Sir, - Mr Finnegan was grateful for his cheque for £156 as a former worker and pensioner from Telecom Eireann and disappointed that it was not enough for the minimum £250 purchase of Telecom shares (July 6th).
He may regret not having sufficient money to join the new "People's Capitalism" so lovingly spirited up by the former British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, and now being implemented by the Fianna Fail/PD Government. I would ask him however to consider the following: Firstly, the Irish citizenry have been conned into paying for something they already own. Telecom Eireann was publicly owned. Secondly, it is the wheeler-dealers in the middle who end up with the bloated bank accounts, not the silly punters. Thirdly, those people who borrowed money to buy shares may have got loans at low interest rates but it is possible that with the Euro plunging below parity with the US dollar, we may get inflation and high interest rates very soon. Fourthly, the vast majority of working class people who have acquired shares cash them in within two years thus providing further cream for the real fat cats.
Telecom Eireann shares may have been sold with all the sexy/ feel good/patriotic/Riverdance brutality of an Arthur Miller salesman but it was an immensely cynical exercise which treated us all as idiots. - Yours, etc., Jimmy Blake,
Douglas West, Cork.