A couple of years ago, along with a great team of people on a teaching project from Ireland, I decided to organise a multi-cultural night in Hanoi. It comprised the usual: music, poetry and whatever you’re having yourself.
used to go to a local music shop where the owner let me play the piano upstairs. My initial communication with him was as a stranger, carefully using Google translate to get my message across.
However, the day after I first arrived, he had a fan over the piano for me to cool down and apples placed on a table for me to eat. He didn’t know who I was and didn’t seem to care – these were gestures built on trust. No matter what I did, he wouldn’t take money off me, so I opted to buy fruit and cakes instead for himself and his family.
After a while, I started bringing other nationalities to the shop and it became a kind of a rehearsal club, so we decided to put on a cultural night in a local venue for whoever wanted to join in.
The shop provided the instruments and was well-paid on that occasion.
On the night, a young American citizen, whose ethnicity was Vietnamese, sang a Japanese song. A local singer-songwriter from Halong Bay sang one of her own tunes.
A group of Americans did their version of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing, a Polish guy read a poem he wrote himself and I blagged a couple of sloppy versions of auld ballads.
It was all I could have asked for from the universe at the time. It was a roaring success for all involved.
Walking through Dublin city the other day, I was ashamed of what I saw.
A group of people who don’t seem to know what it is to be Irish were flying Irish flags, creating an unwelcoming air of aggression and ignorance.
Irish people have lived all over the world for generations in their tens of millions, but I would say most of the people I saw in that group in Dublin haven’t been past the Long Mile Road – or read a word of the Proclamation of the Republic.
One guy was shouting: “Send the unvetted migrants out to posh areas like Dalkey and Killiney and not just to working-class areas like Finglas.”
There are working-class people in Dalkey and posh people in Finglas – if you’re into that kind of labelling (luckily, I don’t fit into either category, as I am merely a writer, with no class at all.)
These people’s modus operandi seems to be “divide, divide, divide”.
A Nigerian woman was filming them, and as I walked past, I overheard her saying the Irish are racist.
I chatted to her and explained we are definitely not. But we do have a few people at the moment that are misguided and out of their depth in the context of politics and law and education and humanity – and actually, it’s not their fault.
Like children looking for negative attention, I’d prefer to ignore these people until they get it, but unfortunately their soundbites are reaching out.
It would be very hard for me to picture the working-class guys I met in Vietnam screaming to see my passport before they prepared refreshments for me.
David O’Reilly, Eyre Square, Galway
We should be addressing other great gender gap
Following a quick data-collecting exercise on the proportion of female contributors to the Letters to the Editor section of three national newspapers for the first three weeks of February, my findings are as follows.
The Irish Independent has the lowest contribution from females at just over one in 12 letters. Faring slightly better is the Irish Examiner, with female writers of one in eight letters. The Irish Times tops the scoreboard with one in five letters printed coming from female contributors.
Excluded from the analysis are letters from groups of more than one gender and unisex named contributors.
Could it be the Confidence Gap, the Time Gap or the Authority Gap, perhaps? Either way, I would like to see this gap being reduced over the coming year and read more letters from female contributors in all of the national publications.
Dr Lee-Ann Burke, Department of Economics, UCC
Case against Assange is no straightforward issue
On January 20, 2023, human rights activists, journalists and lawyers attended the Belmarsh Tribunal conference in Washington DC to discuss assaults to press freedom and the case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is in his fourth year in London’s Belmarsh prison after seven years under the protection of Ecuador’s London embassy.
Tensions rose in the embassy over the years due to his alleged difficult behaviour, as embassy staff described it, from the stress of his situation. His supporters say it wasn’t true.
The then president of Ecuador was a supporter of his. The next president of Ecuador was not. His computer was removed when the embassy believed he was gathering information on them to use as leverage should they try to force him out. He was expelled from the embassy in 2019, and the British police immediately arrested him for breaking his bail conditions years before.
Last April, a UK court agreed to his extradition to the US on espionage charges. The US charge is of conspiring to access classified US Department of Defence files. His appeal against extradition is continuing.
Tom Stoppard’s 1978 play, Night and Day, about the importance of freedom of the press, had British actor John Thaw play a photojournalist and saying: “I’ve been all round the world and I’ve seen people do terrible things to other people, but it’s always worse in the dark – information is light.”
Meanwhile, others say Assange was reckless to the danger of exposing US and other countries’ undercover intelligence employees to danger.
The Belmarsh Tribunal conferences – one was held in New York in 2022 – were held to remind us of those who take risks to reveal hidden government actions.
Government security agencies need careful supervision. Equally, there are limits to how far we can go with freedom of speech and information.
Julian Assange is 11 years with no freedom and his health has suffered. The Washington Post, while mindful of dangers to freedom of the press, concluded he has to be accountable for publishing classified information that put US security at risk.
This is not a straightforward case. If his appeal against extradition fails, he will face trial in the US and possibly years in prison.
Mary Sullivan, Cork
Interest rates dictated by events, not institutions
I am a tad disappointed at the tacit implications in the letter of John F Higgins (‘How Frankfurt affects daily life in the west of Ireland’, March 2), more akin to the little Englander false ideology of straight bananas being an EU requirement.
Irrespective of where we live (myself included), be it Sligo, Melbourne, Paris,New York or the smallest hamlet in the world, interest rates are not set by a Central Bank in Frankfurt, let alone a credit union in Fermanagh.
The current international interest rate increases are dictated by inter- national financial events, not by individual nations.
Why? Because the great politicians of the world sold their souls, hearts and minds to “the markets” at the behest of the corporate world.
Hence, banks were permitted to
sell housing loans, which created a short-term boom for the few, creating long- term financial difficulties for many.
The person who sells the house loan initially passes the file to another branch when it is complete. Not theirs to deal with from thereon.
Having said that, why do people have to have large homes, with all mod cons and new furniture and cars all at once on borrowed money?
The sole concern of economists today is their raw data.
Central banks have no option but to increase interest rates, or risk losing investment to other nations.
The recent billions of pounds that left the UK is ample proof.
Declan Foley, Melbourne, Australia
Fair’s fair: TDs not alone in getting a pay increase
‘Latest pay rise takes TDs’ salaries beyond the Celtic Tiger record high’ (Irish Independent, March 1). So runs the headline on a report on the latest public sector pay rise negotiated in 2022; but every public servant got a 2pc pay rise from March 1 – something that is, in fairness, acknowledged in the main text of your report.
County council workers, Supreme Court judges, hospital porters and
civil servants are some of the many public sector employees to benefit.
And lads like me – public sector pensioners.
To avoid members of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann awarding themselves pay rises, they are also classed as public servants for pay purposes. The need to zone in on one sector in the entire public sector escapes me.
Sure, media scrutiny of politicians is important. But fairness is also a right.
Larry Dunne, Rosslare Harbour, Co Wexford
