Madam, - While it is right that the judiciary should pursue their duties with a certain detachment from the vicissitudes of modern life, surely the comments made by Judge Mary Fahy while hearing an illegal firearms case at Galway district court (News, November 7th) demonstrate a level of remoteness that is almost hermetic.
Sentencing Thomas Costello, described as an "avid hunter", for having an unlicensed crossbow and sawn-off .22 air rifle, the judge remarked that "We do not live in a hunting/shooting type of country, a country like where Prince Charles lives and where people go out hunting all the time." From the reference to the Prince of Wales I presume the judge refers to Great Britain. While many people in that country do indeed enjoy hunting, shooting and fishing - their numbers run into millions - the judge is mistaken in thinking Ireland is different.
Thousands of people in this country from all walks of life are similarly active in country sports. Very few of them are of royal descent, either. Moreover these traditional activities offer a valuable refuge from the stress of 21st-century living and contribute significantly to local economies.
Perhaps the judge's comments can be understood when they are set within the wider context of a society in which some pastimes are generally approved of - shopping, watching football, downloading music, surfing and blogging being common examples - and some are not. The media play a key role in reinforcing this cultural hegemony by covering what is fashionable in salivating detail, while studiously ignoring what is considered old hat.
Driving this phenomenon within television, radio and newspapers is a self-selecting elite of metropolitan sophisticates - columnists, pundits and talking heads - whose powers of arbitration over what's hot and what's not have risen in inverted proportion to their size in numbers over the past decade.
Thus we have TV programmes, glossy magazines and lifestyle supplements filled with drivel about the latest high-tech mobile phone, eye-wateringly expensive kitchens and 10 reasons why anyone who is not snowboarding off-piste at Aspen this winter will be committing social suicide.
Ways of life which value tradition over novelty and are rooted in authenticity rather than transient notions of cool are unworthy of interest and go largely unreported, except for the occasional patronising article about traditional music featuring a picture of bearded men in woolly jumpers.
The new establishment likes to trumpet at every opportunity its demotion to diversity, but theirs is merely one version of diversity, defined by their own tastes and prejudices. - Yours, etc,
PHILIP DONNELLY, Lower Hodgestown, Naas, Co Kildare.