RTE’s Joe Duffy really took the biscuit last week when his Liveline programme was devoted to litter fines and, in a small number of cases, imprisonment for non-payment of those fines.
Joe was outraged about (a) the cost of the €150 on-the-spot fine and (b) the fact that a person could be sent to prison for such a trivial offence as non-payment of that fine.
It has obviously escaped his attention that there is a large, ongoing media campaign warning people that non-payment of the arbitrary TV licence fee of €160, levied annually on almost every household in the country, will result in large fines and possible imprisonment.
Listening to RTE’s “stars”, earning hundreds of thousands of euros, share with the nation their heartfelt anguish for the plight of the ordinary citizen, I often wonder if an irony by-pass is mandatory in RTE.
Joe Duffy certainly appears to have had one.
Footnote: A variant published as a letter in the Irish Independent
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