Kevin Vickers must be the only Sergeant-at-arms in history to live up to that title (when he shot an armed intruder in the Canadian parliament in 2014).

Is there any chance at all that, until he leaves his current post and you have an article and/or picture relating to him, you refer to Finian McGrath by his PROPER title, Minister For Smoking?

Michael Clifford (Irish Examiner, May 7) is absolutely right about people taking offence (or not ). There is no such thing as a ‘right not to be offended’. And there is certainly no such legal right . That leaves me two paradoxes here.

Kevin McPartlan’s (Irish Examiner, April 9) complaint about a tax on sugary drinks is, at most, at a sideshow to a far bigger picture.

I would be more than happy to make a blood donation, regardless of the current level of the blood supply in Ireland.

The irony of Conor Power paying Microsoft for the privilege of getting access to Windows 10 is that he is locking himself in to that system in ways that will both cost him money and be entirely determined by Microsoft rather than himself.

Sailing

There is a poster with an inaccurate message hanging from various lampposts around here: ‘children deserve a mother and father’, they say.

I wish to thank Ray Ryan for his article ‘Chris Hadfield to recall a northside Cork boy’s links to the Space Age’. 

Michael Clifford is correct regarding home births in Ireland (Irish Examiner, December 6).

I write in response to an article in Saturday’s newspaper where abuse survivor, Marie Collins stated the cardinal should have resigned long ago.

It seems to me there is one way to prevent fraudulent credit card transactions, such as from those whose data was stolen recently.

There will be no satisfactory Oireachtas enquiry into the banking crisis since such a thing is absolutely unconstitutional.

Whatever about the past abuses in the quashing of penalty points, surely it is blindingly obvious what should happen in future — the next time a garda hands me a ticket for something, all its details should immediately and automatically appear on a publicly accessible website.

My own disappointment at the resignation of Sir Alex Ferguson as manager of Manchester United derives from two related points.

Your article showing a gay parade past St Patrick’s cathedral in New York, is a reminder that, in one way, Ireland is ‘ahead’ of the US in terms of gay rights.

In listing “some things right during the Tiger years”, one item Barbara Scully omits (Irish Examiner, is the installation of a world-class sewerage system in Cork City funded by the EU.

Michael Clifford is correct about tribunals, their costs, etc. But he does not explain the legal basis for those costs and delays.

Richard Fitzpatrick quotes Raymond Chandler: “When in doubt have a man come in the door with a gun in his hand.”

THE big fleet had a slow passage in the annual race from Cobh to Blackrock as light winds and frequent rain showers arrived instead of the expected very fresh south easterlies. Indeed the race even had to be shortened to a finish-line a little east of Blackrock Castle; a wise decision with the trip across the two-and-a-half mile stretch of Lough Mahon’s open waters very slow.

The mood of the wind gods had changed for the penultimate day of Ford Cork Week when they decided to give the exhausted sailors a little more wind.

Conditions for all fleets were extremely light again to-day.