Save energy and switch off lights
We are still living in land of the hypocrite
Sunday November 09 2008
Sir -- I wish to make a suggestion to save energy now that Christmas is coming and we are going to see houses everywhere decorated with those, in my opinion, awful lights.
I would like to see them banned, but I do not wish to be a spoil sport, so I suggest only turning them on for a couple of hours before children's bedtime -- surely we adults do not need them on all night. Perhaps they should be banned until the 12 days of Christmas, as this would save on energy.
Sir -- Having read the lesbian feature in your Life magazine (November 2, 2008) I would like to make a point relating to it. A lot of the women felt Ireland hasn't the strongest lesbian community and thus there is a lot of ignorance and stereotyping surrounding it; plus they all agreed they despised stereotypes of sapphic women.
Fair enough, I agree Ireland can be intolerant and conservative but then I read one of the lesbian women saying: "There's a lot of one night stands with gay guys; whereas with lesbians it's a little bit different". Now being a hetreosexual male, I'm impartial, but this sounds like big time stereotyping and ignorance of homosexual men and I thought the article was designed to open people's minds and to help eradicate the ignorance and stereotyping of homosexuality.
As Oscar Wilde once said "We live in the native land of the hypocrite!"
Carlow
Sir -- Last Sunday, your columnist John Drennan made the following, rather strange assertion:
"In contrast, this fiscal bucket of dogs' vomit has busted up Cowen's authority to such an extent he even had to bow the knee to David Begg over the one percent levy. Who says the public sector trade unions are no longer running the country."
Given that almost 60 per cent of union members are private sector workers and, consequently, that public sector unions are in the minority within the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, it is hard to discern the link between Mr Drennan's assertion and actual, everyday reality. As the old saying goes 'comment is free, but the facts are sacred.'
Irish Congress of Trade Unions, D1.
Sir -- Everyone should stop crying and whining about Obama, as he is just one man. Obama can only do so much as one man. All of the complainers should grow up and get a life.
No winner would have pleased everyone. These are just the times in which we live. If we could all see past the hostility for one another, then we might be able to solve the problems that we all face.
Or, we can all stand around on street corners, and discuss it with our neighbours.
To quote Bob Dylan, the times they are a changin'.
Ennis, Co, Clare
Sir -- and now we have to endure four years of Charlie Bird reporting from America!
K Nolan,
Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim
Sir -- I would like to back Frank White and his letter of the week (Sunday Independent, November 2, 2008). He was like myself who had to leave home because we had nothing and de Valera had nothing to give us. On a weary winter's morning me and my mates from Kilkee Co Clare headed for Holyhead and left behind us households with no running water, no toilets.
If you were unfortunate to be hospitalised, there was neither money, nor transport for people to visit you. That's how it was. I hope Andrea Byrne takes notice of how lucky she is today.
My generation of Irishmen worked in England helping our homeland. We earned our wages not like some people today.
Now we have people doing their Christmas shopping in New York. I conclude in hoping we get over this recession quickly.
College Green, Ennis, Co Clare
Sir -- Even those who do not believe that the early human embryo is a full human being would sacrifice the embryo in the interests of advancing biomedical research only with misgivings. Many people, even some who believe that the embryo has full human status, override their ethical worries with the belief that human embryonic stem cell research (HESCR), which entails the destruction of human embryos, would quickly produce cures for a variety of human diseases. But most people don't realise that an alternative stem cell approach to curing disease is now available that is just as promising as the HESCR approach but which poses no ethical problems. I refer to induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSC). And, of course, adult stem cell research, which is likewise free from ethical problems, is also available and is producing very promising results.
IPSC are a very recent and remarkable scientific breakthrough. IPSC are made by genetically reprogramming ordinary adult cells and thereby transforming them into stem cells. They are proving to be equivalent to embryonic stem cells in every respect tested. Ian Wilmutt, the creator of Dolly the sheep, is so enthused by this new technology that he has turned away entirely from embryonic stem cell research to use IPSC.
We no longer have to pin hopes of curing disease solely on the ethically-fraught embryonic stem cell approach. We can therefore no longer be persuaded by the embryonic stem cell promise of being the only reasonable chance of curing many diseases in the short term as a sufficient reason for starting up HESCR in Ireland. I do admit, of course, that there are certain developmental studies that could be best done scientifically using human embryos but such a relatively small advantage would hardly outweigh the serious ethical misgivings.
Attention is often drawn to the 2005 recommendations of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction (CAHR) and the 2008 Irish Council for Bioethics (ICB) in favour of conducting HESCR in Ireland. The CAHR recommendation was certainly not informed by the very recent IPSC breakthrough and the opinion of the ICB was not fully informed.
Incidentally, about the same time as these two bodies issued their recommendations, the ICB also published survey results of public opinion. In a scientifically conducted poll in 2005, 57 per cent of those surveyed said they believed human life begins at conception. In submissions solicited by the ICB in 2008, 73 per cent of replies said they would be against the importation of human embryonic stem cell lines for scientific research in Ireland.
These surveys give us the opinions of the Irish taxpayers -- the people who will fund HESCR in our universities if it is given the go ahead, and who also fund CAHR and ICB.
Sir -- As one who enjoys Sunday afternoons walks along Dublin Bay, nothing compares with the joys of a pleasant ramble along the Bull Wall from Clontarf to Sutton or a bracing sea breeze in your face as you stroll from Booterstown to Dun Laoghaire. Recently, one could even enjoy a summertime swim in Seapoint before pollution robbed us of this pleasure.
The purpose of this letter is to expose another form of robbery by Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Council. We returned to our car to discover we had been clamped in Booterstown public carpark. As regular users of this hitherto free Sunday facility, we were completely unaware due to inadequate signage that this had now become a 24 hour seven-day pay and display zone.
It is ironic and morally wrong that one can be hit with a savage €120 fine for using what is usually an almost empty carpark on quiet Sunday afternoons.
R Kavanagh,
Dublin 6W
