A bridge too far
Upon reflection, my use of the word memorial in my recent challenge to the Federal member to fund the Shoalhaven River Bridge maintenance was inconsistent with how it is usually applied. A more appropriate name would just be the The Member for Gilmore Shoalhaven Bridge Fund, which needs $15 million over the next 50 years to keep our beautiful old lady in fine shape. I apologise to those members of our community who may have felt any hurt over my misuse of the word as that was certainly not my intention.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
A. Findley, Shoalhaven Mayor
Tastes like Tea Party
The desalination plant did not need to be privatised – it is not even a “user pays” situation. The sale/lease of the public utility is a conservative plot to extract capital from the people of NSW to finance a bank investment fund (currently averaging 8.75 per cent) a private investment fund and a Canadian teachers’ superannuation fund.
The NSW government can colloquially be accused of raiding and robbing our kids’ money boxes for the purpose of “feathering the nests” of the wealthy – Tea Party politics.
And we had no say in this – it just happened.
Since the sale/lease date the owners, have extracted in rounded terms, $907 million from the NSW government – $534,246.00 a day. And the NSW government is obliged (under contract) to pay over half a million dollars a day to the leasing consortium until May 2062.
Can you imagine what a pile of useless rusting junk the Sydney Desalination Plant will represent in 2062? The lease is a con job. The lease of the plant should never have extended past a period of 10 years.
Tea Party politics where the buzzword is “privatise”: a legal accepted system by conservative governments to “rent out” or sell public infrastructure and services cheaply – investment items that reappear in glossy portfolios of corporations, banks and superannuation funds; with the aim to increase the wealth of investors via way of the stock exchange.
The whole deception of conservative politics stinks to high heaven.
J. Macleod, Berry
Exercise restraint
Gonorrhoea infections increased 60 per cent in Australia over the last five years. According to ABC online on November 6, “no one really knows why”. Syphilis increased 200 per cent in some northern Australian communities.
Professor Ward from SA’s Health and Medical Research Institute says, “a major awareness campaign” is under way.
Awareness of what? Condoms? But condoms seem not very on-turning – who likes washing their feet with their socks on?
What else is there?
How about chastity – meaning no sex until you marry and then only with the person you’ve married?
Like it or not, the reason why people get sexually-transmitted infections is still sexual promiscuity.
A. Jago, Nichols Point
Political fakery
With five politicians living in the Shoalhaven (none Labor) one would have thought we would be the North Shore of the South Coast but instead millions upon millions of dollars are spent and wasted in Sydney.
Here we get political fake news about a 24/7 police station and new ambulance station in the Bay and Basin yet still nothing has started. Nothing about getting the same rail service as Kiama and still no fracture clinic at Shoalhaven Hospital (at least with the Berry bypass patients will get to Wollongong fracture clinic quicker). These politicians have a lot to answer for like why government services are cutback and being sold off.
What is next with the fake news, cane toads spotted in the Shoalhaven?