Madam, – Watching the so-called “storming” of the Dáil (Home News, May 13th) and then listening to the pathetic apologists on radio the next day was utterly sickening.
Pseudo-socialists like Richard Boyd Barrett are merely damaging the international reputation of this country and its ability to borrow the €400 million a week to pay for the social services and the welfare for many of the people he claims he represents.
Legitimate debate is welcome. However, cowardly attacks on our hard-won democracy are not.
What right do these people have to put the rights and economic future of law-abiding citizens at risk merely because they are economically illiterate? Rather than attacking the Dáil they should formulate an alternative and put that before the people and see if they get elected.
The loony left-wing anarchists in Greece burned three innocent people, including a pregnant woman, to death. Shame on anyone who claims to support the actions of these murderers.
Have these people forgotten the damage political violence did to this country? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Where were the police when the bank guarantee was given? They should have been batoning the people who made the decision rather than those who have been wronged by the decision. – Yours, etc,
A chara, – On Tuesday evening I joined more than 1,500 concerned citizens, to protest at the corrupt and incompetent manner in which the political body has led the country and its people to the economic abyss we now face.
I listened as Fintan O’Toole described the existence of “a parallel universe” in which no money exists for hospitals and schools, and yet countless billions of taxpayers’ money is made available to stoke the incinerators, in morally bankrupt financial institutions that have visited such misery and hardship on people.
Kathleen Lynch’s emotive oration, in which she declared her pride in being a peasant, but her resolute refusal to be treated like one by a contemptuous elite, also resonated deeply.
Imagine my anger, therefore, when I awoke the following morning to be greeted by radio reports stating that gardaí were investigating an “incident” in Dublin city centre the previous night, involving a group of 500 people, 100 of whom launched an attack on the Dáil itself.
With the stroke of a pen a thousand people, from all sectors of Irish society, whose primary concern is an attempt to ensure a decent, fair and dignified future, for all our children, were banished from the official record. In the parallel universe where the free-market economy is king, where people know the cost of everything and the value of nothing, it appears that genuine concern for society is dismissed as irrelevant and worthless.
Surely it is time we took a long hard look at the damage such a vacuous ideology has wrought on both our society and our economy? – Is mise,
Madam, – Have the “right to work” protesters realised that their very marching is a sure way to deter outside investment, and ultimately to deny them their goal? Nothing says political instability like a bloody protest. Two of the few things that divide us from the Greeks are our collective resolve in the face of crisis and an internationally respected financial leadership – let us not undermine them both with ungainly and gainless protests. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Senator Terry Leyden’s reference to Leinster House as “the Bastille” while bizarre, is somewhat fitting for the times we live in. In late 18th-century France it was the bastion of royal authority (and tyranny); its storming a decisive point in the new French Republic. If Senator Leyden considers Leinster House “the Bastille”, what does that make us? – Yours, etc,