Recent exposures of the pandemic pervasiveness of US intelligence gathering has obviously rattled its hegemony cage somewhat, scattering embarrassing effluent from the fan of factual farrago. Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and their ilk have a lot to answer for, it seems.

I am disappointed with the GAA re the timing of the recent Cork v Dublin All Ireland football quarter-final.

Many thanks to Michael Clifford and Shaun Connolly (Forum, Aug 3) for their acerbic and timely reminder of the level of self-serving and deluded guff we have to put up with from our esteemed leaders.

Last week, while on holiday, I travelled the main road (N8/N25) from Cork City to Waterford and was taken aback by the lack of maintenance of the Cork end of this road, especially along the Tivoli dual carriageway to the Dunkettle roundabout.

Amongst the predictable and hackneyed verbiage that gets bandied about every time some particular sector of workers downs tools and goes about inconveniencing the public in their legitimate attempts to avoid a diminution of pay and conditions is talk about “greed” and God help us, “holding the public to ransom” from the usual parties.

So those who wished to have suicide included in the new legislation as grounds for abortion have got what they wanted.

Pat Kenny’s departure from RTÉ raises interesting questions as to how the State-owned broadcaster is allowed continue to break the Public Procurement Guidelines and not tender this and other obviously lucrative contracts.

In the article “City’s illicit cigarette trade costs local jobs’’ (Irish Examiner, July 30), Joe Sweeney of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents described the proposed plain packaging of tobacco products as “just a feel-good gimmick that will drive up the illegal trade”.

Our government made many promises in order to get elected.

Facts regarding ‘organic’ salmon, (Analysis Aug 5), are truthfully set out in article by Alec O’Donovan.