LetteroftheWeek

GERALD MOSES, CLEAR ISLAND WATERS

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I’M a teacher and over the last 10 years have worked in many schools – mostly independent schools. None of them have allowed phones. Students had to hand them in at the office on arrival and could collect them after school!

That’s not to say you’d get the students smuggle one in their bag! You can’t search the kids? It’s up to parents to take the phones from them in the morning.

THERE have been a number of articles recently relating to medical testing. The positive is the development of a memory test to help indicate Alzheimer’s years earlier, whereas the negative is the reluctance of men to have prostate cancer testing. However the question that many ask is do we want to know?

One of the initial concerns is that people may have to report their medical conditions to employers or medical insurers. In many countries female job applicants cannot be asked if they are pregnant or intend to start a family soon but if they have ‘genetic tests’ to look for possible disease indicators they often have to report these results.

For me, my family history of prostate cancer for my father and grandfather prompted testing in my 40s - earlier than most would start and by my 50s it showed up. My discomfort with the manual test and a dislike of needles had to be put aside. After a radiation treatment all is well and I don’t glow in the dark as I jest.

The test for Alzheimer’s is more confronting and I am not so sure if I want to undertake this test yet. The testing and side effects of prostrate treatments can be a bit deflating but knowing you were going to get Alzheimer’s would terrify me as in many cases who you are and what you have done fades away and as of yet there are few treatments that help.

Really we do need to know what is happening and check for issues that family histories predict as possibilities and worried as we are we have to check for the more concerning possibilities if we can.

Be brave and help yourself and your family.

TRAVELLERS to the Commonwealth Games are now being slugged with slower M1 speed limits. As your cartoon suggests, there’s not much slower than snail’s pace (GCB 5/2). The only pity is that our beloved leaders like Palaszczuk, Jones, Bailey and Trad won’t be stuck in any traffic jam. Perhaps if we pop them all in a huge pot and stir them with plenty of sugar we might end up with something to serve on toast to our

visitors. It would be something akin to a polly-saturated fig jam. Fig jam? Just ask them!

IF cyber bullying is occurring because of mobile phone use at schools, ban them. It’s not real hard. Having a talk to parents as suggested by some in the education department is as ridiculous as it sounds. Our children’s lives are worth more the imagined rights of some.

FOLLOWING the truly great achievement of the creation of 403,000 new jobs (75% said to be permanent) one needs to contemplate all the positives of that.

Two of these must be the impact of less welfare expenditure and the fact that these new jobs will increase tax revenue. (No doubt other taxes such as GST will also increase).

One would think this will give the Government a better bottom line and the opportunity to the cutting of personal tax rates in a meaningful way. Coupled with reduction in company tax rates all of this will create an even better economy and the prospect of even more jobs.

I for one think that the Government is moving in the right direction for all our benefit.