Sir, - In his Irishman's Diary of February 25th, Kevin Myers is in typical form. The column combines well-written and original thinking with the usual element of misplaced argument and a little disingenuousness. To argue that the cancellation of Third World debt would merely enrich the pockets of tyrants and despots and fail to alleviate the condition of the millions of starving and diseased people is surely specious. Any first-year banking student could devise a prescriptive system for phased relief of debt. Approval of each phase would depend upon rigorously audited success in programmes for the improvement of agriculture or economic infrastructure or other schemes of long-term benefit to these tragic people.
Evil does indeed flourish when good men and women do nothing. The present culture of dependency leads to a cycle of famine, genocide and other cataclysmic events, little local difficulties that seem to have escaped Mr Myers's notice. Each requires an interventionist response from the industrial world. To that extent, incremental debt relief is not merely a moral argument or a recognition of basic human dignity; it is a cost-efficient solution to mankind's greatest problem.
I share with your columnist a distaste for the spectacle of celebrity angst. The people of the Third World can exist without Bono's crocodile tears, but they could certainly make good use of his millions. - Yours, etc.,
Brendan Kelleher, Park Road, Belfast.