Sir, - When he paid this country a visit some 40 years ago the late Pandit Nehru made a memorable pronouncement: "I do not know which I hate the more, the poverty of the poor or the vulgarity of the rich."
I guess he would have expressed himself more strongly still had he been here last week. Our vulgar rich, who are more numerous now and more vulgar, were boasting arrogantly about the influence of their ideas (on the increasing need for the well-off to widen the gap between their precious selves and the impecunious) on our Finance Minister. In contrast, on a DART train I heard an impecunious sea fisherman (McCreevy's Budget ignored the claims of our fishing industry) remark: "Celtic Tiger? Celtic fake: it's a toy-shop tiger." - Yours, etc., John De Courcy Ireland,
Dalkey,
Co Dublin.