Cost share to put power underground
While we are still in the mood for new year's resolutions, council should commence negotiations with AusNet to share the cost of underground powerlines in Albert St, and other tree-lined streets in Warragul.
Within two or three years we could have streetscapes equally as shady and cool as Melbourne's desirable leafy suburbs.
AusNet will probably have access to, or provide grants towards these conversions, and there's terrific, permanent benefits to council, AusNet and residents.
We will also save the considerable, ongoing annual cost (and my anguish) of annual murder to those old, magnificent trees in Albert St. Our parks and gardens are some of the best in the state, but not so our main township roads.
As an ex-SECV poles and wires engineer, who has designed and built many similar schemes throughout eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I even offer to provide expert help to council. How about it, councillors?
Ian Hill, Buln Buln East Department of Many Name Changes.
Our federal, state and local governments tout clean, green and environmentally friendly.
The crapping on never ends. Plant pretty trees in carparks, separate bins for recyclables. Can't build houses on hills, tanks and fences have to be green and so on, ad nauseum.
Our countryside is becoming a filthy disgrace of noxious weeds at a great rate of knots. First prize for appalling lack of action from the people we voted into power.
It has taken generations of farming families that fed our nation to clean up our countryside and now to what avail? Like many others, my father and his father before him went to war and fought for our country.
When they came back they fought with invasive weeds for the rest of their lives, with toxic and often ineffective sprays.
The government has given the finger to our old diggers and battlers and to all landholders that take pride in their respectful stewardship of the land.
This policy of non-action is leaving an abominable and expensive legacy to all current and future landholders.
When the clean-up finally comes, I'd like to have shares in the chemical companies because it will be a massive multi-million dollar operation that will, of course, wipe out our beautiful tree plantations and precious remnant vegetation.
Driving around Gippsland at the moment fills me with sadness, despair and anger and when I look at the farms that encroach on my boundary fences, brazen with neglected and out of control ragwort, thistles and blackberries, I shake my head in disbelief.
Fair suck of the sauce bottle pollies - do something. Christine Webb, Mountain View
Roger Marks, (Gaz 23/1) may have the advantage of knowing the full transcript and context of the blogs of the accused vilifying Tasmanian preachers, or he may not. We don't.
However, if I, or others, publicly present the lifestyle of Roger Marks and his ilk as "distressingly dangerous" and containing "health risks" we may similarly stand accused.
Normalising same sex couples, Roger? This doesn't fit your free speech mantra, but the above does?
I've got news for you. It's always been normal, (dictionary definition: regular, usual, natural), and now it's official. Your "normal" may be another matter.
John Duck, Trafalgar
There was no reference number I had been allocated that would allow me to appeal or pay the fine, but I was informed I needed to pay the fine by the due date or there would be a penalty imposed.
The clock was ticking and I now had just over two weeks before Christmas Eve when the fine of $238 was to be paid and one demerit point lost.
When I mentioned the dilemma about the bill timing to Fines Victoria after another call, I was told yes I still had to pay and in the end Fines Victoria used the number on my infringement notice that had been handwritten by the police officer so that I could pay them.
However using that number when I logged in, I found I was also able to appeal on line. I also wrote a snail mail letter of appeal as backup.
About a week to go I checked on line and suddenly my fine was put on hold. I could do nothing. I rang and after a two hour wait I was told that my appeal was unsuccessful.
I asked why and the voice on the other end of the line had no answer. However my Christmas present from the police officer had now became an early January celebration. I had a reprieve of two more weeks to pay the fine.
I asked for all documentation to be sent to me and they checked my address. They were using the one from over five years prior. There was no automatic update from driver’s licence or rego.
A week later my fine was still on hold and I could not pay it. I rang and queried and said that it had been extended for yet another two weeks.
So what happened? I conceded defeat and paid the fine mid-January and took the hit of one demerit point. The call by the police officer was marginal at best in my eyes and I should have contested it in court.
However I totalled up the time I had spent on hold and talking to Fines Victoria and figured that the time wasted was worth far more than the $238. I checked my status recently and the fine is still on hold. I am hoping that someone somewhere sees the sheer stupidity of a system that doesn’t link with VicRoads for licences and rego information, that doesn’t allow police to automatically upload infringement notice data as it is given to offenders, that doesn’t give details of why appeals have been accepted or rejected or for that matter even read.
If only, I was seen as a person not a number, but that is too much to ask.
Greg Tuck, Warragul