Farmers are not going to save the planet alone
IT isn’t just up to farmers to save the planet. The everyday consumer has a major role to play as well.
It is time to wake up and realise that if it is in all of our interest to save the planet, then ‘carbon offsetting’ is the only way to go.
The everyday consumer who lives in a house or apartment, drives a car, rides a bicycle and eats both vegetables and meat in their diet needs to do carbon offsetting because all of the above have carbon footprints along with every household item.
Stop blaming farmers as we are only one spoke in a very large wheel that needs to take action.
Now ask what are science journal Lancet and vegans doing to protect our planet as individuals? Beside blowing hot air?
Are they doing any carbon offsetting in their own lives?
We can all make this world a better place and people must be fed nourishing food to regenerate their bodies to cope with lost energy.
Their sensational headlines will only fuel eating disorders which are already at historic levels in young people.
These people with a different agendas promoting their own products or name often by fear tactics must be exposed.
My proof to young people of the quality of food that is produced on the farm is that they need never be in fear of farming produce because their parents, grandparents and even their great-grandparents relied on these products every day and lived a long and healthy lives. I rest my case. MICHAEL FLYNN, Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Waterford.
Patients come first
SPEAKING as a retired nurse, back in the 1970s when I started my career in nursing, in addition to carrying out our primary tasks in looking after patients we also undertook a great deal of hard manual tasks (which included the cleaning of the hospital )
Like most nurses, we chose that path because we cared about people and not just for the money. MARY FIELDS,
by email.
Mugging the taxpayer
WHEN we hear about a capital over-run by a Government department we are not, generally, surprised.
It seems Government departments have an ethos of sloppy accounting.
The latest fiasco, the National Children’s Hospital, however, beggars belief.
An estimated price (it could not have been costed properly) was presented for approval.
Maybe, someone with half a wit should have noticed deficiencies in content, either structurally or financially and should have copped on that the price was too low for what we were being promised.
Or was it the same ‘accountants’ who suggested to the government ten years ago to bail out the banks without any passing on of that bailout to the ordinary borrowers who were, through their taxes, footing that bail out?
Or, who suggested that financial gamblers aka bond-holders should get their stake back for backing losers?
Or, who do not seem to be penalised for not doing their homework but retire on exorbitant pensions?
No quantity surveyor with any knowledge of major development costings, no planner with any savvy, would have accepted plans that were so off the mark that they would cost over twice the ‘quoted’ price.
No working accountant worth his salt would recommend such drivel as the original costings appear to have been – though those who missed the activities of the perpetrators of the Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society debacle seem to have managed to do just that!
If the minister was so badly advised, the advisers should be held responsible.
If outside agencies were responsible for deceiving him, they should carry the financial can.
To most onlookers, we, the ordinary taxpayer, have been taken for a ride, again! Not this time. Heads must roll! Stop the work until it is sorted out.
JOHN COLGAN, Dublin 3.