Madam, – So Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan has “amazed” Europe with his budget (Business Today, April 27th)? He adds that the British press gave his measures warm praise and our EU partners “are just amazed at our capacity to take pain”. They praised our masochism. And weren’t they right? It’s certain no other country could endure such self-regarding leaders.
The Minister went on to claim in the same address to the Irish League of Credit Unions that in France there’d be riots were the pension levy to be introduced on public servants.
He never mentioned how the French might feel about ministers who might have three pensions, or how they might feel about public representatives being awash with taxpayers’ money while the dole queues grow longer. Furious maybe.
After all isn’t France the country where the populace stormed the Bastille and then cut down to size those who thought they were head and shoulders above the rest of the nation? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – News reports on the economic downturn show that the fundamentals of language have also changed.
“Protective” notice means that workers’ jobs are at risk.
A “rational”-isation scheme for a firm may make no sense to its experienced staff; and, industrial “action” means no business activity at the firm. In difficult times, it is not only currencies that become devalued, but meanings as well. – Your, etc,
DAN DONOVAN,
Shandon Street,
Dungarvan,
Co Waterford.
Madam, – Many of those critical of the recent cuts in Ireland’s Overseas Development Assistance aid have expressed grave concern about the damage that these cuts will do to Ireland’s international reputation as a generous donor and key player on the international development stage.
Concern about Ireland’s reputation doesn’t strike me as an especially compelling rationale as to why the ODA budget should not be cut, or indeed why it should be strengthened.
Furthermore, development aid is not the only, nor indeed the primary answer to the problems of global poverty and injustice, and more attention needs to be paid to the ways in which aid relationships themselves can often serve as an obstacle to development.
The debate should focus less on national self-congratulation and/ or condemnation vis-a-vis aid, and more on how lives might be saved, by acting against “our” practices of consumption in the West, the dumping of arms in the so-called Third World, lopsided environmental degradation and other policies and initiatives that have brought the inhabitants of the countries “we” seek to save through aid to their knees. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – When going through some press cuttings in my late mother’s house, I came across a newspaper editorial about TDs’ and Ministerial pensions.
It concluded with the lines: “And yet these questions do not get to the real core of public annoyance which is that members of the Oireachtas can be in receipt of ministerial pensions while still drawing salaries as TDs and Senators.That is an injustice which should be remedied without further delay.”
The editorial is from the Irish Press and is dated Monday, April 25th, 1983! – Yours, etc,