Brian Feeney (November 4) concluded: “Placing recruitment of Catholics as the last priority in a list does not indicate that senior PSNI officers grasp how serious a problem the imbalance is for a divided society”.
Whatever way the PSNI is dressed up “to encourage Catholics to join” it remains the Police Service of Northern Ireland which tends to give it a unionist identity. The fundamental divide in Northern Ireland concerns national identity rather than ‘religion’.
I’m not aware of Sinn Féin urging supporters to join the PSNI or of any leading republicans having joined, which might make a difference in terms of encouraging Catholics to join.
MALACHY SCOTT
Belfast BT15
Perplexed by criticism of suggestion to replant dissenters
I am perplexed by the criticisms of my suggestion (October 18) that people should be allowed to return to their original homeland if unhappy that Irish unity was determined, under the terms of the Anglo Irish Agreement, even by a simple majority vote – 51 per cent.
Such a result would leave loyalists automatically confined to an Irish Republic despite their sincere desire to remain British and would surely lead to an horrendous revolt.
Brian Spencer (October 30), who has accused my choice of language as outdated and deeply conceited, must realise that repatriation would be more acceptable to those citizens of Scottish ethnicity who have no wish to be considered Irish, especially if they were to be welcomed back in their original homeland and adequately compensated – Britain should be able to afford this through the resultant saving of the annual £10bn block grant to NI.
Similarly Darren Little (October 30) accuses me, “with my supremacist mentality” of proposing that unionists, who disagree with the new administration, be ethnically cleansed. Does he imagine that loyalist paramilitaries and the Orange Order would ever accept a united Ireland? After all the repatriation of those not amenable to the formation of a new state would only follow the example of the establishment of the Republic, Israel and the US when reluctant settlers were encouraged to return home by the British.
The American Revolution inspired the formation, by Protestant liberals in Belfast, of the Society of United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group, which crossed the religious divide uniting Catholics, Presbyterians and other Protestant ‘dissenters’ groups. The British government recognised sectarianism as a divisive tool to employ to increase animosity between the United Irishmen and the Orangemen. This fostering of religious division has steered Irish politics away from the unifying vision of the United Irishmen.
But now all has changed. The control of the Catholic Church in Ireland has waned and no longer has an overriding political hold on the people. All citizens are equal unlike those subjects in Great Britain where religion still holds power.
At last republicans realise that violence has delayed the eventual unification of this island. Unfortunately the dopey dissidents have still not got the message but continue their cowardly campaign of sneak bombing and running away
I look forward to the creation of a new united Ireland with all men and women, of any or no religion. Hopefully this will happen sooner than later.
JOHN McDOWELL
Co Antrim
Nepotism in schools a discriminatory practice
Nepotism is so rife in the primary education sector that something will have to be done to remove the unsavoury practice.
I know what I am writing about – I’ve experienced the practice at first hand.
It is a ludicrous situation when the public can clearly identify well in advance as to who will and who will not get the teaching posts as they come available.
Forget about equality, ability, potential and fair play. Interviews are effectively meaningless procedures that give the impression of being authentic. Regardless of how the teacher being interviewed performs and regardless of how well his or her CV might read the outcome is most times a foregone conclusion.
Often the position is already filled or being kept open until time the favoured son or daughter is ready to take up the post.
The true situation is that teaching posts are being kept to accommodate a son, daughter, niece, nephew or family members of teachers currently employed in any particular school. Some teachers that should have moved on are staying until a family member or teaching colleague’s son or daughter is ready to move into the post.
In some situations teachers are entitled to take early retirement are being denied the opportunity and are prevented from leaving until such time that ‘our Jimmy’ or ‘our Jenny’ has completed their teacher training.
School principals and fellow teachers should have no say in who gets the jobs. That should be the work of a totally independent and skilled interviewing panel with no interested other than identifying the perceived best applicant for the job.
Until transparency is introduced and proper procedures implemented the appointments will remain questionable and the ugly and discriminatory practice of nepotism will sadly continue.
R ROONEY
Coalisland, Co Tyrone
Former SDLP stalwarts should know better
As a life-time supporter and voter for the SDLP I must express my dismay at the way former big wigs in the party see fit to divide and further splinter the party in the run-up to the pending Assembly Elections. As intelligent people they should know better.
They appeared to be hanging their leader out to dry without giving a single thought as to the harm they are doing to their once noble and respected SDLP.
They all have very short memories when analysing the downward trend of the SDLP. In the Assembly Elections of 2013 under Mark Durkan’s leadership the party lost six seats and suffered a drop of 5.99 per cent. In 2007 and still under Mark’s leadership the party lost another two seats this time with a drop of 1.77 per cent in the party vote. 2011 saw the next elections and this time the party was under the new leadership of Margaret Ritchie. The downward trend continued with the party losing a further two seats. In 2011 the party only managed to win 14 seats with a drop of 0.7 per cent in its vote.
It angered me to read reports of the treatment being dished out towards Dr Alasdair McDonnell by those this gentleman still refers to as being friends of his. With friends like that who needs enemies. It is just a pity that unity and togetherness is not the way that Dr McDonnell’s critics think.
E McCAFFERTY
Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh
Political chicanery
Prior to the last General Election Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore made a commitment to the Irish people that if Labour was returned to power they would dispense with parish-pump politics, sleaze, cronyism and political nepotism, so long associated with the body politic in this state. He was very convincing and we the electorate in our innocence foolishly believed that parish-pump political nominations were to be confined to the political graveyard. How wrong we were. It seems that Labour’s appetite for personality politics and scatter-gun candidate selection has yet to be sated.
The parachuting and election of Mairia Cahill to the Seanad epitomises political chicanery at its worst. Do our politicians never learn? Have they forgotten about the attempted shoehorning of Orla Guerin to contest the European elections on behalf of Labour in 1994? Ms Guerin was rejected by the electorate who rightly took exception to being regarded as automatons. It seems the only calculation taken into consideration by Labour Party chiefs was Ms Cahill’s anti-Sinn Féin agenda. Party loyalty and capability was replaced by political expediency.
TOM COOPER
Dublin 7
