Put down your smartphone and get a life!
YOUTUBE stars are encouraging children to take part in ‘baiting out’ – an online trend where youngsters make crude comments about people they know.
Teenagers should log off Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, stop tweeting and get a life. Why do people want to know everyone else’s business? Phone a friend or invite them around for a chat instead.
In this age of intrusion, pull out the plug and distance yourself from it all. The attachment to social media has become a national plague. I can suggest no remedy except that we all grow a backbone and tune out.
BRYONY REES, address supplied.
Control and trust
CONTROL is the link word between the Eighth Amendment and the treatment of wildlife in the country.
For too long the State has encroached in a gender control move into pregnancy and how it is be conducted. Repealing the Eighth will represent an assertion that a pregnancy and its outcome is a personal matter. For wildlife, the State asserts control over its existence by allowing the recreational killing of wild animals.
Ireland may be a progressive country within the sphere of social cohesion but its record on its treatment of women and the nonhuman members of our society makes disturbing reading.
The vista facing us is that the conduit of the people, our national politicians, are devoid of leadership, emotional intelligence and political valour to do what is right and just.
For once our politicians need to unhook from the parish pump and stride towards the status of statesmen and stateswomen.
Acting for the common good removes the controlling influence the State has over women and wildlife in this country.
JOHN TIERNEY, Dublin 1. ...POSTERS around our streets urge us to ‘Trust Women’. But one of the central issues in this referendum is whether we trust politicians and whether the State can be relied on to act in the best interests of the citizens, of women, born and yet to be born.
The cervical smear scandal demonstrates the agencies of the State were not willing to trust women with their own critical health data.
The phrase ‘Trust Women’ is just a cynical effort to dress up the destruction of innocent lives as a bold strike for women’s rights. I’ll be voting No. MARGARET SIMCOCK,
Navan, Co. Meath. ...GOOGLE are banning adverts related to the Eighth Amendment referendum. They are banning ads from both sides so surely that’s fair. Adverts will not choose the way I am voting and would just amount to drum banging.
MARTIN STRINGER, Barnacogue, Co. Mayo.
Fancy dancers
RYAN O’Shaughnessy did well to qualify for the Eurovision final but I think the two lads on stage with him, cavorting and rubbing off each other, won’t help his chances very much. Surplus to requirements definitely. ROBERT SULLIVAN,
Bantry, Co. Cork.