Madam, – Is there any truth in the rumour that from now on Two-Mile-Borris will be changing its name to Two-To-One-Mile-Borris? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – So finally the super casino in the Midlands has got the go-ahead from the planners. Hundreds of jobs will be created. Innumerable foreign visitors will forsake the bright lights of Vegas, Macau, and Monte Carlo, for the smell of the bogs and cow dung of north Tipperary. They come eager to invest their dollars, euro and roubles, in the fantasy of an Irish gambling fairy land complete with a genuine replica White House.
Or will they? Try listening to the wives, mothers and children of the real investors in this lunacy. Try explaining to them that the fridge is empty, the cupboard is bare, the power and phone is cut off and those men at the door are the bailiffs, all because some mug was foolish enough to believe the hype that everyone is a winner in these new developments.
There will be jobs, probably taken up by non-nationals because the locals won’t work for the terms and conditions typically on offer in similar establishments. Profits will go to the investors, losses will go home with punters.
What we need are real jobs, not the chimera of the last decade, building houses for the builders and for “buy-to-lets”. This development, if it proceeds, will be a disaster for the country. Have we not learned that real progress will only be made through real work, and investment in productive enterprises? We have had a decade of gambling, is it not time that we get sense and got back to basics? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – On reading Charlie Taylor’s article about the Tipperary Casino Complex (Home News, June 14th), I thought perhaps I had stumbled onto an article from the archives: that the time stamp mistakenly read 2011 rather than 2007. Is June 13th the new April 1st? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – We are continually told that during the boom no one shouted stop.
In an experiment aimed at preventing yet more mistakes . . . Stop! – Yours, etc,