The Prague Post Online: Opinion: Letters to the Editor

July 5th, 2008

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Letters to the Editor

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April 25th, 2007 issue

Short-termism

Very percipient piece (“The wood for the trees,” Opinion, April 18–24) Opinion). As well as poor customer service in many areas of the hospitality industry, I feel there is a major problem of “short-termism.”

I have made many trips to the United Kingdom and have chatted to fellow passengers about their experiences of tourism in the Czech Republic. A common thread was the feeling of being “ripped off.” Tales of hugely inflated prices for drinks and expensive restaurant bills for disappointing food and poor-quality service were commonplace, as well as adverse comments about the general cleanliness of Prague (and the Czechs, in a few cases!)

Some entrepreneurs here seem focused on the “quick buck” and the one-off customer, rather than concentrating on building up a regular return clientele by providing a value for money experience.

Plus the widespread “take it or leave it” attitude, which the author of the piece referred to.

I had visited this country for three decades before settling here and have to say that, paradoxically, in many ways the city was more of a tourist attraction before 1989, when it carried a frisson of edginess and the very “backwardness” of service was a strange kind of attraction.

This is not nostalgia for the old days, just a wish that the more tacky aspects that have featured since then were removed from the scene.

Mary Page
Prague

The politics of aid

How typical. The United States is unwilling to resolve the refugee problem it has helped to create by virtue of its own policies against Cuba over the course of the past half-century (“Cuban families gain asylum in ČR,” News, April 18–24).

Instead of granting refugee status, the U.S. authorities continue sending Cubans back to Cuba, where they face harsh reprisals, or detains them at Guantanamo and peddles them to post-communist countries with pro-U.S. governments.

Cubans refugees deserve a warm welcome in the Czech Republic for their suffering, but their cause is being abused under a false pretext of alleged humanitarianism. It has become quite a fad on the part of some Czech public figures whose moral credit may not be so impeccable to begin with to support such pet causes to further themselves politically.

This story, though, is of little importance compared to the potential refugee crisis in the Middle East and, especially, in Iraq. As a result of ongoing violence there following the toppling by the United States of the Saddam Hussein regime, thousands of Iraqi refugees are fleeing the country as we speak, largely headed for Turkey and onward for the European Union. Who is going to have to foot the refugee bill the U.S. government should under normal circumstances take responsibility for? The EU is, most likely. The consequences of the war on Iraq instigated and waged by the United States are undoubtedly going to be far-reaching on a global scale. And there is no light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

Paul Bremner
Calgary

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