Brave woman stood up to powers-that-be

JANETTE BYRNE’S letter (‘Why they feared me — an ordinary person with cancer’, November 17) should be compulsory reading for all of us ordinary yobs when we feel defeated in the struggle to reclaim our country from the brazen, the arrogant and the smug who monopolise our airwaves, our news pages and our screens.

As a self-declared “nobody, taxpayer, Irish citizen, ordinary person, and cancer patient”, she deserves our gratitude for standing up to the powers-that-be and telling her story.

She exposes the multi-million euro, taxpayer-funded propaganda machine that dominates every minute and every crevice of our media. The power and influence of that machine is demonstrated by Ms Byrne’s experience.

Members of that machine were “screaming down the phones wanting to know who made the decision” to put her on the Late Late show. They also demanded to know “why were they not told” she would be on it.

She and the many like her, whom the movers-and-shakers of this world fear and despise, are the real core of this democratic republic.

They, and not some bragging politician or self-obsessed celebrity, have made it what it is. I hope Ms Byrne will keep her promise to the inarticulate and the powerless and long continue to be their voice.

Anthony Leavy

1 Shielmartin Drive

Sutton

Dublin 13