Rory needs to do all his talking on the course
PLEASE do us all a favour and stop shoving down our throats what Rory McIlroy will or won’t do over the next few months. Who cares?
We all know that his personal life history had its own calamities and his recent golf exploits are nothing to write home about.
Rory must be the best friend the bookies have had for years. How many times were we promised great things only for the poor wretched punters to be let down!
As far as Jordan Spieth is concerned, he does his talking on the golf course; he is so good at it, and a perfect gentleman to boot.
S. HOLLAND, Dublin 9.
Fianna Fáil hypocrisy
A SAYING that I had heard earlier in the day sprang to mind as I listened to former tánaiste Mary Coughlan being interviewed on Raidió na Gaeltachta about the non-impact that, in her opinion, Independents have had on the political sphere.
The ‘saying’ went like this: ‘The poor practices of the present become the tribunals of the future.’ The sorry fact is that the likes of Mary Coughlan, along with all Fianna Fáil political representatives from the Celtic Tiger era, are blind and deaf to the reality that they created and sustained a culture of tolerance to a level of greed that tore the heart out of communities who are still sorely hurting today.
Mary’s insistence that Independents have done nothing is partly true. However, there are many well-meaning and honest Independent councillors and TDs who work tirelessly for the people, and it’s an insult to anyone’s intelligence for Mary Coughlan to suggest otherwise while making her bland assumptions.
JAMES WOODS, Gort an Choirce, Dún na nGall.
They’re all overpaid!
THE problem with the gender pay gap isn’t that women should be paid as much as men.
It’s that the amount women – such as those in RTÉ and other areas of the public sector seeking parity with their male colleagues – are paid is far too much as it is, given what they do.
It’s not like any of them are curing cancer or HIV. They are not teachers or social workers and these days it’s hard to know on what basis they can legitimately claim to be journalists, given that they seem to just be presenters.
The problem is that both genders at these levels are overpaid and both need to take a pay cut.
And while we’re at it, how many of these people on these obscene salaries, in places such as RTÉ and other areas of the public sector, pay PAYE tax on their full income? How many are paid as ‘contractors’ on clever agreements where they get all the comfort of the public sector without any of the sacrifices those on the front line make?
Instead of focusing on a nonissue gender pay cap, perhaps it would be better if a spotlight was shone onto the tax arrangements certain layers of staff in the public sector above a certain grade seem to be able to avail of, but aren’t available to those lower down the pay scale.
But this won’t happen as politicians couldn’t take the risk that light might also accidentally shine onto how much they make from tax-free expenses and second homes and donations – so instead we’re left with the strawman summer argument over a gender pay gap between genders whose talents are both overrated. DESMOND FITZGERALD,
Canary Wharf, London. ...THE RTÉ gender-pay-gap furore has to be up there with the most ingenious red herrings of all time. Is this not a case of some grossly overpaid people complaining that other grossly overpaid colleagues are getting more than them?
As a TV licence payer, I am less concerned with how many overpaid female newsreaders or show hosts in RTÉ earn more, or less, than some of their male colleagues do, or vice versa, as I am with the spectre of yet another TV licence fee hike to subsidise it.
If there is discord because some people of both genders are overpaid more than other people of both genders, the best solution for us (licence fee payers) would be to discontinue overpaying the lot of them and remunerate them all equally. RTÉ cannot expect us to subsidise farcical pay claims with increases in what is an already exorbitant TV licence fee.
EUGENE CASSIDY, Co. Cavan.
Protect the unborn
CONGRATULATIONS to RTÉ Radio for the very informative documentary ‘Polar Opposites’.
The programme dealt with the subject of abortion in Iceland. It was quite balanced, but spinechilling in many ways. One couldn’t help but be disturbed by the irrational rationalisations of those supporting abortion, and the almost total lack of empathy for the unborn.
One of the most alarming contributions was from a feminist lecturer who stated that the unborn had no entitlements while in the womb, so abortion was legitimate right up to birth. As we know from the experience in the US and UK, so-called restrictive abortion regimes never work out that way.
Abortion on demand inevitably becomes the norm. We are lucky in Ireland that we can learn from the tragic experiences of these other countries. How wise our parents were to insert the Eight Amendment into our Constitution.
ERIC CONWAY, by email.