Letter of the Week
Have strong opinions, write in an engaging way? You could win our Letter of the Week, and with it a book from our friends and sponsors, the publishers HarperCollins. This month’s book prize is The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn. It debuted at No 1 on the NYT best seller list in the US and is a gripping psychological thriller about an agoraphobic woman who believes she has witnessed a horrible crime in a neighbouring house.
Rules: Best letter competition runs till January 19 next year. Entries close each Thursday at 5pm. The winner is selected by 2pm each Friday. Book of the month valued up to $49.00. Entrants agree to the Competition Terms and Conditions located at www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/
entertainment/competitions, and our privacy policy. Entrants consent to their information being shared with HarperCollins for the express purpose of delivering prizes.
THE Commonwealth Games are coming to town.
Horror of horrors. Amongst other things there is going to be gridlock on the M1, every road in town is going to be backed up. No one will be able to travel anywhere. Tradies are going to have to ride their pink bicycles to work. Various stores are going to close down because of lack of business.
Participants are going to be lucky if they get to their events on time and the poor old public will be lucky to get to or from the event because of massive four-hour disruptions to the rail service.
Oh and of course the bus and light rail service is also going to be derailed.
Now we learn that the whole legal service is going to be disrupted. Courts on the Coast are going to be in disarray and just about nonexistent, criminals won’t be able to report in accordance with bail conditions and District/Supreme Court Judges are going to have to travel to Brisbane to hear matters normally heard on the Coast.
Don’t ask me how they expect to get to Brisbane because of all this chaos bought about by staging the Commonwealth Games here in God’s Country, the Gold Coast.
I’m expecting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to gallop into town at any moment now.
PETER MOY
WHILE your paper yesterday celebrated the use of jet skis to tow in some of the professional surfers at Kirra they were an absolute menace to the paddle-in surfers who were also out there.
There were so many near collisions that the abuse towards the jet ski drivers was flying thick and fast in the line-up.
This is clearly very dangerous and illegal behaviour. Why are these drivers not being prosecuted by the police?
BILL
I COULDN’T believe what happened to me on Friday at Nerang.
I was out on a mission, handing my CV out to select companies. Buoyant and focused.
I was in Cotton St about to hand over my last (two-page) CV, also thinking I’d love to get a copy of it printed so I could have a spare.
Noticed Centrelink right in front of me, so since I am a Centrelink customer, I thought I’d pop in and get them to print one off for me.
The response from the man at the roving counter was shocking!
“No, we don’t do that here. You’ll have to go to your job agent for that.”
My job agent is west of Ipswich. I marched out of there in disgust and straight across the road to the police station, where my request was met with “How many copies would you like?” and smiles.
Is this for real?
SHARLEYNE HOSKIN CLAGIRABA
TO say the Games will be an abject debacle would be a gross understatement. The real losers are the Gold Coast ratepayers and Queensland taxpayers. Rates will increase.
And I can see councillors and politicians with their snouts in the free trough eating and drinking their way day in and day out throughout the Games, all paid for by the ratepayer.
DARRYLE KNOWLES MAIN BEACH
WHAT an idiot Barnaby Joyce is. Through his indiscretion, he could have become a target for blackmail from a foreign power, keen to get information on various aspects of our defence forces.
Miss Campion is also just as culpable. Neither of them can now be trusted to hold senior positions in Government or any position of trust.
And the biggest furphy of all is that neither of them bothered to take precautions against the outcome that has resulted from that liason.
They should both be dismissed with a penalty of a vastly reduced pension, which of course is provided by us taxpayers.
Maybe a sweep among the whole parliament should be conducted, to weed out any other people who are, or may be, tempted to indulge in that behaviour. I know it happens in all areas of private and government circles throughout the world, but that does not excuse this happening here.
VERN EVES, TWEED
THE Prime Minister has just convinced me that not only is he not a politician, he should under no circumstance be Prime Minister. His latest dog act of berating Barnaby Joyce in public has all the makings of someone trying to save his own skin.
I have no sympathy for Joyce or any other older man leaving his wife and children for a younger woman, and lately there has been a number of times this has happened. What I am surprised by is how a highly intelligent woman of 32 years of age allowed herself to become pregnant.
THOMAS DAVIES, SURFERS PARADISE
THE only way Malcolm the Merciless will be able to enforce his bonk ban will be to place all his ministers in chastity belts and give the keys to Lucy.
J.J. GOOLD, MUDGEERABA