Self-education is the antidote to follies of the right and left
ONE of the strategies of the left is to support every labour issue (wage demands, improvements in working conditions, 35-hour week, etc) no matter how unrealistic. It’s through these struggles that working people realise that the economic system as it stands can’t provide adequate living conditions for all – so the theory goes.
Whether this is true or not, my point is that even the left doesn’t seem able to come out and say what’s what. On the other side of the argument are those claiming that if you work hard you will succeed, economic growth has no ceiling, rich and poor is the natural order, etc, and other fairytales.
What both sides contend is that ordinary people must be mollycoddled as they don’t seem to have the ability to understand reality. Maybe the ‘intellectual left’ think they have to lead the masses towards the promised land; the other side want the masses to exist in some misconceived idyll.
As these strategies play out, the antidote to both is self-education with no compromise. Educate yourself on what’s going on.
LOUIS SHAWCROSS, Hillsborough, Co. Down.
Queen’s noble message
WAS the recently departed UK Queen among the greatest ever English-speaking evangelists?
The late Queen, very wisely, never gave the impression of the Bible being a book to bash anyone else with. As her coffin entered Westminster Abbey, an ornate cross was raised and the choir sang: ‘I am the resurrection and the life’. Many millions watched the funeral service and millions followed the Queen’s penetrating Christmas broadcasts.
As she said in one such broadcast: ‘God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a saviour with the power to forgive...’
JT HARDY, by email.
Russian threat
KNOWING the Russians like we do in Eastern Europe (I am Romanian), it is highly unlikely that anyone opposing the war in Ukraine has any chance of success.
My father fought against them in World War II – Romania changed sides to join the Allies in 1944 – and knew exactly how their minds work. During Russian attacks there were mountains of dead but they kept on coming, most of them drunk.
The first to be sent in were the minorities, along with political officers to penetrate enemy defences at any cost. These were followed by the elite units (guards, rifle and tank divisions).
The atrocities committed by Russian troops in occupied territories were indescribable – and trains full of Russian wounded, plus doctors and nurses, were executed for ‘defeatism’ by the NKVD (later the KGB), together with whatever families they had.
So Russian leaders’ disregard for the life of their soldiers is nothing new. There is a ‘master plan’ and they will follow it regardless. If analysts presume that has changed since the last World War, they are wrong. Such contempt for the rest of the world, for any values and for the lives of their own people makes them unpredictable and lethal. Wake up to the threat before it is too late. GEORGE ARDEN,
by email. ... NOW everyone realises why Vladimir Putin didn’t attend the COP26 environment summit in
Glasgow last November. He wants to destroy the world, not save it.
TERRY KENDALL, by email.
Sign of the times
IN 1995 a minor leak of budget information resulted in the resignation of a junior minister.
In 2022 it appears the leak has become a tool of government used in the main by spin doctors to dampen public expectations. Different standards...
GERRY CROSBIE, Ballsbridge, Dublin.