I AGREE with Patricia Grey Amante that, despite the fact that as a nation we are free, we are "deeply paralysed by the fear of speaking out." She, along with Mark McMullan (Letters, 29 July), mentions our silence on the M3 at Tara. This is not the only issue, however, on which we have been intimidated into silence.

The obsequiousness of most of our media towards those who wield enormous power in our society is pathetic. The whole area of how we fund our political parties never gets discussed.

One small political party which had a policy on this issue abandoned it when it became part of the government.

As a result we have become a one-party state with a small insider elite in sole control for nearly a generation of all the levers of power and decisionmaking in our society. Given that all of us are capable of being corrupted by power it is amazing how little discussion we have had on this topic.

Such discussion as takes place comprises mainly of counter-productive personalised references to individual politicians who have been involved in tribunals.

Surely some of our more influential and streetwise journalists should have something more useful to say on this issue.

Alternatively, perhaps all streetwise journalists have decided they would be better off being, as Amante put it, "passive and paralysed inside the cage" than outside "claiming the right to our heritage" of democratic protest.

The implication of that decision is, however, that protesting is left to ordinary people like Amante and McMullan. As such they can be ignored by the people who count.

As Diarmuid Doyle wrote on the same page, ordinary people protesting can be "ripe for satire" and can be marginalised and discredited like the proverbial "disgusted of Tunbridge Wells."

A Leavy, Shielmartin Drive, Sutton, Dublin 13.

Letters pages could improve talk-radio

From Tony Quinn

DIARMUID DOYLE, in his column on 29 July, praised the letters pages as being amongst the most enjoyable sections of newspapers. As a letter writer, I was pleased with your columnist's description of people like myself as being "wedded to debate and argument . . . literate, articulate, thoughtful, sceptical, curious. . .and mildly eccentric."

Analysing the contrasts between print and broadcast media, your columnist criticised undesirable trends on some radio phone-in shows which encourage yobbish cranks. It's cheap to use listener-generated content which provokes further reaction.

Newspaper readers overlap with listeners to talk-radio. I am aware from experience that researchers invite authors of letters to editors to contribute to radio phone-in shows.

Maybe that crossfertilisation will improve the content of such shows.

Tony Quinn, Saval Park Road, Dalkey, Co Dublin.

Pity Doyle didn't return to O'Reilly From Ted Verity

DIARMUID DOYLE rarely disappoints so what a pity that he didn't take the opportunity to return to the subject of Joe O'Reilly in last week's column.

Some of us are still recovering from the battering he gave us over the way our newspapers reported the murder of O'Reilly's wife Rachel in October 2004.

Brilliantly coining the phrase 'show-me-your-mickeyjournalism', Doyle tore into my paper Ireland on Sunday (now the Irish Mail on Sunday), the Evening Herald and the Star for asking O'Reilly if he killed his wife.

"Journalism has no place in the fight against crime, " he thundered under the headline "Scum? That'll be those who decide on a quarry then spread some muck."

But what particularly exercised Doyle was the reporting of rumours that Rachel's husband may have been having an affair with another woman.

"Much more mysterious than the woman, for whose existence there isn't a shred of evidence, was the source of the rumours, " he wrote. "Were they 'spreading across Dublin like wildfire', as the newspaper suggested, or were they the product of some mean-minded guttersnipe?"

Or were they perhaps true and a key part of the case against O'Reilly?

Ted Verity, Editor-in-Chief, Irish Mail on Sunday.

Can he fix it? Bertie better hope he can. . .

From Maurice O'Connell

CONGRATULATIONS to Nuala O'Faolain (News, 29 July) on her acutely perceptive article on Bertie Ahern. She may not have got all the way to the right answers but she certainly has formulated the right questions: What drives the man? What does that tell us about his present and future behaviour?

Ahern is the supreme 'fixer'.

From a relatively humble and (subjectively) insecure background (with a close band of ordinary 'pals'), he has reached a degree of personal popularity and confidence comparable only to Eamon de Valera and Jack Lynch.

However, the very skills that won the Taoiseach three mandates also offer extreme danger. The last time I spoke to him directly about an issue, he told me exactly what he knew I wanted him to tell me.

We both knew that . . . and we knew it was decidedly not what he would say to others approaching the issue from a different angle. This skill requires keeping a number of balls in the air simultaneously.

If the concentration falters . . . or if the operation depends on less skilled associates . . .

disaster must inevitably follow.

The construction of the current government was classic Ahern. But is it too smart? Does it depend too much on too many factors which may be uncontrollable in an uncertain context? Is it 'paradoxically' short-term and actually unstable? Too dependent on an Ahern who has said his days are numbered?

What is puzzling about the saga of Ahern's personal finances is that the dominant impression is one of befuddled mismanagement . . . not of some elaborate scam. But if Nuala O'Faolain is correct and this is only a very ordinary man, 'one of us', this would not be surprising. Unfortunately, this man also happens to be in charge of the country and our futures.

Enough (but not a majority) of those who voted in the election were willing to swallow enough of the 'minor incompetences of the last 10 years' to return him to power.

But only just. If it turns out he has not 'fixed' things for us but got us into a fix' then the savagery with which the people will turn on their beloved Bertie will not be pleasant to watch. Ask George Bush.

Maurice O'Connell, Forge Park, Oakpark, Tralee, Co Kerry.

What is wrong with begging being illegal?

From Jonathan Roth

I REFER to the recent letters on the level of begging on Irish streets since it was decriminalised by the Supreme Court in March.

I have noticed that the sheer quantum and aggressiveness of begging has increased tremendously in the last number of months, especially in the form of verbal abuse and harassment of smokers outside pubs.

In a modern vibrant economy with more or less full employment, I can only assume that the proliferation of beggars on our streets stems from the fact that these individuals know they can make more than the average industrial wage for a minimum effort.

I am tired of the politically correct brigade claiming we must protect these people's rights to "express themselves" and their right to "freedom of speech." What about my rights to stand on a street corner and not be harassed continuously?

What is wrong with begging being a crime? Would some politician please stand up?

Jonathon Roth, 'Castlecourt', Clancy's Strand, Limerick.

It wasn't the winbut the loss that mattered

From Michael Carter

DECLAN MCCORMACK's complaint (Sport, 29 July) regarding the BBC's apparent lack of interest in Padraig Harrington's creep towards winning the British Open seemed to fail to understand what the real story was on the final day . . . the failure of Sergio Garcia to win.

Look at it this way, suppose Padraig Harrington had led from the first tee only to fail at the last hole and had been subject to much critical scru-tiny as he grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory, there would probably be no end of complaint.