Salons vital to good health of the vulnerable

I HAVE just received a call from my hairdresser offering me a booking on their waiting list for the end of June.

My last appointment, she reminded me, was Christmas Eve when they closed their doors.

This is a small local business and the women there have children and mortgages as well as rent and other expenses involved in running a business.

She told me that they would never make up the financial loss.

The thing is that most hairdressing outlets are owned and run by a woman or a couple of women, not a large company. They cannot carry the loss.

The figures show them to be a safe environment. Like other small outlets they have removed seats and partitioned the premises, meaning less footfall.

Certificates of training in Covid prevention are visible on the wall. Customers are required to fill forms showing they are Covid free and easily contactable for tracing purposes.

Hairdressers are safer than even the best-run supermarkets and provide essential services for a large section of our community.

For example, older people living alone can have interaction safely. This is essential for mental wellbeing. As a retired counsellor I often recommended clients visit their hairdresser for the calming interaction of having their hair washed with a gentle massage.

Also, for those receiving medical care that affects the hair, for example chemotherapy, a professional cut that will disguise hair loss is an important part of treatment — mentally and physically.

Anything that will delay the signs of hair loss, especially for women, is an essential service. GRÁINNE KENNY, Dún Laoghaire.

Jab clamour is callous

THE clamour from the gardaí, teachers, SNAs and other unions to have their members prioritised for vaccination demonstrates that they don’t care how many people in the older, at-risk groups die, as long as they are at the front of the queue for the reduced number of available jabs. MICHAEL LENNON,

Dublin.

US abused the law

JOHN CAREY (Letters, March 31), questions my statement (Letters, March 29) that ‘US involvement in Indochina was illegal’ and cites Article 51 of the United Nations Charter in claiming the ‘US acted within international law when it assisted South Vietnam against communist aggression’.

Both the Vietnam and Indochina wars, first involving French attempts to prevent the decolonisation of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from 1946 to 1954, and then involving the US from 1955 to 1975, resulted in the most serious breaches of the UN Charter, the Geneva Convention, and other international human rights conventions.

These two permanent members of the UN Security Council abused their UN veto powers to prevent them being held accountable for their actions.

These totally unjustified wars led to the deaths of more than four million people, and involved the use of torture, chemical weapons, most notably with agent orange, and carpet bombing.

All were contributing factors to the subsequent genocide in Cambodia.

The UN itself was in breach of its own charter by continuing to recognise the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot after he was overthrown in 1979, right up to 1991.

These wars did irreparable damage to the rule of international law and to the role of the UN in maintaining international peace.