Letters to the Editor: We're glad we prevailed over EV anxiety
'We’re well used to being looked at out of the side of a crooked eye.' Letter-writer Marie Curran shrugged off the warnings and is glad to have switched to an electric car. Picture: iStock
Colin Sheridan’s ode to the new owner of an EV is on point. There are begrudgers out there.
When my husband and I bought our first EV last March, voodoo was the word at the cusp of the lips around us.
And those who dared speak in full sentences, said: “You better give yourself plenty of time to get from Galway to Dublin... three stops will be required.”
Having changed our heating system years earlier from oil to a pellet stove and having been advised by one inner sanctum, “the pellet stove would explode and blow the house down”, insistent on this probability, even when assured we were using certified people to install the stove. We’re well used to being looked at out of the side of a crooked eye.
Bemused like every other EV owner, we ignored the voices, ploughed ahead and are grateful we did so.
Unlike Mr Sheridan, we do plan. As a past teacher used to boast, “fail to plan... plan to fail!”
Watching the interview with Brianna Ghey’s mother, Esther, on BBC1, I was saddened, as a parent, grandparent, and as a fellow human being, at the tragic events surrounding the death of her young daughter — a vulnerable, and special child.
Even more shocking, but sadly unsurprisingly in today’s culture, it was two other young teenagers who committed this horrific and brutal murder.
Their planning on messaging apps, influenced by social media and the dark web, where violence and murder is a staple for those influenced by sadism and cruelty, came to the forefront of this investigation, subsequent trial, and sentencing hearing.
The impact of social media in this and others similar type cases is an aggravating factor.
This shocking, cruel and senseless murder, and the sentencing of the two young individuals involved, in a week that saw Mark Zuckenberg and other tech company CEOs being accused of having blood on their hands in a US Senate hearing on child safety, should give us all pause for thought.
The real issue is that there needs to be an international approach to how we regulate, legislate, and guard against violent content and its influencers on social media that persuades vulnerable, mentally unstable, and easily-influenced young people to act in such a violent way.
We need, collectively, our legislators, enforcement agencies, policing authorities and tech companies, and more importantly parents, a complete structural overhaul of social media.
We must look at the pathway from social media apps to the dark web and what preventative measures need to be put in place to stop children from accessing it and other violent content.
Do we have enough robust legislation in place to protect our young children from the influence of social media and the dark web, and how do we counter AI, chatbots, and deepfakes that can and could be used for wholly improper purposes? How do we mitigate this and harmful content?
While tech companies have the power to change coding and design algorithms they must be held to account financially and criminally if we are not to have another Brianna Ghey.
The current wording of Article 41.2 does, in a peculiar kind of way, confer value on what women do in the home. de Valera wouldn’t have endorsed the present inequality of educated, working women/mothers who have two jobs. He also knew that nothing would get done without women!
There’s nothing wrong with homemaking and caring, as long as the providers are sustained by care receivers, families, partners, and husbands. Working for less than a man, in addition to running a home for free, is actually worse than the wording of 41.2.
I reject suggestions that the article should be changed to include care given by all family members. So many elderly people are still dumped in homes. Also, many (female) carers are educated, unpaid, and abused non-relatives, so future changes need to include all carers.
If the Government is suddenly so concerned about the place of women, then why does it still endorse so many inequalities against women?
They say there’s a first time for everything, and that never rang truer than it did on February 3 when Michelle O’Neill was officially elected as First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly. This was a truly historic occasion in every respect. It banished the reality of no longer being a second-class citizen in a statelet set up to be a bastion of unionism forevermore.
Funny how the configuration of a few words and colours can open the doors to new beginnings, and perhaps a new Ireland?
Since Hamas’ attack on Southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,200 Israelis, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) has so far killed at least 27,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including thousands of children.
Israel genocide in Gaza continues despite the country facing overwhelming opposition to it policies by the UN.
Only recently the Security Council voted for a ceasefire, with only the US voting against.
It is long past time that the Irish Government asserted the sovereignty of the Irish state by backing South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice declaring the actions of the IDF as genocide, expelled the Israeli ambassador, and imposed an economic and cultural boycott of Israel.
