Madam, - Vincent Browne is always highly entertaining but I do fear for his sanity (Opinion, July 4th). His depiction of the recent "terrorist" incidents in Britain (how helpful of him to explain that the quotations are intended to imply scepticism) as nothing more serious than an outbreak of mass hysteria and Islamophobia would be comical if there wasn't a danger that someone might take him seriously.
"Nobody has been killed," he writes. "Minimal damage to property has been caused." True. But does someone really need to point out that if the nail-packed car bombs in London's West End had exploded - as the "terrorists" fervently hoped they would - then hundreds of young people could have been torn to shreds.
Mr Browne dismisses the attack on Glasgow airport as "alarm over minor fire damage", which he finds an "unedifying spectacle". Not, one suspects, as unedifying as turning up at check-in to find a blazing jeep full of petrol and gas canisters, riven by an NHS hospital doctor wielding a Molotov cocktail, smashing into the terminal.
"A clear inference from these acts is that those responsible are amateurs, unlikely to pose a substantial threat." What a relief that must be to Britain's security services! And what comfort when the next set of amateur "terrorists" get murderously lucky, as they did on July 7th, 2005, and inevitably will again. - Yours, etc,
TED VERITY, Wellington Road, Dublin 4.