I'm very proud of our Jets, despite the sad result on Saturday night. I think the team deserves a civic reception and Mark Milligan should be presented with the key to the city for bringing the fans back to the game and giving us hope for the future.
It's a bit rich for the City of Newcastle to oppose Jerry Schwartz's waterslide and carousel plans ("Slide, train the new battlegrounds in Schwartz's stoush with council", Herald, 19/5). If the council considers these attractions out of character with the Newcastle Foreshore, then so is the $18.5 million water park and playground now being built in Foreshore Park.
So, the taxpayer will have to foot the bill for the welfare and surveillance of the Isis brides now they're back in Australia. That's just as bad as the $300 million that was wasted on pursuing Ben Roberts-Smith.
Again the media calling State of Origin the pinnacle of rugby league; no need to say any more. LOL
Ian King ("Swoop on supermarket ads welcomed", Letters, 19/5) shows unfortunate naivety in thinking the supermarkets will pay any fines levied for price manipulation. Perhaps an initial outlay of funds, but the ultimate payer of the fines will be the ordinary shopper. A few cents more on every item on the supermarket shelves will soon recover any fines imposed. Higher prices yet again with little pain for shareholder returns.
No more 'Down Down' deceptions; no more 'Fresh Food' falsehoods. No more greed. Customers deserve better than this from their two major supermarkets.
Our government just changed capital gains tax. You can agree or disagree with the policy, but what followed was entirely predictable. The opposition cried broken promise. The media hunted for falling auction rates.
In the noise, another government attempting something hard became just more evidence that politicians can't be trusted.
This is how it goes now. Force the denial before the election, then brand any change as betrayal. Fewer than half of Australians now have confidence in the federal government, and the number looks much the same whoever is in the chair.
I grew up believing our institutions were stronger than that cycle. That eventually the right thing would find a way through. My son was born in 2007, my daughter in 2009. They've had little reason to share that faith.
A recent ANU survey found that fewer than half of Australians aged 18 to 24 believe democracy is always preferable to other forms of government. The world they inherited did that.
Institutions don't repair themselves. They need politicians willing to do hard things and a public willing to let them. They need parents and teachers who talk honestly about why this matters. And they need the rest of us to pause before we share, and ask whether what we're posting is true, or just satisfying to send.
We vote governments in to do hard things, then punish them when they do.
At some point that stops being the politicians' problem and starts being ours.
Marvyn Smith, your laser sharp words are "manna from heaven" in their desperately needed clear clarion call ("Blame the GST for inequalities", Letters, 18/5). The GST was a battering ram to the "fair go" (who remembers long dead egalitarianism?) as you so well put it.
Australia started as a workers' paradise. Now, working for pay, offers little hope for wealth prospects . Turning such social dislocation around is no easy matter, but the government is finally taking action. This budget is not the final say on the matter.
You could say Sydney played very well in the game against the Jets at the weekend but, then, they were mightily served by the referee.
Fouls not given, yellow cards not given, all leading to the team from the big smoke getting every advantage. I grew weary of seeing Eli Adams being taken out and Jets players being manhandled, unchecked by the referee.
It was a spectacle, no question, and the young blokes never gave up.
The shot tally escalated for the home team in the second half, which was full of near-misses and goalmouth scrambles. They have been labelled the Box Office Jets this season for a reason.
The Jets were clearly the best team this year by far. Daylight ran second. Adelaide was shoved out through a similar debacle.
I will not be watching the final, as I think that both teams have been elevated in grossly unfair circumstances.
We recently added another small solar system and medium sized battery to our existing solar panels. It worked quite well for a while until there was no sun for three days and the battery went flat.
We then had to revert to grid power: good old coal-fired power. The message is very simple: all the solar farms, wind farms and batteries are useless if mother nature does not supply the energy sources.
All governments need to recognise this and either build new coal-fired power stations, or start constructing small nuclear power plants before our existing coal-fired power stations become obsolete.
Failure to do this will be catastrophic for all Australians.
As a long-time political tragic, with a voracious appetite for 'traditional' media, I have not seen, read, or heard, any mention of the significant role his son, Eric, appeared to play in the recent visit to China by the US President.
While there has been considerable vision of the younger Trump accompanying his father to official functions, no mention at all about why Eric was there.
The most significant event of any high-level visit was always the state banquet. Here, Eric sat at the head table, close to his father, and next to Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister, and arguably the most powerful man in the CCP after President Xi.
Given that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in the visiting delegation, I would have thought that protocol would deem that, as Secretary of State, Rubio would have been seated with his Chinese equivalent.
Is it too Machiavellian to ponder that Trump is positioning Eric as the 'chosen one' and anointing him as his successor. Given Trump has long been infatuated with British royalty, perhaps it's his attempt to emulate this heredity process.
