Crisis has me pining for the good old days
I WAS in a supermarket this week, and I could not buy even one roll of toilet paper due to the mad panic-buying re Covid-19. The same was true in my quest for the cheaper dishwasher tablets.
Whether there is a pressing and constant issue regarding toilet use and dirty delph, as a feature of the disease, has not yet been established or pointed out to us.
Lack of toilet tissue was never a problem when I was a kid. We always cut the pages of a well-read newspaper into five-inch squares – little holes punched in one corner with a nail, threaded with string, and hung on the door of the semi-outside toilet.
This paper was of a very fine, non-scratchy variety, so we had softness for a tanner – sixpence in Victorian money.
Needs must, as back then it was only posh people and priests who could afford the real thing. I’m not certain it even existed back then, because I never saw any up to the time I went to England. Ah, the good old days. ROBERT SULLIVAN,
Bantry, Co. Cork.
Enjoy the silence
MY wife and I went to the cinema to see The Invisible Man. More like The Invisible Audience. There were only eight people in there, including us.
We were able to watch the movie without the rustling of crisp packets and sweet wrappers or phones going off.
That evening we went to our local pub-restaurant for a meal. We enjoyed it without unruly children or people shouting over each other. Bliss!
My message to those selfish people who have suddenly discovered personal hygiene and who have cleared the supermarket shelves of toilet rolls, pasta and hand sanitisers: stay at home – we are enjoying the silence.
T.W. GLOVER, by email.
Crazy decision
IT might appear inconceivable that, immediately after identifying an in-situ case of Covid-19, the British government would allow the Cheltenham Race Meeting to proceed.
But it did, and apart from possible acceleration of potentially the worst pandemic of recent centuries, the message sent out is appalling. It appears the Sport of Kings, usurped by a modern elite aristocracy, with obscene displays of wealth, power and contempt, will take precedence over the health, welfare and livelihood of lesser echelons of society.
Boris Johnson was made by his steely determination to ‘get Brexit done’. He may be just as quickly undone by what appears abject capitulation to ‘real power’ in the land as revealed by his fawning decision to let the horses run.
The concern and steely determination so necessary in those who purport to guard the health and welfare of Irish people will be sorely tested and exposed by imposition, or otherwise, of mandatory self-isolation on the irresponsible, thoughtless and selfish betrayers of Irish health and safety, who wish to return from an identified location of the dreaded virus. We are told that to beat this pandemic, we must all pull together. Those who recklessly travelled to Cheltenham have already pulled the other way.
PADRAIC NEARY, Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo.
Syrian concerns
THE Syrian White Helmets act as a convenient conduit for Western funding to terrorist groups fighting in Syria. If the White Helmets were legitimate they would operate in all areas of Syria and not just in areas under the control of al-Nusra.
The White Helmets were founded in 2014 – one of the co-founders being the now deceased British military intelligence officer James Le Mesurier.
And then what happens? In the latter stages of the Syrian conflict the UK offers asylum to relatives and members of the White Helmets. Yet in the last 20 years we’ve had British forces around the world supposedly fighting to eradicate terrorist networks, when their own UK government is welcoming terrorists into Britain as part of one of the largest terrorist networks ever created.
LOUIS SHAWCROSS, Hillsborough, Co. Down.