Colin Eimer, Rabbi Helen Freeman, Rabbi Ariel J Friedlander, Rabbi Anna Gerrard, Rabbi Amanda Golby, Student Rabbi Naomi Goldman, Rabbi Aaron Goldstein, Rabbi Dr Andrew Goldstein, Rabbi Dr Michael Hilton, Rabbi Harry Jacobi, Rabbi Dr Margaret Jacobi, Rabbi Richard Jacobi, Rabbi Dr Deborah Kahn-Harris, Rabbi Yuval Keren, Rabbi Sandra Kviat, Rabbi Rachel Montagu, Rabbi Lea Mühlstein, Rabbi Jeffrey Newman, Rabbi Rebecca Qassim Birk, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, Rabbi Dr Judith Rosen-Berry, Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild, Rabbi Irit Shillor, Cantor Gershon Silins, Rabbi Michael Standfield, Rabbi Jackie Tabick, Rabbi Pete Tobias, Rabbi Roderick Young, Rabbi Debbie Young-Somers, Rabbi Dr Andrea Zanardo, Rabbi Kathleen Middleton, Rabbi Monique Mayer, Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

• Nick Clegg calls for a rethink on benefits, a rethink on poverty and food banks; the government is seeking to avert one of its biggest rifts with the Church of England for decades over the same issue; and an all-party report on food banks warns that Britain is stalked by hunger caused by low pay, growing inequality, a harsh benefits sanctions regime and social breakdown. Clegg and his cronies propped up Cameron and his cronies, and between them they let this happen – stable doors and bolted horses come to mind. How long does it take to spot a bloody disgrace?
Professor Andrew Melrose
University of Winchester

• Given the archbishop of Canterbury’s shock at Britain’s food banks and the tightening screw of austerity measures, I am surprised that George Osborne has yet to attract the epithet attached to Heinrich Brüning, German chancellor 1930-32, of “the hunger chancellor”. Maybe because we all know where it led.
Robert Gildea
Professor of modern history, University of Oxford

• I assume Matt Hancock, who says one reason for rising food bank use “is because more people know about them”, will be telling the BBC to remove Casualty from its schedules, as its unremitting advertising of hospital provision undoubtedly increases the ill health of the population.
Richard Stainer
Bradfield St George, Suffolk

• Towards the end of the 20th century, a Conservative government manipulated the secondary school curriculum to demote and almost abolish cookery as a subject. Surely Lady Jenkin (Conservative peer forced to eat her words after claiming that poor people can’t cook, 9 December) is old enough to remember that?
Jan Dubé
Peebles, Scottish Borders

• A hand-to-mouth existence is hard. A hand-to-mouth existence when there’s nothing in your hand is far worse.
Jill Mortiboys
Stowmarket, Suffolk

During the war, our family regularly travelled to Cornwall for a summer holiday. The trains were packed with troops and children; soldiers thronged the corridors. In my fevered recall, the journey, including frequent stoppages, took about eight hours. At one point my mother started, naturally enough, to breastfeed her new baby, at which point a clergyman (in a dog collar) sitting opposite with his daughter looked first horrified, then angry (Breastfeeding in European art: an image of everything Ukip abhors, 9 December). Eventually, with an air of disgust, he covered the little girl from head to foot with his own black coat like a shroud. I wanted to cry out indignantly: “What about the Virgin Mary?”

Seventy years later, I still regret that I didn’t have the courage.
Antonia Fraser
London

 

 

Independent:

End our nuclear love affair

In your article US and China strike deal on carbon cuts (21 November), we read, “It will require China to deploy an additional 800-1000 gigawatts of nuclear, wind, solar and other zero-emission generation capacity by 2030 – more than all the coal power plants that exist in China today”. There will be similar cuts for the US. While the general population is largely asleep about the dangers of decommissioning a nuclear power station, we are told only of the danger of reaching an increase of 2C in global temperature.

Nothing we know of will dissipate the radioactivity from closed nuclear power stations. Meanwhile, climate temperatures for the future depend on computer predictions, based on particular assumptions about past increases, with carbon as the only possible cause.

The way forward is to increase ecological sources of energy, using the money dedicated by the present UK government’s deals for restarting the nuclear power industry. Our goal should be a significant decrease in energy use. As we wean ourselves from energy-intensive computers and other gadgets, we will create a more natural lifestyle, which will solve many of our present human problems.

The end of the UK’s love affair with Trident and nuclear defence would also release vast sums of money for a better future, including a reduction in the national debt.

Can’t we learn from the years of “cleaning up the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant” that still continue (21 November)?
Brian Dawes
Montrose, UK

Enough is enough

I read with some dismay Will Hutton’s rabidly expansionist article (5 December) on the growth potential inherent in the collapse in the world oil price. Even if we ignore the widespread economic and social damage caused by the US fracking revolution, to hear him echoing the blinkered view of the majority of those attending the recent G20 that we must, first and foremost, promote economic growth, gives me little hope for any answer to the world’s most pressing problems: climate change and inequality.

As George Monbiot has noted: “Economic growth is an artefact of the use of fossil fuels” (28 May). Economic expansion has almost always been achieved at the cost of the profligate use of highly polluting fossil-fuel reserves, accompanied by a widening rift between the haves and the have-nots.

Our choices are not simply between stagnation and rapid, unrestrained economic expansion. There is a middle road, albeit one that will require restraint. The concept of a steady-state economy has been developed since the 1970s by such forward-thinking economists as E F Shumacher and Herman Daly, and has come to the attention of the current generation of economists and planners with the pioneering work of Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill.

Any exhortation to exploit the recent fall in the crude oil price to pursue the unsustainable path of more of the same is irresponsible. We can hope that Hutton’s piece does at least encourage further discussion on what constitute the real values and attainable goals of a sharing culture.
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia

This cold war is no surprise

Thanks to Simon Tisdall for his analysis of the new cold war (28 November). The auguries of this second cold war should have been apparent almost immediately after the end of the first. Vladimir Putin is quite right when he points to the continued existence of Nato as the main cause of tension. Nato has been redundant since 1991.

Those who had vested interests in its continued existence should have been confronted with this fact. It made impossible the extension of a rapprochement that seemed to be growing before Mikhail Gorbachev’s departure. The alliance that replaced the Warsaw Pact was not created until 1992. The failure to grasp the opportunity of making Nato redundant is one that the world will regret.
Peter David Rees
Lesmahagow, UK

Burkeman got it wrong

I am sorry, but Oliver Burkeman has got it wrong this time (November 28). After a neat introduction to Dunbar’s number, he makes the assumption that social networks are networks between equal friends. They are not, and thus his conclusion that “densely linked friends are better friends” is erroneous.

The internet’s social networks should be renamed in popular jargon for what they mostly are: me networks. Most postings are examples of a person who is so alone that he or she believes that the words or video he or she offers are of interest to the world. “Listen to me”, the person screams.

Naturally, there can be very small social networks, two to eight persons at most, who find it more convenient to chat online than to write a letter. They have to live with the fact that their social chit-chatting is open to a vast range of people, some of whom will try to take advantage of whatever is said or shown. This vast range doesn’t constitute a social network: it’s merely an audience.

You might wonder where the number eight comes from as the upper limit of a group of interactive friends. It is the approximate number of people in a committee who can come to a decision, according to Parkinson’s law of triviality. Any more and the committee will split into subcommittees to do any work.

I suspect that number works for the internet too. Dunbar’s number of 150 is merely the larger pool from which groupings of eight can be chosen for any particular subject.

That said, Burkeman’s column is always worth reading. It makes you think.
John Graham
Hoogstraten, Belgium

Our leaders are very selfish

In Owen Jones’s article Inequality is not a human instinct (28 November), the researchers quoted are probably right in claiming that normal human beings are not dog-eat-dog selfish. However, I am not convinced that the same holds true of our leadership, who appear to rate strongly on checklists devised to identify the minority of individuals with narcissistic psychopathy.

In all walks of life, whether self-appointed or elected, we find leaders who have superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, a lack of remorse, a shallow affect, a callous lack of empathy, who are cunning, manipulative, irresponsible, and pathologically untruthful. These traits almost come with the job, and the rest of us feel out of place among such people.

Surely, with such people in charge, we are not likely to achieve a more just and equal world.
Bernard Galton
St-Nazaire-sur-Charente, France

Kosovo is no success story

It seems awfully strange to expect the failed state of Kosovo to function properly and thrive when it was constructed on illegal foundations after Nato’s savage war on the Serbian people (14 November). Whether or not the Hague war crimes tribunal agrees, many of Kosovo’s leaders operate without any understanding of law and order; rather, they use their advantage in society for personal benefit instead of serving the citizens who elected them – and kowtow to wealthy western businesses.

If Kosovo is considered a “success” of western policy in the Balkans, I shudder to imagine what a failure would comprise.
Michael Pravica
Henderson, Nevada, US

Briefly

• Philip Ball writes that science has “an obligation to cultivate healthy systems for making … forecasts” of processes such as weather, climate and earthquakes (21 November). Peer-reviewed science does a good job of quantifying probabilities. It is journalists who frequently fall short in their obligation to report scientific predictions correctly.
David Cotter
Woodbridge, UK

• To suggest as Paul Mason does, that anti-war images designed to influence public opinion date back to 1924 – “a precise moment in history” – is misleading. His otherwise timely article (28 November) overlooks the efforts of earlier artists whose repugnance at the atrocities of war led them to produce horrific images.

Who cannot be moved, for example, by Francisco Goya’s horrific 19th-century series of prints depicting battlefield mutilationsr? Mason’s premise that graphic records of war’s savagery have never deterred humankind is greatly strengthened by similar records made centuries before the dawn of photography.
Jack Benlow
Heathfield, South Australia

• As research into the benefits of nostalgia continues apace (28 November), I add this bit from biologist Edward O Wilson’s chapter on Free Will from his new book The Meaning of Human Existence: “we summon stories of past events for contrast and meaning”. Our “human necessity” for what Wilson calls “confabulation” helps us to make decisions based on “multiple competing scenarios”. Thus, “Memories of past episodes are repeated [not only] for pleasure”, as confirmed in your article, but also “for rehearsal, for planning, or for various combinations of all three”.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada

• It was not only the lads who were delivering the mail at Christmas (28 November). As an impecunious student at LSE in the 40s, I remember finding the sorting room of the Royal Mail a bit boring. The professional postmen, with whom I would chat in their van, were very matey and amused by my company; when I told them my lecture hours they thought I could easily combine a student’s life with a full-time postman’s job.
Pat Stapleton
Beaumont du Ventoux, France

Times:

Telegraph:

Volunteers sorts through donations of food at the Hammersmith and Fulham food bank, run by the Trussell Trust  Photo: AFP/GETTY

Irish Times:

Sir, – John Mulligan (Letters, 2nd December) rightly bemoans the lack of cycle trails in Ireland and attributes this to purely local thinking.

As a keen hill walker I am convinced that this is not the cause but instead it is the mantra in local and government circles: “landowners must not be disturbed”.

Legal rights for walkers and cyclists might possibly disturb landowners, hence only a vestigial infrastructure (off-road paths and tracks, footbridges, parking, signing, etc) for walkers and cyclists exists. Never mind that Ireland has wonderful, remote scenery, or that landowners have received billions over the years from taxpayers. Never mind that outdoor tourism would benefit the local economy, or that landowners elsewhere in Europe have freely conceded legal rights to recreational users. Never mind the common good. It’s shameful and so unnecessary but until government attitudes change I am privileged to do most of my walking in Wales, where the difference in attitude makes that between chalk and cheese look insignificant. – Yours, etc. DAVID HERMAN, Meadow Grove, Dublin 16 Sir, – Billy Timmins may question Alan Kelly’s choice of greenways, (Alan Kelly’s funding of Greenway routes ‘a real slap in the face’”, December 1st) but Mr Timmins has missed the point. The key issue is of connectivity.

Connecting local greenways, like the Great Western Greenway to a national network is now of key strategic importance. Connectivity and a network is what will bring growth in this lucrative tourism sector.

The Tuam Greenway and the Sligo-Mayo Greenway projects are campaigning for a greenway from Athenry to Sligo on the closed railway route. If this were connected to the Dublin-Galway Greenway at Athenry and the Great Western Greenway in Mayo, imagine the boost to West of Ireland tourism, creating jobs along its entire length.

In the same report, it was mentioned that a greenway in Kerry is running into problems due to landowners objecting. If Kerry wants to turn its back on a €4.2 million investment then let’s have the money redirected to where there will be no landownership issues. – Yours, etc

The closed (and unlikely to reopen) railway line from Athenry to Sligo is in public ownership and so there is a 110 km strip of land sitting there crying out for Greenway treatment, which could be done very cost effectively.

It’s not rocket science is it? – Yours, etc,

BRENDAN QUINN

Enniscrone,

Co Sligo.

Irish Independent:

People’s memories are a funny thing. Ask any Irish person the names of the characters in Glenroe and they will sing off a list with Blackie, Biddy and Miley. Or ask them who won the All-Ireland in God knows when and they will sing it off like a bird – but ask them to recollect Irish politics over the last ten years and their memories fade.

Irish media has been flooded lately covering the debate on Irish Water. It seems Enda Kenny has become the Irish tsar that everyone wants to hang in the name of Irish liberty. Instead of proclaiming “let them eat cake” he is being ridiculed for asking us to pay for our water.

But I ask you this – what of the Celtic Tiger’s dowry?

Whilst Fianna Fail bought silk shirts and make-overs the Irish people stayed numb and quiet. Where was your protest outside the Dail then? Now whilst Fine Gael tries to regain Ireland’s reputation and regain our country from economic downfall they are been labelled criminals for a crime not of their doing! It was Fianna Fail who placed the gun into their hands.

This is a tough economy for us all. None more so than for the hard-working folk. My father always said: “It’s not that bad, people aren’t darning their socks yet.” We have fallen on bad times, but at least we have roofs over our head and a breath in our bodies. We need to believe that things will get better. I have faith in Fine Gael.

That’s what is funny about Irish memory. We can recall the words to a song during a sing-song, but ask someone who was involved in the Arms Crisis and they don’t remember. It was Charlie again. Fianna Fail robbed this country of our nest egg – not Fine Gael. That is unforgivable. Maybe Enda Kenny is seen as a pariah, but at least he has some dignity.

This is why I will vote for Fine Gael, because – unlike Fianna Fail with their false promises and mismatched suits – Fine Gael are able to make hard choices, even if it costs them their head. I believe strongly that we should all get behind Fine Gael. To allow Fianna Fail back in power is a road to designer suits and not much else.

I would rather hand my money over in the name of Irish Water than in the name of the Bertie Bowl. It’s only a pity we didn’t protest then.

Julie Bennett

Southend-On-Sea, Essex

Everyone should pay their way

I wish to inform you that I have completed my water deductions form some time ago and I encourage every other good citizen of this country to do the same.

Water is an essential product that we all require. We are being asked to pay a nett €1.15 per month. For the price of a pint you would have paid for a minimum of four months charges, for 20 cigarettes you would pay for eight months of charges.

The charge is not just for the water we get out of our taps, it’s to repair the huge amount of leaks we have and to give decent water back to the people of Roscommon, Galway, etc.

Go on your protest, put the present Government out of power if you want, but you will regret it. Stop and think about the state this country was in 3.5 years ago and look at it now. This Government has done what was expected of them – and more. The wound has been lanced, the pain is fading and we are going to make a full recovery.

The Government have made mistakes – even they will not deny this. Unemployment was 14pc, now it’s almost down to 10pc, retail sales are up, the unions are getting ready to look for pay increases – what other signs do you want?

Does anyone seriously think that a government of Independents or Sinn Fein can run this country? If they are in power we might as well book the first-class plane tickets for the Troika to return. You who do not want to pay your charges, surely you see that the Government have done as much as they can? I write as someone who has had to tighten my belt and have taken pay cuts but, thankfully, I see the bigger picture as a citizen of Ireland. I will pay my way.

Donough O’Reilly

Kimacud, Co Dublin

Corporations should serve us

Before reading the article entitled: “Our corporation tax doesn’t need to be reformed. It needs to be abolished (December 5)” Dan O’Brien must have been reading Homer’s ‘Iliad’. In it Odysseus instructs his soldiers to abandon their plans and leave Troy. But it’s a ruse to test their resolve. And Odysseus is pleased the soldiers reject his offer to return home instead of taking Troy.

Dan O’Brien must also be hoping the Irish will reject his lazy offer that we abandon seeking corporation tax altogether. After all, we only managed to wring a few million from a few billion of Facebook’s profits. So it must be pointless? And what’s a few million when you can make twice that from old age people’s heating allowance slashing? It seems unseemly to him to beggar poor corporate multinationals so hard just to get money to pay a nation’s way. Odd given that this nation is the nest that lines their wallets. Imagine lowly us taxing their billions of profits, where there are local services that can be cut, social projects to be abandoned? The cheek of us!

O’Brien wrote that even the OECD is stumped by the mammoth task of begging at the gates of corporate Troy. Those OECD boffins are finding implementing worldwide corporate tax plans, without an obvious referee, unnervingly difficult. Oh, danger here!

Just as well for planet Earth that the UN weapons inspectors or pandemic flu fighters, or the International Criminal Court’s little people don’t throw their arms up in the air when finding the international waters getting tough.

Dan O’Brien thinks modern companies are “one of the greatest inventions of all time”. I’d love to see how he established that.These modern companies get a lucky (tax) break and siphon off billions from the labour of their workers, using tax mechanisms they’ve bent countries to bow to, and there are thus great inventions? Edison would think dimly of it, no doubt. So will the freezing pensioners. And we are to judge a society on how it treats its most vulnerable, not its corporations.

Phelim Doran

Address with editor

Protests about more than water

A Leavy’s concerns (Letters, December 8) about our levels of borrowing are understandable. All services have to be paid for, either by individual households or through general taxation. But the former (neoliberalism) leads to inequality and the economic stagnation we see in Europe, while the latter (social democracy) supports social cohesion and economic sustainability.

Social democracy promotes private enterprise and also distributes wealth through equitable public services and universal welfare. This creates a foundation of stability on which society can successfully operate.

Under Thatcherite neo-liberalism, public services have been largely reduced to commodities that provide profit to shareholders. Flat taxes such as water charges means that services are available only to those able and willing to pay.

This represents the rolling back of decades of social, economic and political progress. It re-creates a neo-feudal world where the new gentry (multi-national corporations) hold the lives of the peasants (citizens) in the palm of their hands.

The water protests are not just about water. They are about the rejection of an exploitative global financial system that has become decoupled from humanity.

Protesters want to reclaim not just our natural resources, but our hard-won representative democracy, from those who would sell it off for 30 pieces of silver.

Maeve Halpin

Ranelagh, Dublin 6

In A Levy’s letter published this week Ireland’s borrowings were listed as being over “a trillion euro’ and not €180bn as originally stated by Mr Levy.

Irish Independent

an

I still have arthritis in my left toe I am stricken with gout. But I manage to get out to optician, eyesight okay better even back in 6 months.

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

Obituary:

5:33PM GMT 10 Dec 2014

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Nathaniel Branden, who has died aged 84, was for many years the lover and chief disciple of the American writer and libertarian monstre sacré Ayn Rand (1905-82); the story of their relationship and its bitter ending served to illustrate some of the pitfalls of her philosophy of ethical selfishness.

When they first met in 1950 Nathan Blumenthal, as he then was, was a 19-year-old Canadian psychology student at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ayn Rand, a Russian-Jewish emigrée in her late forties, was the bestselling author of The Fountainhead (1943), a torrid ideological melodrama of Nietzschean individualism, whose merciless celebration of the human ego, unfettered by religious restraints, not to mention its racy dose of sadomasochistic sex, had attracted an army of young admirers.

Having more or less memorised the novel, Nathan Blumenthal wooed Ayn Rand with fan letters and his devotion earned him an invitation to visit her California ranch. He came for an all-night conversation, and on his next visit introduced his girlfriend and fellow Rand groupie Barbara Weidman.

When the young pair moved to New York for graduate study, Rand and her husband, Frank O’Connor (an actor she had married because he looked like the hero in a picture book she had loved as a child), followed. For part of the trip O’Connor, a mild-mannered man with an interest in flower-arranging, was literally chained to the manuscript of Atlas Shrugged (1957), Rand’s most famous work, then a novel-in-progress, which travelled in a case attached to a handcuff. When Barbara and the by-now renamed Nathaniel Branden (a name suggested by his idol to incorporate her own) married in 1953, Frank and Ayn served as best man and matron of honour at their wedding.

Though Branden was 24 years younger than Ayn Rand, the relationship between author and acolyte turned physical in late 1954. Determined to apply rational principles to a potentially complicated situation, Ayn Rand assembled the parties involved for a discussion. O’Connor and Barbara were “rationally”, if extremely reluctantly, persuaded that sex between Rand and Nathaniel was the logical concomitant of their intellectual communion. Their twice-weekly trysts took place at regular hours at her apartment, with O’Connor dispatched to the local cinema to wait out the assignation. The two men would sometimes acknowledge each other in passing at the door.

The affair continued, on and off, for 14 years, during which Ayn Rand became the host of weekly salons, known as “the Collective”, at which a group of admiring young acolytes (including the future Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan) would assemble at the feet of their guru for marathon philosophy sessions.

Ayn Rand’s most famous dictum was “Check your premises”, but the self-professed individualists in her entourage never dared question hers for fear of being exiled from the fold. They adopted Ayn Rand’s tastes in everything, forming a cultish circle that came to be governed by loyalty tests. Branden became the group’s disciplinarian, staging “kangaroo courts” at which deviants were castigated, and if necessary expelled, for “psychological errors”.

^{Ayn Rand (Time & Life Pictures/Getty)}

When Atlas Shrugged (dedicated jointly to O’Connor and Branden) was panned by the critics, in 1958 Branden established the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI) to promulgate Ayn Rand’s philosophy of “Objectivism”, which she described as “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life”. Together they published a magazine, The Objectivist, and gave lectures. By the mid-1960s the NBI was running Objectivist courses in 80 cities in America out of an office in the Empire State Building.

Branden also pioneered Objectivist psychotherapy, an alternative approach to healing which involved the rational mastery of emotions. But by 1964 he was having trouble controlling his own feelings, after the Collective was joined by a nubile 23-year-old fashion model called Patrecia Wynand, to whom Branden was soon giving private lessons in Objectivism.

Ayn Rand (who was described by one journalist as combining “the shape of SpongeBob with the beauty of Nurse Ratched”) knew something was amiss, but it took Branden four years to confess. When he did so the results were explosive.

Declaring that their relationship was “sexual or it’s nothing”, Ayn Rand demanded he resume their affair. A Randian superhero, she maintained, would not abandon a Randian heroine because of such trivialities as advancing age. Branden must therefore be suffering from a serious character defect. When he fabricated a story that he was having a “sexual freeze”, she went into meltdown, shrieking: “You contemptible swine!” and worse.

In what became known as the “Objecti-schism”, in 1968 Branden was effectively kicked out of his own institute, while, in vengeful fury, Rand wrote an open letter in The Objectivist accusing him of “moral failures” and unspecified crimes against Objectivity. A week or so later, Barbara Branden, too, was excommunicated. Ayn Rand spent most of the rest of her days as a recluse, alienated from old friends, most of whom she had discarded for disobedience. She died of lung cancer in 1982. Her husband had predeceased her in 1979 after years of alcohol abuse.

The Brandens fled to California, where their marriage soon broke down. Nathaniel’s affair with Ayn Rand had been kept secret from all but those most closely involved, but in 1984 Barbara Branden wrote a memoir in which she revealed all. This was followed, two years later, by a less well-reviewed apologia by her former husband, Judgment Day: My Years With Ayn Rand, in which he observed that what Ayn Rand wanted was “a man whose esteem would reduce her to a sex object”.

In 1999 their affair was dramatised in an unintentionally comic television film, The Passion of Ayn Rand, with Helen Mirren as Rand and Eric Stoltz as Nathaniel. The scriptwriters had Mirren’s Rand, in a cod Russian accent, announcing she needs sex with Nathaniel at least twice a week with the words: “Lesser people could never accept it. But veee are not lesser people.”

In California, meanwhile, Branden began repackaging Rand’s ideas, shifting their focus from self-interest to self-help. He founded a new Institute of Biocentric Psychology, and wrote a book, The Psychology of Self-Esteem (1969).

Ayn Rand’s 1968 expulsion of Branden sent shock waves through the ranks of the faithful, many of whom had come to see him as the embodiment of a Randian superhero. It seemed that her cult might never recover. But it did, her visceral hatred of collectivism in all its forms inspiring the Right-wing “Tea Party” movement, whose protest placards often bear the legend “Atlas Shrugs”.

Nathan Blumenthal was born on April 9 1930, in Brampton, Ontario, and grew up in Toronto.

After his divorce from Barbara he married Patrecia Wynand. She died in a freak drowning accident in 1977 and the following year he married Estelle Devers, from whom he was also later divorced.

He is survived by his fourth wife, Laurie, whom he married in 2006.

Nathaniel Branden, born April 9 1930, died December 3 2014

Guardian

Jack Monroe. ‘Jack Monroe’s article will have shocked many readers and there’s just the outside chance that it might be a siren call to those who dismiss poverty, its cause and effect,’ writes Angus Macintosh. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Jack Monroe’s very personal testimony of her own earlier experiences of poverty (Poverty has left me unable to open my own front door, 10 December) is the most powerful, compelling and brave piece of writing I have ever read on poverty and its devastating impact on families. A visceral sense of shame and powerlessness sweep through her text, and reminds us that the contemporary view of poverty, as the responsibility of the individual, is not only pernicious, but damages the very fabric of society. Poverty is a collective responsibility, that we should all shoulder and work towards alleviating, especially as its causes lie far more in the practices of the rich and powerful than in those of the poor and powerless.
Professor Diane Reay
Faculty of education, University of Cambridge

• You see the face smiling from the heading, you read the recipes and, yes you try them. Great. Little do you know of the terror, anguish and heartache that underpins this outwardly positive and dynamic woman. Jack Monroe’s article will have shocked many readers and there’s just the outside chance that it might be a siren call to those who dismiss poverty, its cause and effect. Jack, you’re column will be read with a great deal more of affection by all of us.
Angus MacIntosh
Burley-in-Wharfedale, West Yorkshire

• “One of the big problems with politics today: instead of discussing the issues, the baying mobs on all sides are waiting for someone to say something imperfect” – Jack Monroe is spot on; debate is stifled, people are vilified, careers are ruined and we make no progress. Janet Suzman (Letters, 10 December) or Anne Jenkin slink off chastised and others are discouraged from entering the discussion. Every day you hear the weasel words of politicians and others unable to say anything honest, unable to say “we were wrong”, “we don’t know”, or “I can’t make absolute promises because circumstances change so we might need to change policy to reflect that”, because they know how negatively those words will be portrayed by the media. The media say they only reflect the views of an “outraged” public, but how much of that outrage actually exists and how much is invented, or certainly inflamed, by the media itself to increase circulation and profit, or to achieve a political agenda? Can an honest politician survive in politics today? I doubt it.
Gill Evans
Uckfield, East Sussex

Detainees in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area under the surveillence of US military police at Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Photograph: Shane McCoy/Getty

Ian Cobain notes (UK among allies fearing revelations over role in rendition programme, 9 December) that the nature of the involvement of the UK in the CIA‘s “war on terror” torture and rendition programme “remains unclear”. The resulting injustice is multiple. First, there are the victims of practices which were illegal and immoral, and which the US Senate has also found to have been “ineffective”. Where is their “closure”? Second, there are those in the UK who authorised and participated in these practices. The current position means that many of them are still in post, administering and in some cases legislating, and all the while untroubled by any requirement to account for their actions. Third, however, is the injustice done to those who opposed this civilisational collapse in the face of pressure from a US government in the grip of neoconservative hysteria.

Some officials in the US are known to have resisted the slide towards barbarism. One thinks of Alberto Mora, US navy general counsel, who warned William Haynes, counsel to Donald Rumsfeld’s defence department, that Rumsfeld’s own position was threatened if torture was adopted as an instrument of policy. Philippe Sands QC, in his book Torture Team, memorably records Mora as telling Haynes – lawyer to lawyer – to “protect your client” (p.168). Who were the Moras on this side of the Atlantic? They as much deserve to be exonerated as those who colluded deserve to be exposed.
Roger Hallam
London

• Hot on the heels of the US Senate report on abuses by the CIA, Brazil’s truth commission published its report into the abuses of the military regime that ruled the country between 1964-85 (Report, 10 December). Human Rights Day was deliberately chosen for the ceremony. There are also interesting contrasts. The Brazilian process was initiated, not by parliamentarians, but by the head of state, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and continued by his successor, President Dilma Rousseff, both victims of the military dictatorship, and Rousseff wept on receiving the report. The Brazilian report is available in full on the internet.

Brazilian transparency, perhaps defective in that an amnesty law for the moment prevents prosecution of alleged abusers, should still encourage those in Britain who campaign for full disclosure of British complicity in US abuses.
Francis McDonagh
London

• In the context of auto-da-fé, or the brutality of colonial powers such as the British and the French in the 1950s and 60s (the French favoured the use of a blowtorch applied to captive Algerian resistance fighters, as I recall), the torture of suspects by the CIA was frankly “torture-lite”, however disagreeable it might have been to those on whom it was inflicted.

Of much greater concern is the way in which the US administration dispensed with the rule of law and due process – individuals kidnapped and abused at the discretion of their captors, without any legal oversight. A continuing disgrace – compounded by Obama’s assurance to CIA personnel that those who “followed orders” had nothing to worry about – not an acceptable excuse for Nazi concentration camp guards at Nuremberg.

The US lost a few thousand civilians in the 9/11 attack – a drop in the bucket in the context of annual deaths in the US by homicide and automobile accidents – and the US government played right into the hands of the perpetrators, spending trillions in revenge, to no permanent effect and engendering a new generation implacably hostile to the US. At the time some US commentators asked, apparently sincerely “why do they hate us so?” without stopping to answer their question. All quite mindless behaviour.
Andy Smith
Kingston upon Thames, Surrey

• Surely this is now the time for Obama to use his authority as president, as he claims he will (Report, 10 December) and close Guantánamo as promised at his inauguration. Terrible tortures continue to be inflicted there on men, like our own British Shaker Aamer, who have been cleared of all charges and should be released immediately. The truth is now out and the evidence that Shaker and others can provide about their treatment should no longer be a barrier to their freedom.
Margaret Owen
London

• It’s great news that David Cameron has found his conscience again. In 2009 he said “It is vital that we get to the bottom of whether Britain has been complicit in torture”. In power, he set up the Gibson inquiry. A year ago, Gibson concluded there were 27 key questions which the government needed to answer. Maybe he could make a New Year resolution to start filling in the detail. We don’t need general condemnation; what’s required is some detailed answers to very particular questions. The Americans have done it. Now it’s our turn.
Paul Francis
Much Wenlock, Shropshire

• I’m glad that the weasel words of Jack Straw and David Miliband, on the subject of rendition and torture, will now come back to haunt them. And I’m glad Labour elected the right brother after all.
Tim Grollman
London

I write to express strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition to the views in your editorial on Hong Kong (2 December). First, Occupy Central is in no way “peaceful protest”. It is a farce that is against the purpose of democracy and jeopardises the rule of law. Months of blocking artery streets and putting government buildings under siege are neither democracy nor freedom. They are illegal activities that amount to a political trifle and disturb the social order. Most people in Hong Kong have a clear understanding about this. So does China’s central government and the government of Hong Kong.

Second, Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China after its return. Its affairs are solely China’s internal affairs. Britain has no sovereignty, no right of administration or supervision, and no moral obligation towards Hong Kong. By proceeding with political reform in accordance with the relevant decisions of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress on the election of Hong Kong chief executive in 2017 and the basic law, Hong Kong will, for the first time in history, witness election of the chief executive through one man one vote. That will be a historic step in Hong Kong’s democracy. The Chinese government firmly opposes interference in its domestic affairs by any foreign government, institution or individual. The House of Commons foreign affairs committee’s visit to Hong Kong (Report, 3 December) is an interference in China’s domestic affairs. China is firmly opposed to it and will never accept it.

Third, democracy is not a patent of the west. All countries have the right to choose the political system and development path suited to their national conditions. China is endeavouring to strengthen democracy and the rule of law. It is willing to listen to well-intentioned and constructive suggestions and proposals from all sides. To lecture China like a schoolmaster and with a sense of superiority is not acceptable. China is a staunch force for world peace and development, which now contributes to nearly 30% of the world economic growth and 50% to Asia’s economic growth. Its development will bring more opportunities to other countries. A peaceful, prosperous, stable and growing China will always be a positive force in the international community.
Miao Deyu
Spokesman of the Chinese embassy

• Mary Dejevsky (Opinion, 2 December) is wrong to swallow the Chinese line that what happens in Hong Kong is China’s internal affair in which Britain has no legitimate interest. The Sino-British joint declaration on the future of Hong Kong, under which Hong Kong was returned to China, is an international treaty registered at the UN. Hong Kong was returned to China against the wishes of its people and the obligations placed on China by the declaration were the reassurance intended to make the transfer acceptable. Britain has a moral duty as well as a legal right to speak out when those obligations are broken.

It is also untrue that Britain’s influence in Hong Kong died in 1997. It is precisely because of Britain’s continuing influence that the Chinese government, always paranoid about opposition, has stopped the British MPs from entering, just as it has repeatedly stopped former Tian An Men Square student leader Wang Dan, now based in the US. What happens to freedom in Hong Kong is important for the future of the world. China’s totalitarian system of economic development behind a massive firewall of censorship is not compatible with democratic values, but is gaining worldwide support, from Sri Lanka to Ethiopia to Hungary.

The battle of ideas between the two systems is being fought out in Hong Kong. That is why the fight of the Hong Kong democrats is our fight too.
Paul Harris
Founding chairman, Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor

Your article was correct to point out that, while Luxembourg has produced some of the most striking cases, tax avoidance is a Europe-wide problem (Skype and Disney revealed among tax scandal firms, 10 December). In reality, similar tax rulings have been applied in 22 of 28 EU member states, and lib dem MEPs from across Europe are pushing the European commission to disclose the extent of these. Last week, despite some reluctance from my conservative and socialist colleagues, I secured an agreement for two reports to be produced by the European parliament; an inquiry report to examine the fiscal practices of member states and a legislative report to table a concrete proposal to the commission to end tax evasion and tax avoidance. One solution could be to propose a European convergence code based on a common consolidated corporate tax base. I hope in the coming weeks and months we can work quickly to find a way forward. But let’s be clear, we will only deal with this problem by securing a truly European solution to what is a Europe-wide problem.
Guy Verhofstadt MEP
President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe

• UK politicians take note. Manager voters told the Chartered Management Institute this week that they want parties’ election manifestos to include promises to close loopholes used by businesses to avoid tax on UK activities. With a score of 79% net support, this was one of three top policies the electorate would back. The findings, from CMI’s annual survey of more than 1,200 managers – the Future Forecast report – reveal that our Westminster elite are missing the mark. There’s a real need for policy-makers to refocus on productivity. That means moving on from a debate that has been dominated by the EU and immigration and looking more closely at other thorny issues like fairness and transparency when it comes to business taxes and management pay. This is a wake-up call not just for Luxembourg but leaders in London too.
Petra Wilton
Director of policy, Chartered Management Institute

 

The idea that poor people cannot cook (Report, 9 December) may well be patronising, but it highlights another pressing matter. The poor have no voice, only representation by people who have not experienced or may have become removed from their reality, however well-meaning they may intend to be. It would be refreshing to hear from badly paid zero-hour workers trying to hold down a job while supporting a family or elderly parents.
Dr Paul Clements
London

• Some Tory wag suggested of the Lord Rennard affair that, “only the Lib Dems could have a sex scandal in which no one actually has sex”. Following Roger Bird’s claim (Ukip suspends senior official, 9 December) that he and Natasha Bolter had an affair, and her denial of such, it seems that only Ukip can have a sex scandal in which no one knows whether they had sex.
Bob Jenkins
London

• Re Nigel Mills playing Candy Crush (Report, 9 December): would the best solution just be to ban politicians called Nigel?
Marian Nyman
Whitstable, Kent

• Reading Notebook (Good luck stealing an Anselm Kiefer, 9 December), I recalled a buyer for a group of grand hotels who was asked his main criteria in selecting paintings for the guest bedrooms. “Usually I look for works that are larger than the average suitcase and always larger than the normal overnight case,” came the reply.
Brian Baxter
Bournemouth

• Following the IOC proposals on easing the complexities of the Olympics bidding process (Sport, 9 December), surely a simpler solution would be to select prospective hosts, for the Olympics and the football World Cup, by lottery. Not only would this be cheaper, but would end all suspicion of corruption at a stroke. No amount of bribes or wining and dining could influence the outcome. Watching a worldwide televised draw would be a bit of global fun as well.
Guy Stoate
St Dogmaels, Pembrokeshire

• Spotted on 7 December in a west Sussex garden: a lively red admiral butterfly. Is this a first? Or a last?
Emma Dally
London

Times

Meal-times offer a chance to ‘chew over’ the problems of the day. We lose them at our peril

Sir, Circuit judges are to lose their lunches (report and leading article, Dec 8, and letters, Dec 9 & 10). Is this a reasonable economy affecting an affluent section of the community, or a sign of the terminal decline of interest in wellbeing at work? In our hospitals, genuine meal breaks for staff are a lost cause; compulsory meetings at meal-times are accompanied by water only, not food; and junior medical staff on call at nights and weekends are fed via soulless vending machines in isolated corridors.

Mealtime interactions in the workplace between those who cook, serve and eat enable the sharing of knowledge and burdens, and can contribute to good health and good work. We have an epidemic of workplace stress and absenteeism in the UK; it will be interesting to see how the latest economies in the courts service are reflected in future measures of workplace health and wellbeing.

Dr Anne De Bono

Cropston, Leics

Sir, The Lord Chancellor should rethink the decision to abolish the judicial dining room. After all, the jurors, witnesses, lawyers, police and even defendants need a dining facility, so why not just one small room for the judges?

Judging is a lonely job, and judges need somewhere to “chew over” the problems of the day with colleagues.

His Honour Barrington Black

London NW3

 

Matthew Parris is wrong about the truce of 1914 — ordinary soldiers used it to reaffirm their humanity

Sir, Matthew Parris’s criticism of the Christmas truce iof 1914 rather misses the point (My Week, Dec 10). Ordinary soldiers took an initiative to affirm that enemy troops were human beings like themselves, and not the blood-crazed brutes commonly portrayed.

Curiously, too, Parris finds it “little short of sick-making” that two opponents, both sure they are right, should seek support from the same person. Hardly unusual or disgusting. True, many chaplains, as he suggests, believed the war propaganda. But while politicians gave no heed to the Pope’s steady exhortations to negotiate for peace, most chaplains were sustaining the living, burying the dead — and praying for peace.

Tom McIntyre

Frome, Somerset

American comedians may live longer, but one British comic has proved that laughter is the best medicine

Sir, One British comedy veteran, at least, can testify to the medicinal qualities of laughter (letter, Dec 10). Despite a heart attack last year, Freddie “Parrotface” Davies (77) was wowing them on stage at Cromer a mere matter of hours after having a second stent fitted.

Anthony Teague

London N9

How long before we hear demands for the bluestones of Stonehenge to be returned to Wales?

Sir, Amid the growing calls for the repatriation of objects removed from one country and displayed in another (letters, Dec 10), how long will it be before we hear demands that the bluestones currently forming part of Stonehenge be returned to the Preseli hills of Wales whence they came?

David Wilson

Bridell, Pembrokeshire

We meet more medical schools, with more places, rather than to play with entry criteria for aspirant doctors

Sir, Your report “Half of all schools sent no pupils to do medicine” (Dec 10) bemoans the lack of access to medical schools by candidates from less privileged backgrounds. Less demanding A-level grades are suggested as a means of allowing a wider range of candidates to compete.

Where equality of opportunity trumps all other considerations, this approach obviously appeals. But taken in isolation, it would certainly make the task of student selection an even more ferociously difficult business than it is already. Whether, five or more years down the line, patients would be served by a more efficient, more able, more empathic generation of doctors than today is questionable.

There is ample evidence that there are many more suitably qualified aspirant medical students, from all backgrounds, than there are medical school places for them. Equally, there is plenty of evidence of a shortage of doctors in the NHS. The overriding need now is not to play with entry criteria but to create more medical schools with more places, ultimately producing more doctors. If economics dictate that they be paid less than at present, then so be it.

John Rose

(retired medical director)

Boston Spa, W Yorks

KIng John signs Magna Carta in 1215 Photo: Alamy

6:57AM GMT 10 Dec 2014

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SIR – Today, as the world marks the 66th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – that “Magna Carta for all humanity” – we call on those in positions of power to reflect on the meaningful, often quiet, ways that human rights make a difference to people in their everyday lives.

From ensuring protection for those receiving care services to equality for same-sex couples, our Human Rights Act is helping to deliver the promise of the UDHR in Britain; the promise that each person’s equal dignity and worth is respected.

The legacy of Magna Carta – which has its 800th anniversary in June – is that the exercise of political power cannot be unrestrained: it must follow the law.

We hope that 2015 will be the year that those in power stand with us to respect human rights laws.

Stephen Bowen
Director, British Institute of Human Rights
Gary Fitzgerald
Chief Executive, Action on Elder Abuse
Paul Breckell
Chief Executive, Action on Hearing Loss
Steve Johnson
Chief Executive, Advice UK
Richard Williams
Chairman, Age Alliance Wales
Jeff Hawkins
Chairman, Board of Directors, Age Connects Wales
Brian Sloan
Chief Executive, Age Scotland
Caroline Abrahams
Charity Director, Age UK
Samantha Mauger
Chief Executive, Age UK London
Matthew Evans
Director, AIRE Centre
Joe Powell
Director, All Wales People First
Henry Simmons
Chief Executive, Alzheimer Scotland
Kate Allen
Director, Amnesty International UK
Federico Moscogiuri
Chief Executive Officer, ARMA
Sally Gibson
Artistic Director, Artspace Cinderford
Shaminder Ubhi
Director, Ashiana Network
Wayne Myslik
Chief Executive, Asylum Aid
Ewan Roberts
Manager, Asylum Link Merseyside
Donna Covey
Director, AVA (Against Violence and Abuse)
Abdul Khan
Chief Executive Officer, BECON
Priscilla Nkwenti
Chief Executive, BHA for Equality
Ann Chivers
Chief Executive, BILD (British Institute of Learning Disabilities)
Elizabeth Prochaska
Co-Chair, Birthrights
Asif Afridi
Deputy Chief Executive Officer, BRAP
Tom Hore
Director, Bristol Mind
Bridget Robb
Chief Executive Officer, British Association of Social Workers
Andrew Copson
Chief Executive, British Humanist Association
Dr Mark Porter
Chair of Council, British Medical Association
Helena Herklots
Chief Executive, Carers UK
Judith Wester
Director, CEDAR CIC
Prof Katja Ziegler
Director, Centre for European Law and Internationalism
Paola Uccellari
Director, Children’s Rights Alliance for England
Jim Bowen
Director, Clynfyw Carefarm
Jatin Haria
Executive Director, Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights
Annemarie Monaghan and Lynn G Blair
Directors, Community Brokerage Network
Liz Sayce
Chief Executive Officer, Disability Rights UK
Barbara Cohen
Chair, Discrimination Law Association
Leigh Daynes
Chief Executive Officer, Doctors of the World
Carol Boys
Chief Executive, Down’s Syndrome Association
Shona Laidlaw
Manager, Dundee Independent Advocacy Support
Bharti Patel
Chief Executive Officer, ECPAT UK
Arvinda Gohil
Chief Executive, Emmaus UK
Sarah Green
Acting Director, End Violence Against Women (EVAW)
Jo Glanville
Director, English PEN
Amanda Ariss
Chief Executive, Equality and Diversity Forum
Jago Russell
Chief Executive, Fair Trials International
Steve Miller
Senior Consultant, Faith Based Regeneration Network UK
Mustafa Field
Director, Faiths Forum for London
Cathy Ashley
Chief Executive, Family Rights Group
Julia Bleet
Chair, Free Cakes for Kids Hackney
Jonathan Hyams and Andrew Gough
Co-Directors, FRESh
Chris Whitwell
Director, Friends, Families and Travellers
Bernard Reed
Trustee, Gender Identity Research & Education Society (GIRES)
Sam Smethers
Chief Executive, Grandparents Plus
Bella Kosamala
Director, Greenwich Migrant Hub
Reverend Mike Firbank
Vicar for Church Gresley, Gresley Church
Helen Hibberd
Centre Manager, Hackney Migrant Centre
Councillor Rob Polhill
Leader of Halton Borough Council, Halton Borough Council
Sandie Smith
Chief Executive Officer, Healthwatch Cambridgeshire
Emma Craig
Chair, Healthwatch Hackney
Rosie Newbigging
Chief Executive Officer, Healthwatch Northamptonshire
Cornelius Katona
Medical Director, Helen Bamber
Damien Short
Director, Human Rights Consortium, University of London
Alison Gerry
Chair, Human Rights Lawyers Association
David Mepham
UK Director, Human Rights Watch
Simon Hancock
Board Member Equality Champion, Hywel Dda University Health Board
Adrian Berry
Chair, Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association
Imran Khan
Partner, Imran Khan and Partners
Helen Shaw and Deborah Coles
Co-Directors, INQUEST
Sara Khan and Kalsoom Bashir
Co-Directors, Inspire
Jo Baker
Chief Executive, International Service
Habib Rahman
Chief Executive, JCWI
Shauneen Lambe
Director, Just for Kids Law
Ratna Lachman
Director, JUST West Yorkshire
Tatiana Garavito
Director, Latin American Women’s Rights Service
Julie Bishop
Director, Law Centres Network
Andrew Caplen
President, Law Society
Steve Hynes
Director, Legal Action Group (LAG)
Jenny Beck and Nicola Mackintosh
Co-Chairs, Legal Aid Practitioners Group
Paul Fitzgerald
Interim Chief Executive Officer, Leicester LGBT Centre
Sean Humber
Head of Human Rights Department, Leigh Day
Paul Martin
Chief Executive, Lesbian and Gay Foundation
Jenny Rowlands
Chief Executive, Lewes District Council
Paul Roberts
Chief Executive Officer, LGBT Consortium
Shami Chakrabarti
Director, Liberty
Anna Gaughan
Chief Executive, Life Story Network
Eithne Rynne
Chief Executive, London Voluntary Service Council
Phillip Watson
Chief Executive, Manor Gardens Welfare Trust
Paula Twigg
Director, Mary Ward Legal Centre
Dan Squires
Head of Human Rights Department, Matrix Chambers
Emma Mlotshwa
Coordinator, Medical Justice
Zrinka Bralo
Executive Director, Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum
Don Flynn
Director, Migrants Rights Network
Paul Farmer
Chief Executive Officer, Mind
Deborah Gold
Chief Executive, NAT (National Aids Trust)
Annette Lawson
Chair, National Alliance of Women’s Organisations (NAWO)
Des Kelly
Executive Director, National Care Forum
Rob Greig
Chief Executive, National Development Team for Inclusion
Jeremy Taylor
Chief Executive, National Voices
Gabby Briner
Chief Executive Officer, Network for Change
Julia Lyford
Chair, North East Equalities Network
Colin Devine
Coordinator, North West Community Network
Anjona Roy
Chief Executive, Northamptonshire Rights & Equality Council
Patrick Yu
Executive Director, Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities
Sarah Yiannollou
Managing Director, NSUN
Kath Parson
Chief Executive, Older People’s Advocacy Alliance
Karen Chandler
Coordinator, Pembrokeshire People First
Sally Daghlian
Chief Executive, Praxis
Lu Thomas
Chair, Pride Cymru
Juliet Lyon
Director, Prison Reform Trust
Ross Diamond
Chief Officer, Redbridge Council for Voluntary Services
Carla Ferstman
Director, Redress
Rita Chadha
Chief Executive Officer, Refugee & Migrant Forum of East London
Maurice Wren
Chief Executive, Refugee Council
Shauna Leven
Director, Rene Cassin
Clare Algar
Executive Director, Reprieve
Emma Scott
Director, Rights of Women
Michele Lamb
Head of Department of Social Science, Roehampton University
Andy Gregg
Chief Executive, ROTA (Race on the Agenda)
Professor Cathy Warwick
Chief Executive Officer, Royal College of Midwives
Dr Peter Carter
Chief Executive & General Secretary, Royal College of Nursing
Dr Omar Khan
Director, Runnymede Trust
Barbara Natasegra
Chief Executive, Safer Wales
Marjorie Wallace
Chief Executive, SANE
Robert Sutherland
Convener, SCOLAG
Richard Hawkes
Chief Executive, Scope
Tam Baillie
Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People
Jane Gordon
Co-Founder, Sisters for Change
Sharon Allen
Chief Executive Officer, Skills for Care
Cath Evans
Chief Executive Officer, Slater & Gordon (UK) LLP
Daisy Bogg
Co-Chair, Social Perspective Network
Briget Robb
General Secretary, Social Workers Union
Hannana Siddiqui
Coordinator, Southall Black Sisters
Jan Gavin
Chief Executive, Southern Advocacy Services
Gil Baldwin
Chief Executive Officer , St Andrew’s Healthcare
Joy Hibbins
Director, Suicide Crisis
Ngoyi Barthelemy Malumba
Managing Director, Tameside Human Rights Watch
Dr Rosemary Gillespie
Chief Executive, Terrence Higgins Trust
Dr Dimitrina Petrova
Executive Director, The Equal Rights Trust
Sarah Rochira
The Older People’s Commissioner for Wales
Jon Barrick
Chief Executive Officer, The Stroke Association
Juliet Harris
Director, Together Scotland
Penelope Gibbs
Director, Transform Justice
Martin Coyle
Director, True Voice
Frances O’Grady
General Secretary, TUC
Bridget Warr
Chief Executive Officer, UK Homecare Association
Dave Prentis
General Secretary, UNISON
Diana Holland
Assistant General Secretary, Unite
Natalie Samarasinghe
Executive Director, United Nations Association – UK
Alexandra Runswick
Director, Unlock Democracy
Mike Sherriff
Chief Executive, Voluntary Action Islington
Phil Jarrold
Chief Executive, Wales Council for Voluntary Action
Steve Clark
Managing Director, Welsh Tenants
Eleri Butler
Chief Executive, Welsh Women’s Aid
Jonathon Toye
Co-ordinator, West Norfolk Disability Information Service
Joyce Kallevik
Director, Wish
Rachel Halford
Director, Women in Prison
Vivienne Hayes
Chief Executive Officer, Women’s Resource Centre
Polly Neate
Chief Executive Officer, Women’s Aid
Annie Campbell
Director, Women’s Aid Federation Northern Ireland
Sharon Baxter
Trustee and Chair of the Advocacy Committee, Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance
Harkirit Bopari
Coordinator, York City of Human Rights
Tom Doyle
Chief Executive, Yorkshire MESMAC Group of Services

 

A cause for protest? The TUC demonstrates against the Government’s austerity measures Photo: Getty Images

7:00AM GMT 10 Dec 2014

Comments

SIR – Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, criticises his Coalition partners for wanting to continue with austerity. If austerity means the state and its people living within their means, avoiding excessive debt and encouraging individuals to save for their next holiday rather than just paying for it on credit, then I hope it will continue.

To get the British economy back to a stable position we need a much longer period of austerity, not just the length of one Parliament. I hope the next government realises this, even if Mr Alexander doesn’t.

Geoff Blackman
Mullion, Cornwall

SIR – You state (“Battle lines drawn over the size of the state”, Leading article, December 6) that Australia tends to invest more in infrastructure than Britain does. It must be noted, however, that 18.9 per cent of British taxes are devoted to the NHS, whereas health provision in Australia is obtained through personal insurance schemes.

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In Australia, one is even required to cover the cost of using an ambulance in an emergency. The country is also very careful not to lavish welfare payments on the undeserving. Perhaps we could learn from this.

Carl Graham
Bishop’s Waltham, Hampshire

SIR – You highlight “the generosity of Britain’s welfare system”. Tax credits, introduced by Gordon Brown, have resulted in taxpayers subsidising low wages, “which is good for employers looking for cheap labour and immigrants whose incomes are topped up”, but not so good for the rest of us.

This allows British firms to pay subsistence wages and compete successfully against Continental firms which have to pay better. If this isn’t unfair competition, what is?

Even as far back as the 19th century, something called the Speenhamland System topped up low wages, which led employers to lower them again and again.

Before our EU partners get around to working out this nitty-gritty beneath that euphemistic banner of “flexibility”, perhaps we could aim for a trade-off between cuts in benefits to those in work and a significantly improved minimum wage.

Charles Sangster
Manchester

SIR – The best indication of the health of the economy is GDP per head of population. If job losses and immigration exceed the number of jobs created, the overall result is negative. Falling unemployment is only good news if those in work are in full-time jobs.

The real problem is not money; it is the social structure of our country and the way it is managed.

Barrie Skelcher
Leiston, Suffolk

Saving the police force

^{Should the police merge into a single force? (Alamy)}

SIR – Neil Rhodes, the head of Lincolnshire police, has told the Home Secretary that current funding arrangements will render his force unsustainable.

There is, however, one big saving that the police and the Home Office have not yet made, and that is to merge into a single force. At present, England and Wales have 43 local forces and three more non-Home Office forces, each with its own chief constable, headquarters, training centre, personnel department, IT department and control rooms. The total annual cost of all these police forces is around £10 billion. If just 5 per cent could be saved by merging them all, sharing assets and eliminating duplication, then this would be £500 million, or the cost of preserving 10,000 front-line police posts.

Merging 46 independent forces into one national force would not be simple, but a similar merge in Scotland in 2013 secured a considerable budget reduction without the loss of a single police officer post.

Stephen Love
Chief Constable, MoD Police 2005-2013
Ryde, Isle of Wight

Clean cars

SIR – It would be an inexcusable waste of public money to subsidise the scrapping of almost-new diesel cars, on the grounds that they have been found to pollute the atmosphere far more seriously than previously realised.

Nearly all diesel models have petrol equivalents and could be converted to use the cleaner fuel with a new cylinder head, injection equipment and the addition of electronic ignition.

David Burton
Wellington, Shropshire

Phones on the table

SIR – I was surprised and shocked to read your report of an MP playing Candy Crush during a Work and Pensions Committee meeting.

As a manager in the Home Office and later the Ministry of Justice, I chaired regular meetings with service managers. With the rise in the use of mobile devices, I eventually introduced a policy of all such items being switched off and deposited on a table just inside the meeting-room door.

This was readily accepted by all present and ensured that there were no distractions. Commons committees could introduce a similar policy.

David Pick
Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire

Glorious bustards

SIR – Recently our local radio station broadcast an item about the nomination of a bird to represent Great Britain, as the eagle does the United States.

My immediate thought was the great bustard. The initials – GB – would be easy for the public to recall.

I would welcome other readers’ suggestions for an alternative.

Mike Elliott
Dore, Sheffield

O Christmas tree

SIR – As a family of limited acting ability, we were thrilled a few years ago when my daughter was cast in the role of “Tree” in her school Christmas play.

I duly noted the rehearsal schedule, requiring “Trees 1-6” to be at school one Sunday morning. “No, that doesn’t include me,” she said. “I’m not a numbered tree.”

Jo Marchington
Ashtead, Surrey

Bahrain base

SIR – I find it extraordinary that experts believe the best place to site a British naval presence in the Middle East is Bahrain. Exposing the Royal Navy’s new destroyers and aircraft carriers to the risk of the Strait of Hormuz being blocked seems a schoolboy error.

Charles Hamill-Stewart
Amport, Hampshire

SIR – Britain already has a military presence east of Suez. RAF Akrotiri is at 32 degrees, 59 mins, 16 secs east, whereas Suez city is at 32 degrees, 33 mins east, a difference of more than 26 minutes of arc.

Andrew McEwen
Poole, Dorset

Imported reindeer must be handled with care

^{Laplanders in northernmost Sweden prepare to leave for the winter fair (National Geographic/Getty Images )}

SIR – I read with sadness the sorry tale of Tinsel, the albino reindeer. The indiscriminate practice of importing reindeer from Scandinavia to be sold on to unsuitable places across Britain continues unabated.

Since 2005 more than 1,100 have been imported into Britain to feed the demand for captive reindeer.

Reindeer do not thrive in permanent captivity. Many hundreds have died.

I work at the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre, which is home to Britain’s only wild reindeer herd. Animal rights groups have been targeting reindeer used in Christmas appearances this year. They would do better to address the broader welfare issues of these imported reindeer.

Tilly Smith
Aviemore, Inverness-shire

Feeding the hungry is not always the top priority

SIR – Some people in Britain go hungry as a result of government policy.

Leicestershire County Council has approved the building of a plant to take 3,000 tons of food per year, much of it still in its wrappings, from the stores of just one supermarket chain in the county – not to give to the needy but to process into electricity.

This spectacularly inefficient process is made profitable because government policy pays the plant more than double the value of the electricity it produces in subsidies.

Dr Philip Sullivan
Frolesworth, Leicestershire

SIR – Yesterday the M25 was closed due to an incident. Local councils have limits on when lorries may approach supermarkets and have forced delivery bays to give time-slots to the lorries. All the lorries stationary on motorways missed their slots and were therefore turned back, with all perishable food on board sent to landfill.

This all adds to the shelf price that causes food poverty.

Sue Doughty
Reading, Berkshire

SIR – The launch of the Feeding Britain report confirms what many of us have known for some time. The huge rise in the usage of food banks demands urgent action.

Time and again at Turn2us we hear from parents forced to forgo eating properly to feed their children. These families have no choice but to approach food banks for help or be overwhelmed by debt as they try to support themselves.

The report also highlights families in crisis facing benefit delays of up to 13 weeks, which further compounds the problem. It is more important than ever that people can receive financial support and advice.

Simon Hopkins
Chief Executive, Turn2us
London W6

In beer veritas

SIR – You list Doom Bar as David Cameron’s choice of pint. Opinion in my local suggests that Doom Bar is the preferred option for lager aficionados who fancy themselves as real ale drinkers.

Not too far away from Doom Bar’s source in Rock, Cornwall, there is an IPA brewed in St Austell. It is known as Proper Job. Mr Cameron should try this – it might provide him with the inspiration he needs.

Mike Littleton
Glastonbury, Somerset

Sir, – As a parent of a person with an intellectual disability, last night’s Prime Time programme sent shivers down my spine. As a parent you get accustomed to the two sides of the intellectual disability world. On the one hand you can meet and be moved by professionals who show incredible kindness and care, while on the other you come face to face with those whose only concern is the exertion of power, their own career advancement and control. I am keenly aware that parents have very little say or choice as to what service their sons or daughters can avail of, and to some degree it is a total act of faith. This imbalance of “power” is perhaps at the core of the abusive behaviour we witnessed in this programme.

The staff who featured in this programme have not only degraded the nation but they have cast suspicion on all those good professionals dedicated to caring for and protecting people with an intellectual disability. It is clear that policies and training are not enough to ensure the welfare of those in day and residential care. All staff, from senior managers to the most junior, have a duty of care, and the culture of turning a blind eye must not be tolerated.

In addition, I suggest that senior managers turn off their computers, stop demanding meaningless reports, get out of their plush offices and visit the centres and residential units. – Yours, etc,

TONY MURRAY,

Fairview,

Dublin 3.

Sir, – The scandal of the abuse of the intellectually disabled patients within Áras Attracta is shocking but it also demands answers to questions, such as what standards were followed in the selection, training, and supervision of the staff that were assigned to work with this vulnerable group. There can be no excuses for those workers who abused patients or did not intervene to stop the abuse, and one can only wonder why these workers felt there would be no sanction regarding their behaviour.

What is of deep concern is the failure of our statutory regulators to ensure that care plans on file are actually implemented and the failure of senior managers to recruit the right type of person to show leadership in creating the proper culture of person-centred care that all staff can be proud of. – Yours, etc,

FRANK BROWNE,

Templeogue, Dublin 16.

Sir, – Following on from the Primetime revelations on practices in Áras Attracta, there are a number of things that we can expect, apart from the customary hand-wringing already on display. These will be the promises of change, the now par for the course independent review or inquiry and lesser heads to roll.

What we can also expect is that nothing will really change and it is likely that the situation in residential homes may actually decline even further. This may sound pessimistic but it may be true.

First, we have been here before. There have been exposés and reviews conducted on similar places in the past, prompting the question of how many times can it happen before it’s actually fixed.

Second, the vision of the HSE is in fact to have only one large service provider for each county in Ireland, dispensing with the smaller and often more person-centred local organisations. This might seem like economic sense but there is not a shred of evidence it will result in better services for the most vulnerable in society, which is what people with intellectual disabilities simply are. Big organisations typically become big institutions and all the ills of big institutions follow suit. Rhetoric will not escape that likelihood, and experience seems to have taught us little in this regard.

Third, the widely accepted goal of services is to have people with intellectual disabilities living in

normal homes, in normal places, doing normal things. However, the legislation underpinning services states that these homes must de facto reach the standard of nursing homes in many respects. Nursing homes are not ordinary homes, as much as we may wish to think so, and one consequence will likely be the creation of a small number of purpose-built homes. To make these economically viable and to achieve “value for money”, they will probably have to cater for a greater number of residents under one roof and will seriously hamper an individual’s personal choice over where to live and how to live, owing to the restrictions service providers now have to adhere to. Higher numbers of residents living together means less individualisation of service. There’s a wealth of research evidence to support this but it’s an inconvenient truth.

Fourth, and perhaps more worryingly, is the fact that funding for service providers has been cut year on year, and as night follows day it is inevitable that it truly becomes a struggle to deliver a genuine personalised service in a reality of reduced staffing, no training budgets, temporary contracts for staff, etc. Real quality is not cheap. It costs.

Fifth, and finally, we can expect a denial of all the above as denial enables the status quo to trundle along bar the odd earthquake like Áras Attracta, until the inevitable next time occurs. – Yours, etc,

IAN GREY,

Adjunct Associate Professor

of Clinical Psychology

and Intellectual Disabilities,

Trinity College Dublin.

Sir, – The Prime Time documentary “Inside Bungalow 3” has once again demonstrated the plight of people with intellectual disabilities in Ireland. It has also shone a light on the inherent inequity of a system that has been historically grounded in the congregation and marginalisation of people who are perceived to be different.

As expert consultant to the documentary, I must say that the revelations of what was happening, whilst terribly upsetting and wholly inexcusable, are of no great surprise, as I and others have been highlighting the presence of oppression in such services for many years. Indeed, it confirms suspicions that, despite apparently positive changes to services (non-institutionalised clothes, group homes, increased choice), there has not been a change in the fundamental societal inequity that led to these people being excluded from the mainstream of Irish life in the first place.

The instances shown in the programme point to a continuation of the marginalisation and exclusion of such people by society. Such exclusion is dehumanising, and exposes them to subhuman conditions based on control and subjugation. They are, however, only the tip of an iceberg as the culture of control is arguably inherent in the current service model and, as Minister of State for Disability Kathleen Lynch noted, such situations cannot be ruled out elsewhere in the service system.

So, where to from here? It is clear that the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) inspection regime could not have exposed what was happening in Áras Attracta. Many such inspections can, by their nature, be anticipated or, if unannounced, will only reveal what happens in front of the inspectors. The idea of formalising the use of “undercover” staff and hidden cameras has been mooted but may be fraught with legal and privacy concerns.

I have been engaged in intellectual disability nursing and social care education for many years and the vast majority of people who come into such programmes are value-based individuals who are driven by a spirit of altruism. This spirit can, however, be dulled during placement, by the experience of controlling service cultures in which the students learn to “keep their heads down and survive”. Once this pattern becomes internalised in the student, it becomes difficult to break free from. It is imperative that higher education institutes providing programmes for service staff address this issue forthwith and ensure that emerging staff are equipped with the resilience and skills to maintain quality standards of service provision. It is also vital that the HSE and other service agencies implement proper governance systems that support such staff to blow the whistle safely.

Finally, there must be truly independent advocates available to each person with intellectual disability whose role is clearly set down in law.

As Irish people, we are required to speak out too. We must recognise that we have allowed the values inherent in our Constitution to become irrelevant to the lives of many people with intellectual disabilities, and we have failed to stand up alongside those people who were perceived to be different to the rest of us. What type of society do we have when we can ignore the fact that people with intellectual disabilities routinely have their human rights removed? What type of people are we when we do not scream “Stop” in the face of the verbal, physical, societal and/or situational abuse of a group of citizens because they are “different” from the rest of us? Something is fundamentally wrong and needs to change now. – Yours, etc,

Dr FINTAN SHEERIN,

Lecturer in Intellectual

Disability Nursing,

Trinity College Dublin.

 

Sir, – Any objective reader of your extensive coverage of the CIA torture report (“CIA lied about ‘brutal’ interrogations that amounted to torture, says report”, Front Page, December 10th) could only conclude that our various governments down through the years have been little more than bag carriers for our dear duplicitous old Uncle Sam and just as two-faced. Utterly shameful. – Yours, etc,

GEAROID KILGALLEN,

Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.

Sir, – Mike Scott (December 9th) wonders what would come after the Government signed away sovereignty over cyberspace – “What next, our airspace?” I am sorry to have to inform him that this has long gone. With the permission of the Government but without any agreement from the Irish people (in fact with their strong disagreement), Shannon Airport has been used by the US as a staging post for whatever warfare and renditions it wishes to engage in, including the illegal and vastly counterproductive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And no authorities (apart from some ordinary citizens and one or two TDs) try to check what is in the aircraft. – Yours, etc,

ROB FAIRMICHAEL,

Belfast.

Sir, – Timely indeed that Neil Briscoe (“Diesel vs petrol”, Motors, December 10th) should assess the pros and cons of the trend in this country towards diesel vehicles, promoted by vehicle registration and motor tax. The previous day, the UK environmental audit committee suggested a scrappage scheme for diesel vehicles to cut air pollution. Diesel vehicles produce higher emissions of a range of air pollutants, including fine particulate matter (PM2.5).

A recent European Environment Agency report estimated that PM2.5 was responsible for 1,229 deaths in Ireland. The current incentives for diesel vehicles seems to be based solely on CO2 emissions, and only “tailpipe” emissions at that – on a wider lifecycle assessment, the CO2 benefits of diesel versus petrol vehicles may be more marginal. We need to be careful not to create a national air pollution problem while seeking to solve a global climate one. – Yours, etc,

JOHN O’GRADY,

Dublin 20.

Sir, – The savaging of the O’Brien Press funding by the Arts Council is evidence that the key creative role of publishers is simply not understood.

Despite hyping of the self-publishing route, it remains generally the case that authors’ work can no more be financed, curated and widely disseminated without publishers than plays can be produced without theatres. A flourishing Irish publishing industry is essential if Irish culture – in the widest sense – is to be properly represented and articulated.

A good and successful publisher, such as O’Brien Press, fosters and nurtures local writing talent; the key remains the on-the-ground contacts, meetings, discriminations, and deep knowledge of the Irish context that only a local industry can supply. Until this essential role is adequately supported, the Irish publishing industry, which has made such strides since its rebirth in the 1970s, will sink once again to the situation lamented by Sean O’Faolain: “It is to a frightening degree the English public which decides both what Ireland should read and write . . . how can you be independent when your country’s mind is dominated from outside?”

For this reason, the 84 per cent cut to the O’Brien Press should be reversed and annual funding restored. – Yours, etc,

TONY FARMAR,

President,

Clé – The Irish Book

Publishers’ Association,

Ranelagh, Dublin 6.

Sir, – If the wind sector is of such inestimable benefit to the Irish economy, why has my PSO (public service obligation) levy been increased this October by almost 50 per cent? This PSO levy was imposed on all consumers to subsidise wind farms, peat power stations and Aughinish and Tynagh. The bizarre design of the PSO means that as gas prices fall internationally, the subsidy to these entities is increased. The hard-pressed electricity consumers in Ireland cannot benefit from lower energy prices while this subsidy exists. – Yours, etc,

ALAN McCARTHY,

Dublin 6.

Sir, – Lucille Redmond’s An Irishwoman’s Diary (December 9th) rightly draws attention to the remarkable level of anti-Irish prejudice implicit in the Kipling and Fletcher School History of England (1911). It did not go unnoticed at the time. The Irish historian Alice Stopford Green wrote an angry letter to the Westminster Gazette on November 9th, 1911, censuring the “contempt and calumny” of the authors and wondering if such a view expressed the imperial mind of England. Through Green’s influence the matter was raised in the House of Commons. On November 23rd, Cathcart Wason MP addressed a question to the chief secretary, Augustine Birrell, on whether the book was available in national schools in Ireland. The minister assured the house that the offending work was not in common use in Ireland, even if it was widely distributed in the English school system. – Yours, etc,

ANGUS MITCHELL,

Limerick.

Sir, – It is great to see the coverage of research on meditation in the Science pages of The Irish Times (William Reville, “Let’s be mindful about the benefits of meditation”, December 4th).

However, as a teacher of transcendental meditation for the past 35 years, I have to disagree with Dr Reville’s final statement that a system of values is needed to get the most out of meditation.

In my experience, stress distorts people’s feelings and thought patterns. It prevents them living according to their most cherished values. One of the highlights of my profession is to see people becoming a truer, more rounded version of themselves as their lives become freer from stress. – Yours, etc,

JOHN BURNS,

Blackrock, Co Dublin.

Homeless crisis Sir, – Calling for the return of bedsits to alleviate the homeless crisis is like calling for the return of workhouses to ease unemployment (“Tánaiste wants Dublin bedsit ban reviewed”, December 3rd). I would wager that most of the “bring back the bedsit” merchants have never actually lived in one. – Yours, etc,

BRIAN AHERN,

Clonsilla,

Dublin 15.

The price of water A chara, – Flood warnings on the day of the water protests. You couldn’t make it up. – Is mise,

Rev PATRICK G BURKE,

Castlecomer,

Co Kilkenny.

Anatomy of a car crash Sir, – Congratulations on publishing Peter Murtagh’s excellent series of articles “Anatomy of a Car Crash”. By exposing the hidden costs and sorrows associated with such tragedies, I hope it will make more people realise that “road safety” is not just a meaningless phrase to be ignored at will. – Yours, etc,

HUGH O’NEILL,

Dublin 1.

Making cents

Sir, – I read that the Central Bank is on the prowl for 1 and 2 cent coins (December 9th). May we assume, therefore, that the services of the governor of that organisation will no longer be required as the euros will be looking after themselves? – Yours, etc,

J GERARD OSBORNE,

Dublin 13.

Irish Independent

I saw ‘Prime Time’ last night, which exposed how people with intellectual disabilities have been treated recently in a residential care home, Aras Attracta in Swinford, Co Mayo. This shocks me, as a I am a mum to a child aged nine with a severe to profound disability, both intellectual and physical.

I thank ‘Primetime’ for exposing these people. The people of Ireland cannot take any more of this. We need to say enough! Our children and adults with disabilities are equal to, not less than, anyone else. They are vulnerable and that means we must advocate for them.

The programme sickened me to the core. I did not sleep last night. I think the only answer is to have cameras installed. Sadly, it’s the only way to prevent this from happening.

How can anyone think it’s OK to treat vulnerable people like this? You wouldn’t treat an animal in this way. I am so worried for the future.

My son is not a burden on society, and I wrote this poem about him:

Some people think he’s a burden

But he is my son

I grew him inside me for nine months

And I have carried him for nine years

He is not a burden

He is my son

He has a name

He has my heart

He has a smile

His innocence is forever

He loves unconditionally

He trusts everybody

He is still my baby boy

I will always be his mum

I will always be his carer

There is no burden lighter than love.

Aisling McNiffe

Straffan, Co Kildare

Horror at care home revelations

I’m sure no one got much sleep last night after watching ‘Prime Time’ and the inexcusable treatment of the three ladies shown in RTE’s report. I know I didn’t.

While we can all condemn what we saw and ask for proper criminal investigations to be launched, perhaps we could all try and turn this sorry story into something positive. Can I suggest that people angered by what we saw, show their support by sending a Christmas card or maybe some flowers to the three ladies who were in the report?

The one part of the programme which really got to me, was when one of the relatives noted that their loved one never retaliated when they were struck, such was the gentleness of this resident. Perhaps we could all take a leaf out of her book, and show our support to these women at this time, to show them how much they are thought of, and that despite what they have endured, there are so many who are so upset at what they endured.

Perhaps an outpouring of support to these ladies would mean more to them than any anger shown towards those so-called care workers. Let the Government and authorities do their job and investigate what they need to. Meanwhile, let the rest of us angered by what we saw, do what we can to make these ladies feel loved!

Fr Michael Toomey

Holy Cross Church

Tramore, Co Waterford

It’s 1.15 am and I need to be up for work in five-and-a-half hours. But I can’t sleep! I can’t sleep because of the sickness in the pit of my stomach, caused by the heartache and upset over the footage of Bungalow 3 in Aras Attracta shown on ‘Prime Time’.

I’m from Mayo, and have lived here nearly all my life. I work in Dublin three days a week, and choose to commute because I love my county and the people who live in it.

But tonight I feel nothing but shame. To think that people with intellectual disabilities were treated in such a disgusting, inhumane manner in my beloved county sickens me to the core.

There are carers throughout our county, and country, who look after the sick, in hospitals and homes like Aras Attracta. And they show the patients nothing but love and care. They do this with ease, because this is not a job to them, it’s a vocation.

There are not enough words to describe what happened in Bungalow 3. My 13-year-old son went to bed that night with tears in his eyes, feeling sick. His last words to his sister were, “no way are Mam and Dad ever going to a home, we will look after them”.

Enough said.

Martina Jennings

Hollymount, Co Mayo

Unchecked power led to austerity

I agree with Julie Bennett when she says that “it’s a pity we didn’t protest” when decisions were being made during the boom by a small number of the most powerful people in the country which eventually bankrupt the nation (Letters, Irish Independent, December 10).

But I am not sure that the partisan party political part of her letter adds anything to the basic point.

That is we should remember that the damage was done by human beings who were in virtually unchallenged power for far too long over the years of the boom and that the present austerity is a consequence.

To be fair to all of us, things would have been much different if a media campaign, matching for example the present anti-water charges campaign, had been conducted against the recklessness of the boom.

But as Ms Bennett tells us we should not forget what the causes of the present austerity are and when they occurred.

A Leavy

Sutton, Dublin

Recession didn’t hit everybody

Julie Bennett (Irish Independent, December 10) states she will be voting for Fine Gael because despite it all, they’ve made hard choices even if it costs them their head and she says “this is a tough economy for all of us” and she’d rather give her money to Irish Water than to the Bertie Bowl.

But that’s just the point. It is not a tough economy for all of us, as there are quite large numbers of people for whom the recession is just something they have read about and something that apparently angry people write to their office about, but as TDs and ministers have assistants to filter out those letters, it doesn’t affect them that much. Similarly, the sacrifices made have not been shouldered equally.

Does Ms Bennett really think Enda Kenny, Michael Noonan, Joan Burton or Brendan Howlin have ever had to choose which bill to pay because they literally do not have the money for two bills? Have they ever given a moment’s thought to the cost of turning on the heating or have they ever checked the receipt for the weekly shopping? Do they ever worry about retirement or if they get ill? Of course not, because the Irish taxpayer will fund their lavish retirements and the cost of their private healthcare package.

Was anyone astounded that Mr Kenny is so out of touch with reality that he seemed genuinely surprised at the struggles homeless people face?

Our taxes are already funding a water system.

Mr Kenny asked us to trust him in 2011. He asked if he could borrow our votes because he was different. He would separate the level of bank debt we carry for the sins of the private banking sector from the extra debt we would incur from the lower tax revenue and increased social welfare costs it is right we incur. He told us he would reform transparency and accountability within politics and all across the public sector.

We were told there was a Democratic Revolution in 2011. As is always the case with a revolution, the first act is never how events ultimately unfold.

So it makes sense that having brought down the monolithic Fianna Fail, the voter is now going to do the same to Fine Gael and Labour in 2016. The problem for Fine Gael and Labour is that they deserve the same fate as Fianna Fail.

The problem for the country is that having done in a rotten political system on the surface, its foundations remain embedded in the fabric of society and to finish the job, Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Fein/IRA need the Irish Parliamentary Party treatment. We can’t build a new Republic, whatever that may be, on the rotten corpse of the old one, which needs to be removed first. Then we can debate what we want to replace it with.

Desmond FitzGerald

Canary Wharf, London, UK

Irish Independent