Council shelters behind Road Management Act

I read with interest the article (Gaz 26/9) relating to Tom Pye’s encounter with the local shire over a claim he made resulting from a recent accident.

My wife had a similar experience early in the year. She was walking along a residential street, looking for a specific house number when she tripped over a join that was protruding several inches above the neighbouring slab.

Resulting from the fall, she sustained, among other injuries, a seriously broken wrist which took several months to heal.

I wrote to Baw Baw Shire council, advising them of the faulty footpath, and it took at least seven weeks for them to get around to repairing the fault.

Almost immediately after I wrote I received a letter from council and they virtually told me exactly the same as what Tom Pye was told. I also received a letter from National Claims Solutions telling me the same story about council having no responsibility.

In their first letter they even mentioned that the council would not use ratepayers’ money to pay for injuries.

Any intelligent person would know that the council should have public liability insurance to cover any accident sustained by the public for which they are responsible and the ratepayers would not have to fork out.

Any other corporation under the same circumstance would be responsible for injuries incurred on their property, especially through their negligence, but the council can shelter behind Road Management Act 2004, to avoid their legal obligation to anyone who has suffered injury because of council negligence.

Bob Stone, Drouin addressing the real and painful difficulties experienced by LGBT children. However, it doesn’t go far enough to include the whole spectrum of children’s experience and the real causes of bullying and abuse of power.

If we are to have one program for every area in which children bully and hurt each other, then we will need to develop programs for; kids with freckles, kids who stutter, kids who have a lazy eye, kids whose parents are unemployed and so on.

You may say that these examples are not the same as sexuality but ask an adult if being tease and bullied because they had a stutter has influenced their lives and their relationships and you may find surprising results.

The fault of this document is that it doesn’t address the real problem of power. Who wants it and why they need it.

Then, what do we do to redirect the desire for power. How do we help the bully understand what is going on in their experience?

Yes, let’s give the powerless support but this program is only going to inform the non-bullies and maybe most followers. The real bullies and wannabees, will hunker down in defence, possibly reinforcing the reason for their behaviour even more. Kathrine Swift, Warragul why is it so long until Tony Abbott admitted it just another coverup as far as I can see.

This is a great influence lets stand for Parliament and hope we get in and we can live off the tax payer and have a great time as well.

Daryl Rogers, Warragul

In this Google age no one should be misinformed.

To believe the weapons grade disinformation of the Al Gores', Robert Mannes', Tim Flanerys' and Phil Jones' etc is to be very misinformed indeed.

Please consult Global Warming Petition Project. Also YouTube for Tim Ball, Bob Carter, Jo Nova, Patrick Moore and many more such skeptics with no, should be non existant research jobs to justify.

Lynton Malley, Cloverlea

Elizabeth Stephens is to be congratulated on having a level head and using it.

Very few people h ave given the yes-no vote a lot of thought, but just voting as their belly guides them. B. Sharp, Drouin South