Dear Sir... Readers' Views (24/10/16)
Legalise prostitution and marijuana
It really is so indicative of our self- serving government that we are still discussing the legalisation of prostitution and marijuana. The only fact in these matters, proven throughout history, is that if we continue to ban them we increase crime. Intelligent people have known that for many years. There are five results of this continuing stupidity.
Firstly, even more garda time will be wasted on those harmless crimes instead of protecting decent tax-paying citizens from real crime (burglary, assault, shop-lifting, etc, etc).
Secondly, the many good women in prostitution, and the women who have been forced into it, have no protection under the law.
Thirdly, many people who could benefit medically from using marijuana will continue to suffer needlessly.
Fourthly, legalising them will raise standards and thus safety — for the users and the public.
Fifthly, can our blinkered TDs not even see that all the tax revenue from such popular, legal industries would help to cover up their incompetence in the financial area over the last two or three decades?
Having lived in and around Amsterdam for 20 years, I am not just philosophising.
Rich will always be able to up the ante
It is interesting to note that Deputy Donohoe doesn’t specify an upper limit as to how much he should be paid out of the public purse, so that he doesn’t succumb to temptation.
My best guess is that no matter how much we pay politicians, the rich will always be able to up the ante sufficiently in the ‘Game Of Influence’ to always be able to exclude the high polloi from bribing their representatives.
Politicians should get average wage
A Leavy seems to be implying that politicians are comparable to gardaà and teachers when it comes to criticism of public servants seeking salary increases (Letters, October 17). Unlike our front line law enforcers and those tasked with educating our children, politicians get paid, as A Leavy keeps reminding us, even when the country they ran was about to default on its sovereign debt commitments.
When their attractive allowances are taken into consideration, every TD gets paid at least three times the average industrial wage. Their contract is with the people and should not be as part of the wider civil service.
Therefore for a politician to be getting a salary increase at this time of up to €5,000 per annum in tandem with other public servants is grossly unfair and unwarranted when we have so many people sleeping rough and hundreds of children living in cramped hotel rooms.
Far from getting a salary increase, every politician should be paid the average industrial wage as a base salary and any increases during their tenure should be tied to economic growth and agreed performance targets being met during their time in high office. If they don’t like this they can always just go on work stoppage and remove their names from the ballot paper next time around and let someone with the right degree of hunger and capability solve our nation’s most pressing problems in the spirit of public service and not self-service.
To thy self be true
Since the dawn of time countless people have walked upon this earth. Some have been termed great. Others have quietly served the human family with no recognition whatsoever. Some have craved fame and fortune. Others preferred to be the power behind the throne. However, there is one unmistakable truth. We all come in and we all go out the same way.
No one escapes the ferryman. We must all answer to a higher power, no matter what shape or form is implanted in our subconscious.
Economic currency is of no value in this dimension. One can not buy one’s self favor. People will be judged purely on their merits. Now, atheists will argue this is all poppycock. Maybe so. No one knows for sure. The afterlife is a gambler’s bet.
However, even if death means lights out, I would rather depart this vibration in time knowing that I did my best to shine a little ray of light into people’s hearts. I would prefer to depart this life knowing this, rather than feeling that I tried to own the world for my own gain, and thus chanced losing my hypothetical soul.
Politicians’ pay claim is offensive
It beggars belief that TDs don’t understand why their pay claim is so offensive and why their pathetic posturing behind Haddington Road is cringing.
These are TDs and Senators, who to a person, all claim the maximum tax free and unverified expenses on top of their €90k salaries.
They use those expenses to buy second homes and local offices that they rent back to themselves, claiming expenses for the mortgage and the rent while retaining ownership of an asset the taxpayer pays for. They also build up pension benefits that they pay a fraction toward. They also give themselves holidays that are completely unacceptable in the modern world.
Those TDs who are now trying to claim some moral high ground for declining a pay rise they should never have deserve no credit because no TD has made any effort to reform the Oireachtas expense gravy train. A more moral response would be to place all political remuneration in a different section and to tackle the obscenity of politicians retaining ownership of capital assets the taxpayer paid for.
But those TDs who refuse the pay rise also need to publish their declaration to prove that they declined the pay rise being included when their pension is calculated. This is because Irish politicians have a track record of pretending to decline pay and pensions when all they did was defer them and then later claim back payments.
No only should TDs say what they are doing, they must also verify what they say they are doing is in fact the truth. So when saying they are declining permanently a pay rise, they must prove they have also declined the increase being added to their pension at the taxpayers’ expense. It’s still nothing close to the scale of reform needed in the Oireachtas but it would show they are not all money motivated people and that maybe there is some hope for the future.
I believe in an omnipotent god
I enjoyed reading the letter by Guy Le Jeune in the Irish Examiner (Letters, October 20) and admire his efforts to understand a complex issue from a woman’s perspective.
However I do believe in an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent deity.
Luckily we are not without hope as Jesus described himself as Son of Man, in order that we as humans do not need to run in fear as we have a loving father we can identify with.
Garda strike is an attack on the state
When Robert Peel inaugurated the London Metropolitan Police in 1829 to replace parish policing there was public unease, anxiety and opposition.
Peel devised nine principles which underpin the legitimacy of policing today in Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand as well as the UK — designed to foster the fundamental principle of policing a democracy through consent.
On appointment each garda swears an oath to uphold the Constitution and the law. This oath takes account of the Peel principle that each member of An Garda SÃochána must recognise always that their power to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behavour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
Media reporting of the threatened disruption to policing service is euphemistically described as ‘a strike’ and a ‘withdrawal of labour’ — despite the illegality of the initiative.
Do the potential consequences of this threat to public safety and national security not warrant defining this threat for what it is — a potential mutiny; a blatant attack on the authority of the state, a brazen disregard for the Constitution and the law, spawned in the muddled melodramatic chaos of canteen culture?
If the threatened disruption to normal policing service materialises, the dilapidation of the moral authority of the force and the fundamental authority of the State is likely to endure far longer than public sympathy with the fine print detail of the underlying claims. Perhaps those hell-bent on threat, menace, disruption and chaos should bear in mind the Peel slogan that ‘the police are the public and the public are the police’ and rethink the consequences of their paroxysm of rage.
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