Government must cut fuel tax – it’s not rocket science
WITH Ireland in crisis, it is depressing to hear the Coalition boasting of billions offered in help, but persisting in band-aid solutions that are always too little and too late.
To then witness the way Sinn Féin is still preoccupied with a border poll and a United Ireland and Corbynesque economics is as bad as the Government’s bandaid solutions.
As Wexford TD Verona Murphy so clearly explained, the Government has gained extra tax from increases in fuel prices. Everything moves and it is not rocket science to see that the temporary elimination of such tax for three months, until the Budget, would benefit motorists getting to work, truckers moving products, and householders getting heat.
Secondly, helping Ukrainian refugees is admirable but a nolimit policy is certain to cause financial and social problems.
We have over 33,000 Ukrainian refugees here already, with obviously escalating costs. They deserve help, and a pragmatic and realistic solution would be to spend the Overseas Aid budget at €750million on these refugees, who now represent an overseas aid crisis on our own doorstep.
These are two practical financial steps that no sensible person could dispute but the Government will not do anything that reduces its tax revenue, while Sinn Féin and the Left will never offend Do Gooders Inc or populist opinion, forgetting that charity begins at home.
JOHN P. KELLY, Clontarf.
Rugby’s real test
I WONDER if the real reason the four home nations in rugby decided to tour the southern hemisphere was to find out how bad their first-choice teams are.
The French don’t have to travel anywhere to know how good their team is, and the poor Italians don’t have to move outside their own border. It is just as well that the four others won the second tests, or their coffers would be feeling the pinch with a third dead rubber test.
LIAM POWER, Co. Louth.
Phone pest ploy
THE telephone rang one morning and an unknown caller asked if I’d had an accident in the past six months. I said yes, but I’m all right now because the wife has changed my nappy. The line went dead and he didn’t call back.
MICK GRAY, by email.
Supermarket heroes
MARIE Helvin’s wail that she is so broke she ‘may have to work in a supermarket’ (Mail) belittles supermarket employees. We all owe a great debt of thanks to those who worked in food retail outlets during the pandemic.
S. JAMES, by email.
Show some respect
THE sight of Boris Johnson leaving the House of Commons to calls of ‘goodbye Boris’ was distressing.
For MPs to sink to ridiculing a man who held his nerve through Brexit, the Covid pandemic and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is beyond comprehension.
M. E. CHAPPELL, by email.
... BRITAIN is starting to wake up and remember how odious, smarmy, overbearing, uncaring, arrogant and dangerous the Tory party is, with the (imminent?) departure of Boris Johnson.
Ireland had 800 years of Boris Johnsons and Jacob Rees-Moggs to contend with. A taste of your own medicine, lads?
TED KENNY, Dún Laoghaire.