Madam, – Last February, I spent five days in central Berlin. The pavements in this wealthy city were encrusted with uncleared snow and ice. One of our party took a bad fall. The citizenry were wryly resigned – “the city council has no money for this”.
So your correspondent Kieran Clifford (December 6th) can take some cold comfort – in the matter of icy pavements we are not alone. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – As the snow has now stopped falling, could we not clear it away? There must be a lot of construction equipment lying idle which could be used at reasonable cost. I imagine economists could very easily work out what it is costing the country in lost production and trade, and do a cost benefit analysis of spending some money to get the country moving again.
Schools are needed for this new smart economy: it is not very smart leaving the schools and the country paralysed. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Barry McCall asks how privatisation would improve our postal service (December 3rd). We live within a stone’s throw of Killiney Shopping Centre yet had no postal delivery all last week. On phoning An Post I was informed that postal deliveries had been suspended because of the weather and that if I so desired I could collect my post at Glenageary sorting office. This I duly did.
I might add that I subscribe to The Irish Timeshome delivery service and my newspaper has been delivered each day this week before breakfast as usual.
Roll on privatisation. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Travelling to Heuston Station last Wednesday night we were delayed for three hours at the Celbridge railway station due to the snow. During that time the man from the ticket office offered us hot steaming coffee – all 15 of us – on the freezing platform, and there was more hot coffee as the night progressed. A thankyou to John for making me feel so special. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Despite all the disruption across Ireland during this cold snap, the frequency of noise from false burglar alarms has continued unabated.
Should I take some kind of comfort from this? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Instead of buying stocks of salt from overseas to use on icy roads, is there any scientific reason why we can’t spray the roads with sea water? – Yours, etc,