We’re not as appalled as naughty RTÉ stars think!
RTÉ is at its best-before-date. We have Miriam O’Callaghan telling the nation she ‘will be forever sorry’ for flouting Covid rules, while the rest of the newsroom party-goers also self-flagellate on our screens with even sadder faces. Can it be possible folk like this believe they are national influencers, and we’re out here hanging on their every word?
Think again, Miriam and friends, it matters not a trawneen to us ‘ordinary’ citizens what you do.
As you all revel in the mistaken belief there is now also even a little whiff of cordite emanating from under the performance make-up, boys and girls, hurry back to your self-congratulatory bubble which you convince yourself is real.
We’ll try not to repeat your mistakes of being naughty and having got caught out. ROBERT SULLIVAN,
Bantry, Co. Cork.
Football’s tragedies
MY FATHER Vernon Gunner, a keen amateur footballer playing centre forward and centre half, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and pre-senile dementia. He died aged 60 in 1981.
To see him deteriorate in such a manner was heart-wrenchingly sad. In the late 1990s, I read a newspaper article about Scottish footballer Billy McPhail going to a benefits tribunal claiming his trade had caused his dementia.
Though his case failed, it struck a chord. I had watched my father play and remember days when a header from him sounded like a cannon shot. I started to think there was a link between heading a ball and early-onset dementia.
With the 2002 coroner’s verdict that Jeff Astle’s dementia was an industrial injury linked to heading footballs, I thought it would only be a matter of time before the matter was tackled. How wrong I was! The attitudes of the UK Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) and the Football Association (FA) in Britain are pathetic. The attitude seems to be: let’s kick the problem into the long grass and, ironically, keep our heads down and it might go away.
RICHARD GUNNER, by email.
... READING about Burnley footballer Jimmy Robson’s battle with dementia is especially sad for those like me who supported the club in the 1950s and 1960s.
Of the 1959/60 team, seven have been affected by dementia. In those days, the ball was heavier so it is a surprise the effects of heading haven’t been recognised sooner. It’s time for the PFA to step in and support the generation who created the environment for today’s football millionaires.
JAMES WIGNALL, by email.
Money talks
ISN’T it surprising that there has been little mention of the money spent on the US presidential election? I wonder if that was because the Democratic Party reportedly received more than the Republican Party, confirming it as the party of the elite and the rich.
Are there no l i mits to the amounts political parties there can receive during an election campaign? If not, what chance has any party if it cannot come up with millions of dollars?
It is certainly a miracle that President Trump managed to get over 73million votes with the imbalance in funding and also the support given to the Democrats by the media.
It’s no harm to point out once again that the cry from the Democrats for democracy to be accepted rings rather hollow in light of the fact that they did not accept the vote in the 2016 election and did absolutely nothing but try to get rid of President Trump since the day he was elected.
I wonder how long the fawning over Joe Biden will last when it is established just what his policies are, as they certainly were not sussed out during the campaign while he hid in the basement and was not subjected to robust questioning, as President Trump constantly was.