I AM a dog lover. Unlike people, dogs love you unconditionally. But dogs should never be elevated to the status of people, nor should they take over our lives.
I see many pampered pooches. Recently, in Japan at a tourist site, I saw a squeaky clean white Husky being carried by a Japanese cyclist using a sling on his back. I often see 'fur babies' or small yappy terriers being wheeled around in prams. I appreciate some of these dogs may be old or may be baby substitutes of couples who cannot have, or cannot afford, a human baby.
Rather than wheeling around small dogs in prams, I advocate mushing larger dogs who are attached to wheeled sleds. This would provide the dogs with good exercise and the dogs' owners with a cheap means of transport using renewable energy (dog food) but no stopping to read the 'peemail'.
Geoff Black, Caves Beach
Stadium plan's no slam dunk
I THANK Scott Neylan of Stockton for raising the topic of a basketball stadium within the Wallsend electorate, ("Opposition, power different beasts", Letters, 1/3). We're big sporting fans in the Wallsend electorate. The proposal was announced by Greg Piper MP in collaboration with the former NSW Liberal government, Newcastle Basketball and Newcastle lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes on the eve of the 2023 state election.
Mr Neylan claims that I was ignorant of the details, and he's not wrong.
While the proposal for the stadium was slated for the Wallsend electorate, we in the Wallsend community were kept in the dark and not consulted.
The first step in establishing this stadium must be thorough consultation with the local sporting communities, residents, Hunter Water and Lambton High School. Football and cricket have long utilised the parks that are being proposed to be built on. Where will the football clubs and cricket teams play once these fields are removed? Local residents have raised their concerns with me about parking availability.
How will the proposal impact Lambton High School and their use of the fields? The grounds are used as overflow for the adjacent stormwater drains, so how will flood mitigation be addressed?
If their intention is to actually establish this stadium and not have another Hillsborough-style debacle, I would encourage City of Newcastle and Newcastle Basketball to actually undertake consultation with our local community before making a gung-ho announcement on the eve of an election.
Sonia Hornery, Wallsend MP
Don't rubbish Supercars scrutiny
REGARDING Tuesday's story ("10,000 fill out Supercars Newcastle 500 survey as workshops begin", Newcastle Herald 4/4), our lord mayor is quoted as having said "the community have now experienced the Newcastle 500 four times, we are committed to an open and transparent process of consultation to help inform any future decisions on this event".
I accept that Novocastrians are probably tired of reading more allegations that Newcastle council is parroting Supercars' inaccurate attendance figures. However, getting it right is vitally important.
Council chief executive Jeremy Bath recently said that Supercars had committed to provide "similar ticketing information" for the 2023 event as for previous races, and therein lies the problem. Correct attendance figures are important because that is how boffins work out just how financially viable it is for the ratepayers to allow this event to continue. In computer speak, GIGO means garbage in, garbage out. If wobbly attendance figures are used to extrapolate spending habits, then the resultant information likely lacks serious merit.
For the 2017 event the council commissioned a report from the Hunter Research Foundation Centre (HRFC). HRFC inasmuch rubbished Supercar's attendance figure of 192,242 and came up with a vastly different figure. The council seems to ignore the result of its own report and instead relies on Supercars' numbers.
When the lord mayor says "we are committed to an open and transparent process" and Mr. Bath says Supercars will provide "similar ticketing information", I reason that ratepayers are in for more of the same.
Les Brennan, Newcastle East
Bali helmet blitz seems biased
BALINESE police are reportedly on the warpath to come down hard on scooter drivers who flaunt the laws about not wearing safety helmets. That's all well and good, but really what's good for the goose should be good for the gander.
Most of us have been to Bali and we know what goes on regarding fines for non-compliance regarding not wearing helmets, and unfortunately we were/are guilty of letting ourselves go when over there, ignoring rules and regulations and partaking in copious alcohol consumption.
All tourists need to pull their socks up just a little and stop acting like bogans, but the police in Bali also need to apply safety rules to all; locals as well as tourists. It's a well-known fact that it's revenue raising and if you argue the fine is doubled. Locals travel sometimes five on a scooter, plus animals, all without helmets and the irony is, or used to be, that only the driver has to wear a helmet. Where's the logic in that?
It's not safe, and I realise that helmets are not cheap, but if their people cannot afford them then the government should supply them to promote safety and reduce deaths on their roads and re-educate their traffic police into proper procedures and concentrate on enforcing correct safety rules and stop running their own rules. It's not just the tourists who are ignoring helmet regulation rules, and yet they have the quandary.
Graeme Kime, Cameron Park
Shake up the timber trade
TONY Mansfield (Short Takes, 3/4) does state the practice but does not answer the question as to why the loggable timber is not used for the building industry; he has only stated past practice. As I see it there are several jinker loads of loggable timber that could be set aside and then collected for the use in a sawmill. While this is not the current practice, it could become that with the decision of the government of the day.
As I stated before I come from a family that would have cut a lot of usable building timbers from the trees seen from the Newcastle roadway let alone any others along the road construction path.
Value adding should be a buzzword of the government but apparently not. The buzz word is convenience, it seems, from a qualified person in road design and who consults with construction companies.
It is never too late to try a new thing, though this is not new as it has been done before - many years ago - and now just when it is convenient. We need building timbers and we need them now.
Milton Caine, Birmingham Gardens
SHORT TAKES
GRANT Agnew, ("Don't censor Latham's words", Letters, 4/4), you would have saved more time and had a better day had you Googled the comment rather than writing that letter of indignation over censorship. Seriously.
Sharon Cooper, Hamilton
ALAN Hamilton's comments on Stormy Daniels' hush money in regard to a "rounding up error" not a felony charge opens up the door on a range of campaign funds, I suspect in America, (Short Takes, 4/4). There would have been a lot of rounding up in the Jeffrey Epstein investigations into the political influences.
Grahame Danaher, Coal Point
THE Prime Minister of NZ and the Chief Medical Officer of Australia were both asked recently: "What is a woman?". They could not answer. Really? Has the world gone bonkers? There are males and females. The dictionary tells us a woman is a "female human being". Easy. What's the big mystery?
Don Fraser, Belmont North
IN reply to Robyn Nehl, ("Enough pain without church's legal games", Letters, 5/4). Brother Romuald, he was an evil predator alright; in my opinion he'd have walked under a rattlesnake with a top hat on, along with many others in the Catholic Church, including Cardinal George Pell.
David Davies, Blackalls Park
TRUMP the martyr, centre stage with the world watching on. What great publicity for his presidential run.
Julie Robinson, Cardiff
JOHN Arnold ("School shootings not God's fault", Letters, 5/4), abolishing a benevolent God won't abolish evil and suffering, or make more sense of it, but it makes forgiveness difficult, if not impossible. Robyn Nehl, ("Enough pain without church's legal games", Letters, 5/4), a practising Catholic should not wish that anyone is burning in hell.
Peter Dolan, Lambton
HA! John O'Brien, (Short Takes, 5/4). I was wearing a top hat and tails mate, it's Royal Randwick after all, not the Kempsey Cup. My old man came to Randwick with me a few years back; I had a horse with a mate racing that day. Dad refused to wear anything but shorts and thongs so we bought him a suit. He refused to wear the tie on entry to the owners and members. The staff asked dad to put his tie on, he didn't have it so they got him one from lost property. It was a big purple bow tie. He looked like a clown. The horse won and dad kept the tie, wore it to Kempsey races with shorts and thongs a few weeks later. Harvey the horse even got a sip of dad's beer.
Steve Barnett, Fingal Bay
DENNIS Petrovic, (Short Takes, 4/4/), reckons Slobodan Milosovic was exonerated by the International Criminal Court investigating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. Milosovic actually died in his cell at The Hague in March, 2006 before the trial was concluded. I'm not sure that exonerated is the word we're looking for in this case.
