Taxpayers are deceived again on property tax

SO now we know: the property tax income isn’t going to be spent on local services after all.

This can’t have been a sudden, offthe-cuff decision. It must have been intended all along — which is the final proof, if one was ever needed, that one cannot believe a word that this Government says.

Once again the people have been deliberately deceived.

ANTHONY MANSER, Faithlegg, Co. Waterford. THE household charge, quickly followed by the property tax, was a bitter pill for the already hardpressed taxpayer to swallow.

But at least we were led to believe that the revenues generated would go toward paying for the essential local services which have been falling to bits all over the country ever since this manufactured ‘financial crisis’ began.

Now we learn that the funds — taken straight from our pockets — will disappear into the black hole of the Exchequer, and local services will once again be pushed to the back of the queue.

When will people realise that we’ve been taken for fools, and stop accepting every equivocating and obfuscating word that falls from the mouths of our political masters.

Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, Sinn Féin, etc. All of them the same, and none of them worth a damn.

JOHN DALY, Dublin 15.

Tax turncoats

GERRY Kelly (Letters) gets on the Synon and Conor Cruise O’Brien bandwagon in praising Edmund Burke. Burke was Irish by birth; English by domicile and an Anglo-Irish intellectual who did help Ireland in getting Penal Laws removed.

However, his greatness as an orator; his magnificent prose and defence of American liberty can’t obscure the fact that he was first and foremost a politician... and, at politics, he was a failure. A maverick politician like Conor Cruise O’Brien, he couldn’t relate to either the Whigs or Tories and spent his life outside the real source of power. Even worse was his attitude towards Ireland; in particular to Irish republicanism; this man supported American liberty and physical force to gain freedom helped by the forces of France, but opposed the United Irishmen and their aid from France.

Even worse, he supported the decadent, corrupt French monarchy as against the French revolution, which — excesses and all — created a new and better Europe, not dominated by kings and Divine rule.

I’m pretty certain he was not a supporter of Grattan’s Parliament and during the Act of Union debates which destroyed the Irish economy,

I feel he was at best ambivalent and certainly I do not recollect any fiery speeches against such a union.

JOHN P KELLY, Drumcondra, Dublin 9.

Call that impartial?

DISCUSSION of the ‘elite’ (Mail) reminds me of a conversation l had with an acquaintance of a former taoiseach. He told me the taoiseach in question was bombarded by some s enior counsel asking t o be appointed as judges — political appointments. Once on the bench, however, we are meant to believe these judges have been endowed with the wisdom of King Solomon, no matter how bizarre some of their judgments, which can be questioned only by other members of their elite.

On a lighter note, it’s a pity when retired US Judge Judy of TV fame came to visit us she wasn’t asked to join our judiciary, because of her obvious ability.

TONY MORIARTY, Dublin 6.

Sisterhood’s silence

AS a man, I’m deeply offended by attempts by some feminists to try to circumscribe the terms on which the abortion issue is discussed. The statistics show that the vast majority of abortion’s victims are young females. This is l argely because of China’s one-child policy. Ironically, this policy is enthusiastically supported by Planned Parenthood International. Not much soli- darity among the sisterhood there.

The sisters also seem strangely muted about last week’s horrific news of the death of a young woman following an abortion in the UK. No tears for this unfortunate victim of the abortion industry, it seems.

In Ireland we have the recent ridiculous spectacle of feminist crocodile tears in the Seanad when a senator seeks to inform us as to the exact nature of the procedure. Surely we all, including senators, need to make decisions on a fully-- informed basis. In that context Senators Walsh and O’Domhnaill are to be commended.

It seems that the pro-abortion lobby would rather proceed on the basis that ignorance is bliss.

In view of the robust Seanad debate on this issue, in contrast with the group-think nature of the Dáil proceedings, the wiser decision would be to abolish the latter and leave the Seanad alone.

ERIC CONWAY, Navan, Co. Meath.