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 Cross her Heart by Sarah Pinborough. Some secrets are worth dying for – the mind-blowing thriller from the author of the bestselling Behind Her Eyes.

I’VE taken some time to write this email, but the matter seems still a topic in the ChatRoom.

The Commonwealth Games closing ceremony was a total fiasco. No ifs and buts. Peter Beattie and his cohorts should be ashamed, particularly at the obscene amounts paid to overseas so-called promoters.

Here’s what I would have done: All those wonderful singers should have been singing songs that the audience knew, not songs none of us had ever heard and could not understand the lyrics anyway. Why wasn’t John Williamson included? He is a GC resident and icon and the writer/singer of so many great Aussie songs that the audience could have sung along to.

What did that ballet pair have to do with anything? And their segment went on for far too long. I would have had all those talented dancers dancing to Kylie Minogue’s Locomotion. What a display that would have been!

I would have opened with a few rock ’n’ roll numbers that the audience would recognise, and have the dancers jiving. What about Mike Brady singing the most famous AFL footy song ever – Up There Cazaly (I admit to a little bias here) – and the dancers could all be taking marks and kicking the balls into the audience.

And, finally, there was no march-by for the athletes who made the Games such a success. Shame, shame, shame. I would have had them walking the circuit towards the end, to the tune of Waltzing Matilda (bring John Williamson back on for this, joined by all the other singers) and the audience singing their loudest.

As it was, I believe many of the audience left the stadium early in disgust, particularly after paying an outrageous fee for entry.

In closing, you stuffed up big time, Beattie. The audience (those who remained as well as those who left) should have their entrance fees refunded. I am a 75-year-old woman and long-time GC resident. I would have done the job for pocket money. BURLEIGH GIRL

I TOTALLY disagree with the suggestion that the parents of little Dolly Everett should pursue legal action against Dolly’s school, where she was bullied and tormented, eventually leading to the poor girl taking her own life.

Why sue the school? Teachers are there to teach students and give them a good education, they are not in the classrooms to be parttime parents and bodyguards.

The Government should toughen laws, making parents responsible for their children’s reckless behavior and allowing legal action to be directed at the parents of the bullies, simply because too many of today’s parents have raised their kids with no discipline and without teaching them to show respect.

Too many of today’s parents simply think that by dropping their kids off at school or dumping them at the beach, that teachers and lifesavers automatically become their children’s guardians in their absence, and expect them to be responsible for their safety. KEN WADE, TWEED HEADS

WE are continually being told that we now live in the age of electronic transfers.

This may be so but the “transfer” only seems to work one way.

When money needs to be taken from my account to pay a bill it disappears on time every time.

However, when money needs to be transferred INTO my account it never happens if there is a weekend involved.

For example, my pension this month was due to be paid into my bank on May 5.

But that was a Saturday so it is now Monday, May 7, and I am still pensionless.

Why does it only work one way? FRANK TEWKESBURY, SOUTHPORT

TO the morons on the 68-foot Azimut anchored north of Tipplers on Friday night, I hope you see this (but then again you probably cannot read). You guys are absolutely hilarious (not). We really enjoyed you anchoring on top of us and especially liked the abuse hurled when you were told you were too close and would swing into us on the turn of the tide. That was only topped by your juvenile schoolboy jibes as were we leaving on Saturday. You guys really have missed your calling as circus clowns. All I can say is that you are totally suited to your vessel. A REAL BOATIE, PARADISE POINT