Other > Letters to the Herald > Banging On

Sometimes, it's just fun to sound off on something, and even more fun to see it published in the Sydney Morning Herald.
I'm particularly proud of these letters.

Tuesday's Heckler omitted one of tea's greatest virtues: a sense of community. The egotistical coffee drinkers make an individual order: double-shot decaf skim soy cappuccino with no chocolate; it's all about them.  

Meanwhile, community-minded tea drinkers make a pot, to share.  Then someone offers to "be mother" and serve others.  Only when everyone has a cup does personal preference, a little sugar maybe, come into play.  It's all about us.

"Tea or coffee?" may well be the defining question of our age.

Alicia Dawson needn't worry (Letters, September 20): the education system is carefully designed to ensure even budding geniuses turn out ordinary, and if that fails, a few years in a nice corporate job will finish the job.

Icelandic ash is revealing how the past 100 years has turned us into a pack of spoilt, planet-consuming whingers.

I'm stuck in Australia for a few days and can't think of anything better to do than hang around an airport: boo-hoo.
I might miss this year's dawn service in France: boo-hoo.
British wedding planners are denied access to cheap Kenyan-grown roses: boo-hoo!

I think mother nature is gently hinting it's time to grow up and get real about living sustainably.

On a call to honour Germaine Greer…

Why would Germaine need a gong (Letters, March 10) when she has received the greatest honour Australia can bestow on a writer: that of being reviled, denigrated and hated by people who haven't read you, don't understand you and would never let ignorance of your views get in the way of a good opine?

Responding to a letter on reports on Mother Teresa's doubts and spiritual emptiness…

Just think, if Mother Teresa had thrown the bible away and sat very quietly under a tree for long enough, she might have discovered through grace that she didn't need forgiveness from "god" because she wasn't born sinful and the heaven she sought was present int he here and now (Letters, September 14).

The true offence of copyright infringement is busying yourself trying to capture a moment instead of participating in it, an activity that ironically would also have resulted in a perfectly legal “recording” of the experience with the versatile multimedia device known as memory.

With political will, buckets of funding and unparalleled co-operation, Western scientists built the first atom bomb and sent men to walk on the moon.  Why don’t we do the same for viable nuclear fusion?  In one fell swoop we could end our dependence on oil, turn around global warming, avoid stockpiling weapons-grade fissile material and begin to build a sustainable future.  All we need is for a coalition of the willing to generate enough heat and pressure so great minds can develop this much-sought-after non-weapon of mass destruction.

In the 175th anniversary Herald, Robert Willis asked "Did a great-great-great grand parent of Bill Carpenter, Rosemary O'Brien, or Peter Fyfe have a letter published in the first Herald?" Naturally, all three of us responded…

Robert Willis, in 1831 my great-great-great grandfather was in Scotland dreaming about migrating to a yet-to-be-proclaimed South Australia where he hoped to farm stolen land, raise a family, and send an epistolographer east to take on the illiterate convicts of Sydney.

By banning cameras from its pools, Randwick council has not offended common sense. Rather, it has boldly struck a palpable blow in the fight to reclaim the human spirit from the technological age.

There is now a little patch of Sydney where, if something interesting is happening, people have to pay attention and watch the view, not the viewfinder. Folks wanting to remember something are forced to make a memory.

Best of all, absent friends must resort to imagining what it was like, aided by the now vital storytelling ability of their chums who were there.

Let's look on this ban as a wonderful opportunity to not relentlessly document every minute of our lives. We might enjoy our experiences, awaken our imaginations and even live a little bit more fully as a result.

Responding to a letter calling for the letter writers to lighten up…

Bob Moore's invocation to lighten up (Letters, August 5) is timely. We are in the middle of a dangerous and life-threatening metaphysical obesity crisis.

We've pigged out on a diet of sugary, content-free entertainment and high-fat fast-sound-bite debate. We've lounged around with a couch-potato aversion to the soul exercise of thinking, engaging, and contemplating. The result is a metaphysically flabby nation with a potential heart condition. No wonder we sound depressed.

The only solution is to cash in the physical gym membership, turn off the TV, and get into the delicious all-natural, fresh and nutritious inner buffet offered by our galleries, concert halls, book clubs and the like, then enjoy the ensuing workout of debate scrutiny and revelation.

In no time we will all be metaphysically trim, taught, and tittering all the way through the Letters page.

On NSW changes to the stamp duty regime…

What's the big problem with stamp duty? normal people pay if only once or maybe twice in their lives.

As for the urban nomads, aspirant renovators, and evil property speculators, let them pay.

It will remind them that housing is not an asset to maximise capital growth of balance our their portfolio, but a place to live, to grow, to find some perspective, and discover something really valuable.

Responding to a rather indignant letter about the allegedly mediocre state to letter writing, I relished forcing the author to eat his own words, slightly spiced of course…

I wonder what Oscar Wilde would make of a devastating and insightful riposte like Kevin Rugg's "I'm sick of reading this crap" (Letters, July 9). Would Shaw dare reply to our esteemed epistler's barbed cry of "Who cares?" Surely even Shakespeare would hang his head in shame, for are his plays not all too replete with "brief question" and "lame, 'witty' utterance"?

In his famed anuran epic, Aristophanes pits the smart-alec retorts of Euripides against the tragic utterances of Aeschylus. Permit me to use the same device to reply to Mr Rugg: "Bring back the old-fashioned, long, literate, painstakingly furnished, quality…" little bottle of oil.

In times as dry as these, we need the lubrication.

The conservatives have invented an implausible diversion to keep the media busy while they ruin the country. They search their ranks and discover a fish-and-chip shop owner, preselected as a party candidate and persuade her over a plunger of coffee to resign from the party and run as an independent, a martyr for the conservative cause.

When she makes her carefully scripted maiden speech, they do not condemn her, but leave her free to provide the counterbalance that makes the Government look good. Finally, before anyone catches on, she becomes a plausible excuse for their inevitable defeat at the polls. It must be a conspiracy.

I'm outraged by the heresy in the Kevin Smith film Dogma.

In the opening disclaimer, Mr Smith uses "platypi" as the plural for platypus.

As all good English speakers know, platypus comes from the Greek for flat foot and so its plural is platypuses, although some may prefer platypodes.

Let Mr Smith say what he likes about God and the Church but English is still sacred, at least outside [of] America.

A real convicted drug trafficking criminal bearing the torch is a perfectly suitable image for the Olympics: it poignantly counter-balances the addictive drug-like cocktail of global corporate greed, exploitation, tokenism, and cronyism that is peddled by the modern Olympics, a movement so morally bankrupt it must spend $220 million in advertising to patch up its image and keep the sponsors happy.

By allowing Warren to bear the torch, we metaphorically bear all.

Following the suggestion of B.Coombe (Letters, May 4), I agree to work on the Queen's Birthday holiday provided I can have a day in lieu to celebrate Wattle Day, when we honour something truly Australian.

If only customers could impose fees on banks, like could get interesting. Imagine a $6 "waited too long in the queue" fee, a $12 "have to fill out another form" fee, the $25 "you don't understand my simple request fee", and best of all, the $80 "I need a lawyer to understand your terms and conditions" fee.

As one of the young victims of a progressive education, I had to do a night course to learn some Latin. Like Dorothy in Oz, I stood amazed as the English language suddenly burst forth in living technicolour, rich with history, and full of shadows of meaning. I was glad to have left the black and white Kanzas of ignorance.

It's time we dropped a few houses on those wicked witches who would have us all eschewing eloquence for the sake of their tiny minds. Cave! You have been warned.