Climate confusion
Ian Cooper (Bendigo Advertiser, Saturday, January 2) repetitively tells us that climate experts are being ignored, and repetitively uses the name Greta Thunberg to emphasize his point.
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The last I heard Greta was a young school girl who had taken time off to make a lot of noise and a name for herself - certainly not at her age, a climate expert.
Ian also names countries that have committed to a goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.
Words are cheap and none of those countries has spelt out how they are going to get to that point and at what cost.
We know from events of last year that predicting the events into the future, or in this case not predicting future events, can become a disastrous failure.
David Arscott, Kangaroo Flat
One and free?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made a 'captain's call', and changed one word in the national anthem.
We are no longer 'young and free', we are now 'one and free'.
Only we aren't and we are not.
The constant efforts of the left to denigrate the Australian way of life, and promote the myth of multiculturalism has ensured that we are anything but 'one'.
There are whole areas of the big cities where single cultures exist.
There is little integration. Indigenous Australians are working to create treaties with state and federal governments.
They seem to think that will make them happier.
As someone who grew up in New Zealand, I know it won't. The treaty of Waitangi, the founding document of the country, sets in concrete that it is a 'them and us' situation.
It might be a feel good thing, singing about being 'one', but putting into law that a whole people group are separate and different sort of contradicts it.
Then there is the 'free' bit.
One could go on for ever about the erosion of personal freedoms, especially freedom of speech.
One topical example is the state government's plan to make it an offence to not agree that there are multiple genders.
There are people who have always thought that there are two sexes, male and female.
The new version of freedom means they are free to keep that opinion strictly to themselves.
One and free? Maybe not.
Murray McPhie, Epsom
Alcohol is a curse
Penalties for alcohol infringements should be tightened and increased across the board. Alcohol consumption and all the dysfunctionalism that occurs because of it should be better publicised.
It is a poison that kills, either through family violence, motor vehicle accidents, gambling, heart disease and liver complaints to name a few.
Sobering up rooms could be a good thing, I shall reserve judgement. Alcohol is no joke even though it is advertised as such. It affects all genders and races in the same way.