Micheál’s crude plan to keep Sinn Féin at bay
GOING into 2019 we have Fianna Fáil leader Micky (slippery) Martin and Fine Gael trailblazer Leo (slick) Varadkar resembling an upper-class couple having a heavy adulterous affair.
In public they’re screeching as if they’d pull each other’s hair out, but when the curtains are pulled, the courtship moves into a pleasure zone where both emerge with grins of approval.
What I’m referring to is Micheál’s pre-Christmas gift to Leo, a reaffirming of their Confidence-andSupply arrangement, and so the back-scratching goes on until someone finally opens the bedroom door and makes the amazing discovery that its Joe and Annie public that’s being shafted all along.
The Fianna Fáil leader made a big fuss about the arrangement being in the country’s best interest, pointing out that it had nothing to do with self-interest. Well if that were the case, we’d be handing out medals to Fianna Fáil for outstanding bravery while serving in the trenches.
It’s more of a battening-down of the hatches between like-minded suits to keep the riffraff at bay. In this case the riffraff is Sinn Féin along with its detestable policies of making the wealthy pay more tax to fund public house building, a decent health service that does not distinguish between rich or poor, and being able to put food on the table without having to queue up at a soup kitchen.
When Micheál Martin took over the Fianna Fáil leadership from Brian Cowen, the new leader took
note of the emerging threat from Sinn Féin, and immediately began the name calling, added to the tirade of false accusations against Gerry Adams, until he exhausted himself.
His establishment colleague Enda Kenny rowed in alongside him with a venomous torrent of political unproven claptrap, but still the Sinn Féin vote kept rising steadily.
So, Micheál, your ludicrous claim of your Confidence-and-Supply Agreement with Leo being in any way patriotic is pure rubbish.
The conundrum you’re presenting as being in the interest of the country is no more than self-interest in keeping the status quo as it presently stands. It’s got nothing to do with the uncertainties of Brexit, but it has a lot to do with
keeping Mary Lou McDonald at arm’s length. What hope is there for change in 2019?
JAMES WOODS
Gort an Choirce, Dún na nGall.
Josepha’s hypocrisy
I NOTE that Minister Josepha Madigan claims that ‘she does not believe that her faith and politics are at odds’ after she supported the campaign for repeal of the Eighth Amendment and the legalisation of abortion up to 12 weeks here without restriction.
I cannot accept that Ms Madigan does not know that according to her faith abortion is forbidden. After all the Fifth Commandment – ‘thou shall not kill’ – applies to all Christian faiths, and by what stretch of the imagination can the killing of an unborn baby in abor-
tion and adherence to that commandment be reconciled? She further states that ‘I don’t think I have the right to impose my decision on anybody else’, seemingly forgetting that it required her Yes vote to enable abortion to be legalised. Therefore, she is partly responsible for the outcome.
It would be far less hypocritical if those who profess to follow a particular faith would admit that in certain decisions they take they are completely at odds with that faith.
That would be much more honest and in keeping with their actions.
MARY STEWART,
Donegal town.
Life and death in Ireland
THE juxtaposition of Irish life and death is not simply about living and dying – it has become so mystifying as to make us shake our heads in wonder.
When the Tuam baby graveyard was discovered, I was in favour of an investigation, but not to the extent of digging up the little mites to show us their bones.
That is a ghoulish prospect which will offer no dignity to the babies or their parents.
It is more an exercise of a ‘superior’ liberal solution of showing us
the dead, in the same manner innocent Germans were dragged along to see the Nazi death camps. We are not responsible for Tuam, those who were are probably dead. If some are still living and guilty of crimes, let them be pursued through civilised means and courts. The exhumations are to take place in 2019, the newspapers said.
The liberal agenda of ‘outrage’ always seeks to demonise what went before without making much positive influence with its power in their own time.
Blaming and shaming without real responsibility is big in Leo’s government, with support from the other parties in the Dáil.
On the same day I read of the Tuam plans, I also read that Holles Street maternity hospital will be open for abortion referrals on January 7, 2019. Is this scenario of termination any better than holding grudges over how and why deceased children were buried in suspected mass graves in Tuam? Do we get to vote on future action over whether to disturb the dead in Galway? No.
Big on the grand empty gestures are Leo Varadkar and Minister for Children Katherine Zappone, but they are very short on sensitivity.
ROBERT SULLIVAN,
Bantry, Co. Cork.