If we joined the UK then there’d be no border...
AS the Irish border is showing to be one of Brexit’s most problematical points of getting agreement between the EU and Britain, there is an opportunity for Britain to lead the way out of this impasse.
Theresa May should offer the Republic of Ireland the opportunity for Ireland to become part of the British Isles.
Yes, that would require giving the people of Ireland a referendum (and why not I ask). After all, the majority of the populace wish to have Ireland’s unification.
As it is unreasonable to consider that Ireland could go alone in the world today they need back-up from the EU or Britain.
Now leaving aside those who hold a blinkered vision of attaining Ireland’s unification in today’s circumstances, should a referendum be held I believe the result would not be a foregone conclusion but be mind-boggling. HARRY STEPHENSON,
Kircubbin, Co. Down. ...THE British alone decided they would leave the EU therefore it is incumbent upon them to produce a coherent strategy that will preserve free access to the border we enjoy today while at the same time satisfying the EU’s requirements.
Leo Varadkar must insist on this before agreeing to a second round of negotiations on trade, which the UK is impatient to get to without really satisfying any of the three conditions agreed by both the EU and the UK at the first meeting of the negotiations.
It will be a sad day if Europe allows itself to be seduced by the ephemeral offer of £40billion from Perfidious Albion to the detriment of the Irish border. Mr Varadkar’s demand for a written clear-cut solution could be the defining moment of his premiership.
DECLAN MOORE, via email.
Let him rot
BOSNIAN Serbian military leader Ratko Mladić has been very justifiably sentenced to life in prison for crimes including genocide in Bosnia. In March 2016, Mladic’s political boss Radovan Karadžić was also convicted of similar charges and is already serving 40 years in prison, and once again his sentence was fully justified.
What is not widely known, because it received very little western media coverage, is that the tribunal that sentenced Radovan Karadžić also found that similar charges against former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević were not substantiated. Para 3,460 of the tribunal’s report found that ‘based on the evidence before the Chamber ... the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milošević agreed with the common plan’. Milošević had died in prison in suspicious circumstances before his trial concluded.
War crimes tribunals provide a very important function in bringing war criminals to justice. Sadly. however, far too few war criminals are tried before such courts, and the leaders of the most powerful states in the world have given themselves immunity from prosecution at such trials through bla- tant abuses of international laws and the UN Charter. All citizens of the world should be equal before the law including war criminals. EDWARD HORGAN, Castletroy, Co. Limerick.
The REAL jungle camp
I HAVE long been sceptical about the I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here! camp in the Australian jungle, which appears too carefully orchestrated to be real, so it was refreshing to read Alison Boshoff’s expose (Mail).
In 1971, I spent four months training in a real jungle camp in Mexico. I had been offered a job as an agricultural engineer among one of the Mayan indigenous groups in the state of Chiapas, and the organisation I was working for insisted I undertook this training. I spent the first six weeks at the main base, where we lived and ate local-grown food served in a dining room, but with pit toilets, dirt floors and no mod-cons.
We took turns cooking and had lessons in the Mayan language, travelled in dug-out canoes, slept in hammocks and were trained in fire-lighting, life-saving, hiking and basic medicine such as giving injections. For the second part of the training, we hiked for eight hours to a camp deep in the rain forest where we had to build our own shelters. We cooked on open fires and had to ration our six weeks of food. One camper drank all his coffee ration in the first week and was not allowed more. We were told always to have at hand our basic survival kit – machete and file, water bottle, cooking canteen and water-purifying tablets, medications for malaria, diarrhoea and insect bites, painkillers, a space blanket, compass, small torch, matches and pitch pine – carried on an army webbing belt.
One night, we were suddenly sent on a survival hike: we were each left alone without any food or shelter for three nights. I had to make an A-frame shelter and build a fire to keep animals away. I lived on snails and edible plants.
Finally, we stayed in a small Indian community to learn the language and culture for a month. This was a genuine jungle survival experience, and for some of the participants, it was so challenging they decided not to take up the job they had been offered.
I suspect most of the I’m A Celebrity campers would have been tuckered out after just three weeks on the main base, let alone the survival hike!
Rev BOB SHORE, Nottingham.