Roy should never have been near the Irish side
THE never-ending ‘Roy Keane saga’, with the footballer getting Corkonian sainthood and endless praise from media columnists, is annoying at best and insulting to the intelligence, at worst.
Keane was a great footballer, even if ‘savage’ with retribution on the field for any perceived wrong. One critic praised his ‘unpredictably’ when, in actual fact, he has always been predictable.
A foul-mouthed Corkonian with a chip like ‘Birham Wood’ on his shoulder; a fierce critic who was insulting to those under him; and an ego bigger than Mount Everest. The rights and wrongs of Saipan – the balls, the pitch, McCarthy – are all irrelevant to one inescapable fact... he refused to play for Ireland.
He left his team-mates to play the World Cup without him but, amazingly, all was forgiven and he was welcomed back as an assistant manager, earning three or four million euro from the FAI – and from the Ireland he had deserted in Saipan.
Keane who put his ‘ego’ before his country has a saint-like status in Cork and is praised by media followers when he should never have been allowed near an Irish soccer team.
JOHN KELLY, Clontarf, Dublin 3.
Irish-made... or not?
EACH morning I hear a radio advert promoting food produced in Ireland.
It states/suggests that there are currently products on the market that endeavour to mislead the consumer by giving their product an ‘Irish name’.
Thus they would mislead the consumer by suggesting the product is actually ‘Irish made’ and therefore a better food product than similar products brought in from abroad.
The closing words on the ad state that all products with the Irish label are of superior quality – however the very last line of the ad reads as follows: ‘...using local ingredients when available’.
By extension – when not available the ingredients are imported f’ and used to meet the ‘Irish-made goods’ promotion.
I am not a lawyer but surely this promotion is wrong?
A product which has ‘foreign ingredients’ cannot be factually promoted as an Irish product. Am I incorrect?
VINCENT LAVERY, Dalkey, Co. Dublin.
An insult to elderly
LAURA Grimes’s letter (Mail, Thursday) is an insult to the elderly. She seems to think that everyone who is 60-plus is finished. First off, the pension age is 66 and a lot of 60-plus people are still working.
I am 66 and do not class myself as someone who is only able to sit in a room playing snap, Scrabble or poker. I have a full day. I have so much to do I sometimes wonder how I had time to go to work.
I would admit that there are pensioners out there who are lonely. But it’s not just the over-60s, there are younger people lonely as well. If pensioners did rent their homes as Laura Grimes suggest, under Government rules, they would lose benefits.
The reason a lot of pensioners are lonely is because the Government has taken a lot of benefits away which means these lonely pensioners are afraid to go out as they cannot afford it.
All these so-called do-gooders like Laura Grimes never think of the damage that their suggestions can do because, it seems to me, that they just want to make a name for themselves. What age is Laura Grimes, is she moving into the commune that she suggests for others?
DAVID BURKE, Gorey, Co. Wexford.
Carbon tax folly
THERE is absolutely no point in burdening the population of Ireland with any further carbon taxes. Considering the size and population of the country, our output on a worldwide scale means absolutely nothing, especially when countries such as the USA and China, to mention just two, have no intention of reducing theirs.
In addition a world with a population of 7.5billion cannot possibly feed its people without the output of massive amounts of carbon and the use of fossil fuels.
It is also nonsensical to have the skies full of aeroplanes, with absolutely no consideration of this being taken into account in the overall global warming and emission of toxic substances.
One must also consider the fact that it is too late to reverse the problems.
So if we are really serious about slowing down the inevitable, let’s ban all non-necessary travel (including holidays such as cruises, flights and motor travel).
Eat Irish produce such as Irish lamb instead of flying it in from New Zealand, to mention one of hundreds of products being carted around the world needlessly.
And let’s put off the Christmas shopping trip to New York and stop fooling ourselves into thinking that overall we are getting bargains.
And what about those millions of Christmas lights burning up electricity created by fossil fuels? Politicians talking about global warming and carbon emissions are a little bit like an alcoholic giving a presentation on the dangers of alcoholism while taking swigs from a whisky bottle.
JOHN TWOMEY, Kilgarvan, Co. Kerry.