Peace talks are the only thing that will end this awful war

FROM the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the Peace & Neutrality Alliance (PANA) has called for a ceasefire and UN-chaired negotiations. Now, as this war drags on, we can not only imagine the devastation on Ukrainian people, but also watch apparently helpless as a major economic recession with a cost-of-living crisis spreads across Europe.

PANA welcomes the recent ‘unprecedented agreement’ on the resumption of Ukrainian grain exports via the Black Sea, and the historic agreement on a permanent cessation of hostilities in Ethiopia. We once again call on our political leaders to reject geopolitical interests and work for a ceasefire and UN-chaired negotiations in the Ukraine war.

ROGER COLE, Peace & Neutrality Alliance Dalkey, Co. Dublin.

Targets for censorship

WE mustn’t allow anything that upsets someone to become unlawful, as anything can upset somebody, somewhere, sometime. It will be used to silence those on the sidelines of power but not against the mainstream players.

Governments themselves and large corporations upset people. But they will never be the target of censorship or punishment, it will be the people who question the official narratives. It will be the independent journalists, filmmakers, authors, podcasters and the like who will be hounded into the ground, not because they upset but because they don’t support wars, the disappearance of freedoms, and the onset of a fully digitalised money system, to name three things.

LOUIS SHAWCROSS, Hillsborough, Co. Down.

No stone unturned

DÚN Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council will be badly affected if the concrete levy ever comes into force. The council is in love with concrete. Council officials are combing the borough sniffing out locations to pour it.

The stone walls around Killiney Hill Park have been breached in places and concrete slabs put in. Trees have been cut down to lay unnecessary concrete paths over natural ground. Concrete kerbs have been put in on Silchester Road and Clarinda Park.

No reason can be guessed at for this, unless it is that the council’s love of concrete obliges them to cause inconvenience and danger to pedestrians and motorists.

We will need more than a levy on concrete to bring Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown council to heel over its plan to cover the borough in concrete.

JOHN F. HYLAND, Killiney, Co. Dublin.

A tax on fun

I GOT an online reminder today that my car tax will expire at the end of the month. It reminded me of a more innocent time when anything with a harp on it would do the job of a tax disc, and you took your chance that you’d get away with it.

A favourite substitute was the label off a Guinness bottle because the colour was near enough to the real thing. Even the cops smiled at that attempt when they clocked it on a windscreen. If you were caught, the court fine was sensible and manageable.

It’s different now though, when even not having a TV licence can land you in jail. There’s no fun any more because ‘the man’ is out to get us always. ROBERT SULLIVAN,

Bantry, Co. Cork.