GUIDE GOOD FOR BIN

ONE can only chuckle when reading extracts from the infantilising “training guide” produced to aid Commonwealth Games volunteers.

Residents of a tourist mecca hardly need a guidebook to know how to greet visitors.

We are not children. We know how to say hello without offending anyone.

If we were to live our lives according to the nanny-state mindset behind this guide, the world would be a very dull place indeed.

Pretty much everyone would be afraid of opening their mouth for fear of offending someone. Language would lose all colour and meaning. It would be a dull, monotonous, grey and miserable world.

Luckily the Gold Coast is nothing like that, and neither are its people.

Volunteers should chuck the guide in the recycling bin and heed the good advice of Mark Peters to “be themselves.”

They should be as laid-back and good-humoured as always. Because if truth be told, that’s what visitors to the Gold Coast really want.