Letters to the editor

OFTEN, work takes so much of our time we have little left to think, to stop and to talk. Today I woke up deeply affected, after I read the last letter of Miklós Fehér's mother.


A footballer remembered


OFTEN, work takes so much of our time we have little left to think, to stop and to talk. Today I woke up deeply affected, after I read the last letter of Miklós Fehér 's mother.


[Fehér was the 24-year-old Hungarian footballer who collapsed and subsequently died during a game for his Portuguese club, Benfica].


For the first time in my 15 years as a professional journalist, I cried when I was writing. I just wanted to share with all Hungarian people the pain, because what we had to learn in those days was that life has no frontiers, not even different idioms.


A mother's letter touches us so much in our hearts. We all felt in this moment that with Miki died, a little of each of us also died. It might seem strange, but listening the mother's message, I felt a little like Miki's father, or brother. His family is not so small, as his mother said! We want belong to them, we feel that indeed we really belong. As [Britain's former Prime Minister Sir Winston] Churchill once said, today I also say: "I am a Hungarian.".


I never had met Miki's family and I am sure I'll never find them. But for all I faced in those days, I share their pain! I've two children (three and eight-years-old), and I'll never forget yesterday when I arrived home, my older son had a drawing to give me: he had draw a player, wearing the number 29, and wrote: "To Fehér. The Last smile!"


To all the Hungarian people, I just can wish one thing: "God Bless your homeland forever"


Joao Paulo Lourenço


Jornal de Notícias


Lisbon, Portugal





Why missionaries?


IF I could be permitted to reply to the Beth Thornton's reply, I would just like to comment on the fact that she has not addressed the central point I was trying to make, which is that current depictions of Christianity, in West European culture at least, are far more damaging to Christianity than any Government sponsored campaign possibly could be.


It may well be the case that churchgoing is down amongst younger people in Hungary, but if she were to go into most British churches on a Sunday morning, she would not find them packed to the rafters with young people.


From my own experience as a high school teacher, I know plenty of young people who, despite having churchgoing parents and state funded religious education have even less than a hazy grasp of Christian concepts.


The Hungarian youngsters Ms Thornton has come across are not unique in this. The American situation may well be different, but I still don't accept that Hungary "needs" foreign missionaries, however well intentioned they may be, any more than any other modern European country does.


The Communists did not stamp out Christianity, so why not let the indigenous Churches get on with their work?


Allan Forrester


Grotz, Broughton, Westray,


Orkney, UK





Subjectivity


IT IS a long time [since] I gave up reading your movie reviews, basically because they're no good to me, being very colored by the people who write them - as far as I remember your review of Pirates of the Caribbean was that "it is the film with the longest title this summer". Duh!


And then your stories usually go on (and on and on) about the "writer's" experience with irrelevant stuff like little kids spilling coke or the likes during the film.


Do you not set any standards to the "journalists" that you attach to you paper? Or is it on purpose - and that's my view - that most of you staff write like they are still on some college paper?


In the January 22 edition you have a "style" story by an Adam Webb, If its good enough for Madonna and I almost feel stupid telling you this, but I actually counted the times that the words "me", "my", and "I" appear.


Sixteen, 31 and 31!


Don't you as journalists learn to keep out subjectivity from the stories? I for one don't really care about Adam Webb's mother, I might be interested in furry things but I just will not torture myself by reading a whole article like that to find out.


Well, well, I'm sorry about this but I finally had to let it out, although I in the same sentence must say that I'm relieved that Lucy Mallows no more appears in your pages.


John Bau


Lovas ut


Budapest


Editor's note: Adam Webb is our fashion columnist. Columnists are supposed to be subjective.





Health worries


FOR a long time there has been a topic highlighted through the media: the problem of the Health Service. The question was even raised in the The Budapest Sun's Street Talk of January 15: Is it ever right to pay gratuity money to a doctor?


The answer lies in the question, in the word "gratuity". If you take it from the right angle, there is nothing humiliating, shameful in it, it is far from bribery.


As the greatest treasure in life is health, we are grateful when somebody could help to restore it when we are ill. Gratitude is a nice feeling, let us offer it, when there is an opportunity to do so.


Doctors should take "gratuity" this way. We ought to have understanding and compassion for each other. It is right when the government and the health minister are looking for the way to order gratuity money to the right place.


But if you ask me the problems can never be achieved by a pay rise for the doctors and nurses, unless the income of every one else is raised in the country at the same time.


It is difficult to find a way where poor people won't be disadvantaged. I hope that the health minister can find an affordable way out.


Mary Pôry


Budapest





Salami smuggler


I AM furious about the total ban on meat products from Hungary (US bans Hungarian meat and Meat row sizzles, January 29). This US pot dares to call the other kettle black when its own meat products are teeming with hormones and antibiotics, not to mention corn syrup.


How I miss my Hungarian salami. I will get it even if I have to smuggle it in!


J Barath


Atlanta, USA




05.02.2004