Letters page

10 Boyne Valley,
Mell, Drogheda.

Dear Sir,
Good heavens but Shop St. is becoming a very dangerous place, what with the crossing at the top, the potholes at the bottom, and Drogheda Independent columnist Tom Reilly threatening to take his coat off and square up to all and sundry who challenge his views of Ollie Cromwell, the Seige of Drogheda and its aftermath.

Some years ago I stood four square with Tom on the issue of Cromwell’s  Death Mask, I would stand with him if the situation arose again. Narrow-minded blind acceptence of the legends of Irish History as was once taught in our schools closes our eyes to the lessons of the past. Perhaps this is why having thrown out one crowd of overlords in 1921 we proceeded to create/elect our own homegrown crowd of lords and masters.
Tom Reilly appears to have a blind spot in his admiration for The Lord Protector. Cromwell waged war on Ireland, his enemies were the enemies of Parliament, but the god of war does not travel alone, he brings with him famine and disease. Death  makes no distiction between man, woman or child, soldier or civilian, dead is dead. That was then, this is now, it is still happening today and will continue tomorrow.
Who knows where the men in arms who died in Drogheda came from, Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Donegal, Duleek, Tullyallen or Dooley Gate. Who knows what father picked up a spade, pike, knife in order to protect his family and was slaughtered. Who knows what young man caught up in the excitement of the battle rushed to the barricades and was killed protecting his town. We do not know the names and addresses of the unknown thousands who died and we never will,
Now Tom is,  as a historian, aware that even up to the 19th Century wives and children  accompanied their soldier husbands to the army camps, soldiers married. Did any of the defenders marry local women. Their men dead they were destitute.
Following the war, even though he had gone home, Cromwell allowed the soldiers to go abroad but not their families. Parliament,which was Cromwell, decided as part of his policy of ethnic cleansing that they would be exported to Barbados and sold as slaves. Men,women, children to work in the fields under the burning  sun,  morning to night. Many of the young women and children, boys and girls sold to brothels.
This policy started by Cromwell was continued for decades under various kings, so profitable was the slave trade that slavers often raided farms and villages kidnapping whole families to sell abroad.
Tom Reilly is behaving like a spoilt child throwing his toys out of the pram when he does not get his own way, like Violet in Just William he treatens to schream and schream until we, everybody, accepts that he is right,  get a life Tom and stop behaving like a spoilt brat, repeat spoilt brat.
Cromwell was a man with all mans failings, possibly mentally unstable, not a god, a religious fanatic who firmly believed that killing Irish Catholics was the will of God, kill the infidels.
There are none so blind as cannot (refuse) to see, war, famine, pestilence, ethnic cleansing and slavery are still with us,  even today there are probably ,in this country, people from Eastern Europe and Africa in particular, who are bought and sold as slaves into the sex-trade.
There are no absolutes, in the courts you don’t get justice you get law, history is written by the victor, there are known facts and there are unknown facts.
We will never know how many Drogheda natives died at the Seige of Drogheda or afterwards, how many were transported.
Tom Reilly, a man of sober habits, should stop behaving like a drunken ******* threatening to take his coat off to anyone who disagrees with him.  Stop behaving like a spoilt pup, repeat spoilt pup, a drunken *******, repeat drunken *******.
Yours,
GERRY FLOYD

10 Boyne Valley.
Mell. Drogheda.

Sir,
Lord Kitchener appealed to to people of England and Ireland with the phrase, “Your  country needs you ” and thousands of young men answered the call. They proudly marched off and died in the bloody, muddy killing fields of France. Churchill offered his people nothing, “But blood, toil,  sweat and tears”.
Charlie Haughey told us we were living beyond our means, Bertie Ahern told us nothing, not even the name of the horses he backed. Brian Cowan tell us we have a strong economy and the other one Laurel oops sorry Brian Lenihan appeals to our sense of patriotism to get the country our of the mess he and his mates made.

Not that Cowan and Lenihan are totally to blame, the finger must be firmly pointed at the man who led us down this road our former Taoiseach,future President,Deputy B.Ahern, the man of many pensions “The dig out ” champion himself. The man who threw the paddles over-board and allowed developers and bankers run the the economy, then he legs it and leaves us up the creek without a paddle.

There is a game and also a scientific formula called Six degree of separation. The idea is that you have met someone who has met someone etc. and you are only separated from every person in the world by five people,you are one your target is six. In this country there is no separation,Bertie appointed his friends to Semi-state, state connected bodies,why? they were his friends. Tax-payers money going to his friends whom when times were tough financally for him gave him a dig out. There are many Government bodies or bodies financed by the Government, our money, were there is no degree of separation the same people turn up again and again as members of differant Boards of Directors getting paid big money while at the same time having a business connection through their day job.There are people who are appointed to Government bodies whose only qualification is the fact that they donated money to election expenses or canvassed for the local T.D..
There is a large degree of nepotism in this country,appointing ones friends to positions were the public purse pays, looking after your own, its moral corruption.
Dail Eireann is morally corrupt, our T.Ds. are morally corrupt,t hose who stands idly by and allows evil to thrive are as guilty as those who commit the deed.
I use the word EVIL which is a religious term because EVIL is what it is.
Developers kept raising the cost of a house because they knew people needed/wanted homes,they knew that the banks would provide the money, the banks provided the money to inflate their profits, thus increasing their bonuses,the Government collected the taxes convinced every one they were rich, they were not it was a house of cards.You bought a house for half a million its now worth 200,000 you still owe the borrowed amount plus interest. Bumbling Bertie made a suggestion about some Economists and suicide it will happen somewhere and I hope, pray I’m wrong somebody will commit suicide.
During the Great Famine millions died of starvation while the country exported millions of tons of food,English Landlords used the mass starvation to clear their lands of tenants. Today employers are using the resession as an excuse to cut wages/jobs, what the hell if you can’t pay your morguage,you won’t starve you may be homeless, depressed, lost, suicidal, but don’t worry according to the Government we have a strong economy.
We not only have an incompetent Government we have a useless Opposition who mouth and spout. When I see the salaries of every T.D. being cut by 50% and expenses cut when Minister’s salaries are cut by 60% when Trade Union officials take a 50% cut and half the Dial Committees abolished I might believe they care a little, very little.
When senior bankers resign they get massive payoffs the Government should stop this and the Courts should back them. Its simple they claimed big bucks by inflating profits they should now be told to f### off because of the mess they made.

Did the men and women of 1916 die fighting for our right to control our own destinies only for us to allow ourselves to create a new home grown elite governing
class.A class with it’s own rules and attitudes, the tigers who feed on the common herd,the Pharisee and the tax-collector, the Vampyre and his victim,noble and serf, we are but tenants in our own ruler by the decendants  of the landlord state of mind.
Yours,
Gerry Floyd