What’s the human cost of cut-price uniforms?
I FIND it very disturbing that supermarkets are selling school uniforms so cheaply.
It raises a number of issues for me: are the workers being exploited to produce a uniform for such low cost? What are they being paid and under what conditions are they working?
With our generous benefit system and our school uniform allowance, I find it hard to believe that there are families here who are so poor that they have to avail of these offers.
As a relatively wealthy country how can we be allowed be drawn into such exploitation?
J.M. SMITH, Kilmacthomas, Co. Waterford.
Murphy’s lawless
I AM amazed that a charge of unlawful imprisonment was brought against Paul Murphy and his Jobstown co-demonstrators/ bullies. This clearly wasn’t a case of false imprisonment, although there might have been a case for hijacking.
Whatever it was, the legal case that followed was a shocking waste of money. The way the gardaí came out of it was very disconcerting.
I really wish that the gardaí did not get themselves involved in these controversies – it only gives these demonstrators future ammunition.
What I can’t understand is why, and especially with all the media attention given to bullying these days, was there not more made of the troll-like remarks made on the day. If Joan Burton was subjected to this kind of abuse on Facebook there would be an outcry, but yet it seems to be perfectly acceptable in public.
It’s amazing to me that a member of Dáil Éireann can lead a bunch of highly excitable acolytes, let them subject a fellow TD to a unmerciful torrent of abuse, and after all this emerge as the victor.
Not only is this amazing, but after a expensive court case he wants to further undermine the police force of this country by having an enquiry into them.
The Paul Murphy faction seem to want to bring down the gardaí, for what reasons I do not know, as every country needs law enforcement.
I am sure that it would make their handiwork at the likes of Jobstown a lot easier if the gardaí weren’t around.
The strange thing is that, after all this demonstrating, Paul Murphy and his minions haven’t made Irish Water any better, or any more stable.
All they’ve done is got rid of a charge, and the true implications of their action will not be seen for years.
In the meantime Paul Murphy’s career will go from strength to strength. CHARLIE JOHNS, Carlow.
The panto scrap
THERE was a time not so long ago, when Conor McGregor really ‘got my goat’ for want of a better saying.
His brashness, his shameful derogatory remarks that belittled his opponents and their places of birth, and worst of all, having the cheek to go into a boxing ring – or octagon as its referred to among followers of that particular sport – wearing them wee tight yokes.
However, in light of recent times and the route he has taken, I have to say that his flamboyance has grown on me, despite my objections to his utterly outrageous antics.
I must give him a degree of respect for challenging Floyd Mayweather, another little man who earned an awful lot of money through the use of his as-yet-unequalled talents at competing in the boxing ring.
What annoys me about Mayweather’s career is the fact that, having earned $340million – what amounts to a colossal amount of money in any man’s language – he’s now scraping the change from the bottom of the barrel, and has come out of retirement to fight an opponent who epitomises the wealth that bling, bluff and showboating brings to the table.
If he is guilty of wasting that amount of money on high living, then Floyd deserves a good hiding outside the ring – never mind inside it.
As far as I’m concerned Mayweather is over the hill, but whether McGregor is crafty enough to walk the walk, and beat a man with both feet on a downward slope is anyone’s guess.
Because boxing and sport are only side issues; it’s the millions that both are going to bank after pummelling the public with trash talk that’s guaranteed to pay big dividends, when ordinary Joe Soap dips his hand into his pocket and extracts his hard-earned dosh to pay for the privilege of watching what may turn out to be the best pantomime of 2017.
JAMES WOODS, Gort an Choirce, Dún na nGall.
Heartbreaking choice
SHOULD the parents of baby Charlie Gard be careful what they wish for?
I shed a tear listening to a caller to BBC Radio 4’s Any Answers relate how she battled for the life of her severely disabled baby boy to be saved.
Her son is now a teenager, no longer on life support, and so she cannot let him go, despite him being conscious of nothing but relentless pain.
Reflecting on her decision to keep her son alive, she admits: ‘We did it for us, not for him.’ KEN WARREN,
Devon.