Letters to the Editor: Swap some SUVs for a few encyclopedias. That would be better for us all.

One reader hails our parents for valuing knowledge highly — especially at a time when it was far more expensive to access

Even a child who has read a little about the world around us will have worked out the folly of the boom-and-bust capitalist economy. Stock picture

When I was 7, my parents bought the Childcraft books for me. It was a junior encyclopedia from the publishers of the World Book encyclopedia. World Book was another thing some parents purchased at huge expense and no small amount of sacrifice. If a family owned World Book, well now that was a cut above buttermilk. A declaration of war on ignorance.

The World Book salesman called to your house several times before such a quixotic knowledge-seeking household could conceive of taking the plunge. That series of books cost more than most families earned in a month. My children cannot understand that level of investment. They have encyclopediae at their fingertips on their phones. 

Back in my day when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, these books were the price of a perfectly respectable secondhand car. Very few families owned two cars. Almost half of the lads I went to school with in the early 1980s grew up in homes with one or no car.

Knowledge and information was very expensive in the early 1980s. All over Ireland parents invested in books, encyclopediae and other ‘academic’ things. That was a choice — made by people who did not get the chances or opportunities our children take for granted. These are the people who built the “knowledge economy” we have today. They were far-seeing; able to imagine a different place and willing to bring it about.

My favourite story and lesson from those Childraft books describes tulipmania in Holland in the 17th century. Finance houses, consumers, investors. The Dutch were the most sophisticated people in the world yet bought and sold single tulip bulbs for prices exceeding the value of three-storey houses in Amsterdam. An economic mania, popular delusion, and madness of crowds.

Today we have learned nothing. Our ignorance is amazingly relentless. We relentlessly insist and declare that houses are commodities. Investment products. Selling them back and forth to each other. Cheering when the price of houses rises. Downcast when the price of houses falls. Tulipmania. How many cycles of boom and bust must occur before this economic “philosophy” becomes ridiculous?

As this tulipmania continues, important things are happening. The planet is warming yet still we here in prosperous and evolved, sophisticated 21st century Ireland are still driving SUV’s without tow-bars. That caps it all off. If you own an SUV that does not have a tow bar you don’t need a SUV. Farmers need 4x4s. And only some. If you’re driving your children to cello lessons in an SUV that doesn’t need a tow bar you need Childcraft. You look like an idiot. Sellotape your bank statement to your forehead if you desperately need to feel superior. Anything is better than these unnecessary SUVs and 4x4s.

We need to find a more harmless model of capitalism and one-upmanship in this country. I am all for letting people sellotape house valuations and nett worth analyses to their foreheads. I will genuflect. It's childcraft. But our parents — the people who educated us — must be mortified.

Michael Deasy, Bandon, Co Cork

Failure to provide respite care for kids

There is much talk about the chronic lack of respite care in Cork, however, this is just a symptom of the real problem.

The HSE has a legal mandate to carry out an “assessment of needs” for a child within a specified timeframe, but there is no legal requirement to carry out the essential “life-enabling” services once they have been identified.

This is like a person presenting at the hospital and being told that they have broken leg but that it cannot fixed because no-one is prepared to carry out the service. They are then being offered painkillers but they are not available either. 

Why can we not provide “life-enabling” services for our own vulnerable children — are they lesser citizens? It certainly appears so.

Joe Mason, Merrion Court, Cork

In memory of Ava Twomey

I am writing to honour the life of Ava Twomey who has died aged 13. It is only because of her suffering and the heroic campaigning of her mother, Vera, that medicinal cannabis is now legally available in Ireland. They achieved this despite the cruel, misguided resistance of politicians and doctors who still, based on prejudice and lack of knowledge, do all they can to block access to this life saving and transformative medicine.

The people of Ireland owe a huge debt to Ava and her family.

Peter Reynolds Chair, Cannabis Industry Council Ireland, Knocknagoshel, Co Kerry

Magical Munster’s miraculous victory

Munster’s Peter O’Mahony in action against Stormers in the URC final in Cape Town, South Africa. Picture: Sportsfile 

Munster’s victory on Saturday must go down as one the greatest Irish sporting victories of all time. It has to be.

From where Munster were at the start of the tournament it’s nothing short of a miracle. 

When they beat Glasgow that was enough for me. I thought that was one their toughest matches ever and I could not see how they could pick themselves up and perform to a high standard the following week. 

But what do I know about the Munster spirit within that camp? Indiana Jones would have found the travelling exhausting. There must be a record in there somewhere for a team to travel so many miles in such a short space of time. I can’t imagine an English Premier League team doing it without complaining. 

You could go through that team and shower players with all kinds of plaudits but Peter O’Mahony must stand head and shoulders above everyone else. What a player; what a man. Well done Munster. We all knew you were capable of victory.

Neil Carroll, Cork

Salient lesson from hunger strike film

This year marks the 25-year anniversary of the end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. As a master’s student at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, I watched the film Hunger (McQueen, 2008) depicting the H Block prison strikes in 1980-’81 in one of my classes.

There may be no better filmmaker for this event than Steve McQueen, a Briton with Caribbean roots who grew up in a household where the TV was turned off the minute Margaret Thatcher appeared. With protesters scolded by Thatcher as disruptive, the film takes pains to describe the measures taken by prisoners such as flooding the jail with their urine, the “no wash” practice, and the brutal beating they suffered at the hands of prison guards. After all, the IRA inmates and the McQueen family do share a common enemy: UK prime minister Thatcher and her conservative government from 1979 to 1990.

With parents practicing medicine in Malaysia, a former British colony, I witnessed as a youngster the mayhem that ensued after the British left in 1965. Ethnic Chinese (25% of population) and Indians (15% of population) experienced discrimination unheard of during the colonial heyday. In 1982, a group of Hong Kong representatives went to China to ask for an extension of British rule beyond 1997 and got severely reprimanded by leaders of Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Hunger made me understand why the British were embraced everywhere in the world they ruled and loathed by their next door neighbour who share their looks and heritage.

Mathilde Diaz, Long Island City, New York

Different parties offer same choice

The recent row, provoked by Fine Gael with their government partners Fianna Fáil, looks like a bit of a ready-up, as both parties seek to distinguish themselves from one another in advance of the next general election. It calls to mind the Irish expression “cath na mbó maol” — a phoney war.

After 12 years in power for Fine Gael, supported by Fianna Fáil for the last seven of them, it will be a challenge for both parties to convince the electorate that they’re not six of one and half a dozen of the other.

John Glennon, Hollywood, Co Wicklow