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 Hunting Party by Lucy Foley. In a remote hunting lodge, deep in the Scottish wilderness, old friends gather to celebrate New Year’s Eve. One of them is killed. Not an accident – a murder among friends.

Rules: Entries close each Thursday at 5pm AEST. The winner is selected by 2pm AEST each Friday. Book of the month valued up to $49 (incl. of GST). 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. Best letter competition runs until January 23 next year.

FOR all the people who believe in man-made global warming, please do not cite extreme weather events as evidence – whether it’s droughts, floods, fires, high temperatures or cyclones.

To do so is to argue that in the past we have never had them.

First of all, our records don’t go back very far.

Second, even the records we do have show that there’s always been extreme weather events.

Are you going to ignore the records of history?

Take, for example, the recent “record” of 46.2 degrees in Adelaide. In 1939 they recorded a temperature of 46.1 degrees.

That’s virtually the same. Extreme weather events are not a recent phenomenon. JASON COOKE, ROBINA I REALISE this is a radical idea, but it is time to change the antiquated law about lawyer client privilege.

Finding the truth and stopping crime should take priority.

So, if anyone, including lawyers and priests, has information about the guilt of a person who has committed a crime, or information about a crime that may have been committed, they should not only be allowed but they should be compelled to tell the police.

For that reason, lawyers will always be able to feel good about defending someone whom they truly believe is innocent. I think it is immoral that a lawyer should try to prove the innocence of someone they know to be guilty.

Please think carefully about this before you simply dismiss it.

Get rid of the confidentiality oath! There should be no confidentiality when it comes to protecting innocent people from violence, drugs and crime.

I believe that lawyer 3838’s information was crucial in stopping the gangland murders in Melbourne and in intercepting a huge drug shipment into Australia.

Wow! Brilliant! Thank you, lawyer and especially thank you, police. Good job! Well done! JENNIFER HORSBURGH, ELANORA HINTERLAND councillor Glenn Tozer’s remarks (GCB, 25-01) about the massive blowout of interstate migrants arriving on the Gold

Coast, has obviously attracted the attention and agreement of the original locals, including my wife and I who fondly remember the Gold Coast as a crime-free, safe way of raising a family, until the invasion of the southerners began.

The intelligent Gold Coast City councillors of the 1970s had a town planning vision of a population cap of 300,000, so as to retain the Gold Coast’s previous relaxing lifestyle, which would mean avoiding a future infrastructure nightmare like in the big southern cities.

Yet these current GCCC councilors, many who have been there for far too many years, have allowed the population to nearly double and are years behind with infrastructure.

And worst of all, the obvious rise in crime that comes with a population increase, and that is what the Gold Coast is plagued with today, and worsening every week to a point where the original locals are selling up and moving across the border like we did.

So it is fair to say that the southern exodus from Sydney and Melbourne have done the Gold Coast no favours, real estate and rental properties prices now unaffordable to many, highways at a standstill, increase in concrete jungle and crime completely out of control.

A population cap is imperative before the Coast grinds to a halt. KEN WADE, TWEED HEADS MY first thoughts were like those of many others. Why a Junior Miss Universe for a nine-year-old girl? (GCB, Feb 8).

And I answered my own question, ‘Why not’? The inherent dangers that accompany the Senior Miss World and Miss Universe contests surely aren’t present here. With parental support and guidance, these young girls are fine to accept the challenge they’ve entered.

We’ve all no doubt seen the behaviour of over-ambitious mothers who force their children into the beauty pageant circuit at too young an age and there’s as much competition between the mothers are there is between the young girls.

If self-confidence is the only thing gained from such a contest, then it’s been worth it. KEN JOHNSTON, ROCHEDALE SOUTH