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An Phoblacht welcomes readers’ letters. Write in Irish or English, 200 words maximum. Letters may be edited for brevity. Send your letters to [email protected]. No attachments please

RTÉ’s British Army signal

THE British Army has sent the signal out and is waiting for Irishmen to follow. Well, that’s according to the 6 o’clock news I watched on RTÉ 1 this week.
RTÉ News, not content on reporting the increasing level of Irish lads joining the British Army, has instead decided to advertise for them by declaring it’s not necessarily for ‘queen and country’ but in fact for ‘excitement and adventure’.
I hope some other anxious young lads watch Sky News before deciding on this exciting career path. Updates of the body count (death toll) are recorded daily for everyone to see. Some ‘adventure’.
The Irish Times was also keen to join in with the British Army recruitment drive. Advertising the increase as a “centuries-old tradition”, the Irish Times fails to refer to the centuries-old resistance by Irishmen.  
Maybe RTÉ could report the abuses that this army has carried out throughout the world and is continuing to carry out. Or even just give a non-partisan view by providing the same free advertisement to other armies that are fighting this imperialist power, just as our oppressed people have done so, and done so for centuries.
COLUM RADFORD,
Cork City

Tom Parlon’s hypocrisy

WHEN it comes to hypocrisy, can anything beat the Irish political and business establishment?
This week on the national airwaves the Irish people were treated to the hilarious bleatings of Tom Parlon, pleading for state intervention to save the construction industry from the vagaries of market forces.
Tom Parlon, lest anyone forget, is former president of the right-wing Progressive Democrats. He is also former Minister of State at the Department of Finance with responsibility for the Office of Public Works (OPW), who in that position brazenly posed for press photographers with a gavel as he sold off public property to the private sector.
After the voters of Laois/Offaly unceremoniously dumped him out of public office, he was rewarded by his property developer and builder friends by being appointed Director General of the Irish Construction Industry Federation.
Parlon has shamelessly called for state intervention in the market to help the big builders now that the market has readjusted itself. But where were Parlon and the CIF when others called for state intervention to cap house prices, the extortionate rates of which meant hundreds of thousands of Irish workers could not afford a home of their own or else got into serious debt in an effort to do so?
SEOSAIMH
O TUATHAIL,
Baile Átha Cliath 3

Madness

THERE appears to be a new madness and severe bout of amnesia deeply set in Government circles.
PD TD Fiona O’Malley was on Newstalk’s lunchtime show last Thursday bemoaning the ‘out-of-control public sector wage bill’ and arguing that it needs to be brought under control. Who does she think has been in power for the last 11 years and therefore responsible? It’s not just the PDs, though. The Greens were discussing the reintroduction of water rates due to future ‘predicted’ water shortages. All it has done is rain all summer and last summer. One solution which they appear oblivious to was actually highlighted in this paper a few weeks ago, proposing huge water storage projects nationwide.
The last issue is that all Government cheerleaders have been claiming that the slowdown or recession is due to the world economy and therefore out of our hands and not the fault of the Government. By this logic, Fianna Fáil et al were not responsible for the Celtic Tiger as the world economy had seen consistent growth for over a decade.
The real fact, though, is that they ARE responsible as they failed to see and prepare for the harder times and openly boasted that they had created the most open economy in the world which has now cost us dearly along with the destruction of indigenous industry.
BARRY HEALY,
Droichead Nua,
Kildare

Bailing out the banks

THE US Government has stepped in to bail out the two biggest mortgage companies in the US. Some time ago, the British Government bailed out a huge bank in Britain. Over 20 years our own Government stepped in to help out the old PMPA.
All of these companies made huge profits on the backs of the man or woman in the street and then reaped their greedy rewards. But when they lose, who comes along to help out? We, the people.
I have said this many times before: it is time for these huge money-making machines - the banks and insurance companies - to be nationalised and nationalised NOW.
PAUL DORAN,
Clondalkin,
Dublin 22