Letters
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday June 11, 2009
There's no place for the politics of personalityMichael Hayden (Letters, June 10) seems to believe the problem with "unelected" premiers highlights the failure of the policy of fixed-term elections. The real problem, however, is this pervasive belief that in elections we vote for a premier (or a prime minister) and not a government. Should the exercise of voting in an election become no more than a naive concession to the manipulative and adversarial nature of the politics of personality, then good government is not only unlikely but ultimately unnecessary.David Grant BallinaDon't stew over itI mentioned to a colleague how sick I was of seeing Tracy Grimshaw and Gordon Ramsay on the front pages. Surely there are more newsworthy stories. She replied that she had never heard of either of them. I should be so lucky.Maureen Chuck CabaritaCure is nothing to sneeze atSocial life in my 20s became a misery because of prolonged sneezing bouts that could last an entire evening. Desperate for a cure, it was suggested I give homeopathy a go. A few tests later followed by some sugary granules under the tongue and I was cured. So Anne Kirmane (Letters, June 10), homeopathy does work for some.Jim Gentles CoogeeSaying "natural" equals "good" just doesn't work. There are many natural things that are very scary. Lead, arsenic (suspected in Phar Lap's death) and mercury are both natural and deadly.Suzanne Wicks Potts PointLet us laughIn St Paul's Anglican Church, Burwood, in the early 1950s I heard, for the first and only time a congregation applauding during a sermon (Letters, June 10). The late Bishop Hilliard was suggesting that the Christian church could clean up the then current crime wave the Presbyterians providing the fire, the Baptists the water to extinguish it and along would come the Anglicans to provide the starch.Keith Ridler-Dutton KillaraPM's a bonzer blokeStrewth. With such studied exclamations as "fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate" ("Labor prepares for election with new ministry line-up", June 10) it is a wonder that Kevin Rudd did not have a starring role in Baz Luhrmann's Australia.Sarah Robertson East LindfieldThose of us old enough to have used the expression know it was a suck of the sauce bottle that required fair consideration.Lloyd Capps St IvesPleasure and painIan Lee (Letters, June 9) informs us that "there is plenty of evidence that ... removal [of the foreskin] reduces sexual pleasure". I am curious as to how is this measured? Is there something like the Richter scale perhaps that measures the level of such pleasure? And were we women asked which we had found to be more pleasing? Not that this would be any easier to measure, but at least it would be nice to know our feelings were considered as well.Ruth Harvey Dover HeightsEndangered speciesOf course electronic books have their place (Letters, June 10), but there are some things that cannot be replicated. After my father passed away I became the proud owner of his copy of Charles Darwin's Voyage Of The Beagle.It is leather-bound, with the cover and spine embossed in gold leaf, includes fold-out maps and a wonderfully evocative dusty aroma that only old books can have. It was signed by my father's teacher as a reward for winning the mathematics prize at his school in 1919. I have since had the cover and binding restored, and whenever I leaf through those pages I like to think that I am sharing Darwin's journey with my dad. Somehow I don't think my children will share those same emotions in 40 years if they opened some PDF files.Matt Petersen Randwick
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