Opinion

The town of Arva’s crow ‘invasion’ is no caws for concern

A recent article entitled ‘The burning question now is who will save the town of Arva from the crows’ (July 7) has ruffled a few feathers in our town.

The author’s description of a backward “one-street town” (there are actually five streets), “approached only by narrow, torturous roads” provides the perfect backdrop for his dystopian drama of a docile, sleepy community being terrorised by a murder of menacing crows. Alfred Hitchcock and Edgar Allan Poe, eat your hearts out.

The crow family are in fact one of the oldest and most respected families in Arva. One branch of their family tree goes back to the plantations. They worked in the thriving corn and flax mills until their closure when the crows fell on hard times.

In the 1950s the philanthropic Cully family provided relief for destitute crows by opening up a bakery, after which their population soared. Their lineage is not the only thing that endears them to the people of Arva. Crows have long been regarded as one of the most intelligent creatures outside of primates. They can make simple tools, solve problems, recognise faces and count streets. The dark blanket they cast over the town at dusk every day is one of nature’s great spectacles and a gentle reminder of our impending doom. The author will notice that the streets are actually completely free of bird droppings, with the entire load directed towards his car.  However, we’d like to reassure him that this behaviour will soon stop if it hasn’t done so already. After all, the same thing happened when Charlie Bird came to visit in 1996 but they soon got used to him too.

We hope our visitor enjoys his visit to Arva, continues to return and learns to live in harmony with the crows. They may not be welcome everywhere but we’re proud to say that the people of Arva are truly for the birds.

DAVID BRADY


Arva Town Development Association

So worked up about Israel

Has Peter McEvoy confused the two world wars in his recent letter (July 20) It was the First World War that broke Habsburg, Ottoman and even part of the Romanov empires broke into nation states mostly on linguistic bases. The original four dominions and Ireland were accepted as being independent internationally as well as internally. The Arab ex-Ottoman provinces became their own even if initially as Mandates. They have never turned into an Arab, US nor even an EU confederation. Other than a geographical expression as Metternich dismissed an Italian nation state, where was San Remo Palestine of the 1920 border on the Ottoman map? Can Mr McEvoy name and date for us any Arab Palestine state, emir, currency or language before the British Mandate, or since in 1948-1967?

If Palestine afficionados are so worked up about the re-establishment of Israel as a nation state, may we understand that had they been at De Valera’s desk in 1933-40 he would have accepted into Ireland far more than 1,000 Jewish refugees?

Those super liberals of Roosevelt’s four freedoms, the PLO, have cut the Christians of Bethlehem from 60 per cent to 30 per cent of the town. Should they wreck Israel and take the government from the river to the sea, would Ireland accept a million or even half, Israeli Jewish refugees?   

FRANK ADAM


Prestwich, Manchester

Ashamed to be associated with Boris Johnson

In 2016 as leader of UKIP in Northern Ireland I was proud to have campaigned with Boris Johnson and many others in securing a winning Brexit referendum result.

Brexiteers in Northern Ireland provided 349,442 crucial ‘leave’ votes which assured victory and restored sovereignty. Mr Johnson said “we would take back control of our borders”.

Today along with hundreds of thousands I am ashamed to have ever been associated with him in the historic triumph achieved by all true Brexiteers. Never, that is until he became prime minister, was it proposed or agreed by Brexiteers that control of the UK’s only land border would be bartered away in a sordid deal. Far less imagined being handed over to the EU and the Irish. His egregious behaviour leaves principled citizens shocked and angry.

Government spin doctors have failed to convince Northern Irish unionists that their Britishness is guaranteed under the Northern Ireland protocol.

The charge against his government of betrayal is inescapable. The liberties and rights of the British in Northern Ireland are outrageously abused. He has removed our right to trade, travel and to live freely as UK citizens.

Do not mistake the silence of unionist leaders as a signal of public consent for his dishonest deception. Nothing could be further from the truth. Momentum is gathering across the UK to denounce his betrayal of loyal unionists. His government will find immense difficulty in defending the disgraceful double dealing it is

accused of.

DAVID McNARRY


Strangford, Co Down

Deluded about NHS

Some in The Irish News occasionally refer to our health service as the NHS. The pandemic has underlined how our Health and Social Care, with HSC, emblazoned on nursing and ambulance uniforms is devolved. The service is funded through the block grant like NHS Scotland and NHS Cymru (Wales) and not National Insurance like NHS England. The constitution, terms and conditions of service are different as nurses and doctors have found out from the Doctors and Dentists’ Review Body pay awards, as are the services. Try looking for an ECMO machine, paediatric cardiac surgery or cardiac or liver transplantation in northern Ireland. Those who put NHS on Divis Mountain or clapped for the NHS have been deluded like those who blindly followed London instead of what the pandemic dictated here. Why do our dentists need a fallow period when one can drive to Dundalk for a filling and maybe reciprocally charge through E111 while it is still operable for us?

I know it is shorthand and most mean no harm but those calling the police service the ‘RUC’ would get short shrift in Donegall Street ... or is constructive ambiguity back?

Dr M DONNELLY


Belfast BT9