..about the issues they raise and are careful to get the tone and the clarity of their arguments just right to pass the editors’ stringent scrutiny, real or imagined. Sure, the letters are still not all great, but the standard is generally streets ahead of the ‘anything goes’ FB sewer.
And I suspect that a lot of inveterate letter writers fondly imagine that their letters may be read by somebody who actually counts in the scheme of things and might even have a positive effect on society at large. What I’m saying is that their motivation is unquestionably in the well-meaning basket and that suspicion gives me a warm glow by itself.
Racist and offensive
I live in Hong Kong but recently returned to Melbourne for a visit. When I am here, one of my favourite things to do is watch my ex-team mates play football at an eastern-suburbs club. Hearing a number of them racially vilified on multiple occasions is not. While the comments are too offensive to quote, they highlight a lack of understanding, education and cultural awareness at the club. I am happy to be back in Hong Kong and playing in the South China AFL where diversity, inclusion and multiculturalism are the aim of the game.
Lachlan Evans, Hong Kong
Now, to me, that is so much more affecting than the usual grotesque reports of violent protests about mosques and Muslim birds in burqas etc. I want to reach out and reassure Lachlan that it’ll all be fixed by the time he comes back from Honkers to check out another rough and tumble footy match at the thankfully unnamed south-eastern suburbs’ AFL club. And thanks for the intelligence on the long arm of the AFL – who knew there was a league in South China anyway?
And while we’re looking helpful hints gleaned from the overseas experience of our fearless correspondents, what about this one?
Copy Spanish system
The article ‘Speeding truck law push’ (The Age, 4/7) is yet another example of us reinventing the wheel when a perfectly good one is available elsewhere. In Spain, a truck or bus driver has an e-card that is inserted into the ignition and records GPS position, speed and duration of rest breaks over a 21-day period. The e-card can be read any time by police and must be submitted each month by the driver. Their driving licence depends on it. While in Spain recently, we did not see a speeding bus or truck.
Peter Jones, Hawthorn
This is so sensible I don’t understand why it hasn’t been acted on immediately. And coming from a Hawthorn resident lends it just the right mix of sobriety and authority. How can you not trust a Hawks supporter to come up with a back-to-back competition-winning solution?
What letters to the editor can’t promise the writer in these days of instant gratification is a response. I doubt that these two examples got a response and if they did it would be in a slow dance of death, made even slower by the lamentable service of Australia Post, in the form of another well-considered letter to the editor endorsing or decrying the original letter - in a very reasonable and civilised tone, of course.
Poor Malcolm is being castigated for everything he does these days and probably even more for what he doesn’t do, but just in case you’d forgotten he was in charge of the government’s cheapskate NBN option, here’s a prod from some Aussies abroad, hailing from Mount Eliza in the just safe Liberal seat of Dunkley. You can almost taste the indignation.
Such speedy delivery
My wife and I are at Kizhi Island, one of the more remote places in the world, travelling by river from St Petersburg to Moscow. Imagine my surprise when I downloaded The Age online yesterday, via the ship’s satellite, much faster than we do using the new National Broadband Network in Mt Eliza
James Young, Mount Eliza
Going OS can be a revelation for us isolated Aussies, but because we think we know all there is to know about it, one of the surprises in the first world is that the United States isn’t exactly what we expected.
Many-faceted country
I am travelling in the United States and Kate Stanton’s comments (Comment, 15/7) ring true. The US has massive issues; our media reminds us of them constantly, and I would not belittle them. However, it also has much that its citizens should be proud of and that we can learn from. It is physically beautiful, and the accessibility of the wonderful national parks inspires appreciation for the outdoors and the environment.
There is an optimism, friendliness and patience. Middle-class Americans live in well-insulated houses. There is a fine culture of philanthropy and +a public school system that puts ours to shame. Drivers are patient and courteous – emphasising the aggressive behaviour of drivers on Australia’s roads.
Our media follows the tried and tested ‘only in America’ formula, emphasising the weird, violent and crazy, but it should not define the entire country.
Margot Milne, Geelong West
In that case the admonishment is quite mild, but the following epistle lets it all hang out. It’s an old argument but a goody; perhaps I wouldn’t be game to make the suggestion at an Australia First rally though.
Backward looking
Mr Annanth, I understand your disappointment at my government’s refusal to grant you a visa (‘Australian ban on Indian student labelled bizarre’ 21/7). However, this petulant act is ultimately in your best interests. A strong candidate, you could do a great deal better than study in Australia. For all its problems, India looks firmly to the future; whereas our culture seems unable to understand the worth of education; or, indeed, the worth of its children. The widespread stereotype of Australians as ignorant convicts has some basis in truth. For generations, Australia has run down its education system for all but the wealthiest. Fears that the government’s peevishness will reflect badly on your CV are not well founded.
Rod Vance, Blackburn
And finally a plea for better grammar, with which I sympathise but which is the literary equivalent to pissing into the wind. It’s not a letter as such (so there’s no header) but it was all I could find at short notice and it’s typical of the genre.
It would be a more welcome shift in Frydenberg’s language (29/7), if he didn’t use ‘transition’ as a verb.
David Markham, Flynn, ACT
I heard bits of a show on RN this afternoon that predicted the end of newspapers as we know them is much closer than we think. I didn’t read newspapers at all until I was in my thirties but it is a daily ritual these days and I shall regret their passing into history, quite apart from the issue of newspaper journalism being one of the bulwarks of a healthy democracy. The letters to the editor will naturally pass with them and I wonder what the civic minded amongst us will do now that their passion to right wrongs with their mighty pens has been judged by society’s bean counters to be redundant.