Our internet incompetence
YES, our internet just dropped out for the umpteenth time in two days!
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I have read many complaints in the Lakes Mail about the internet constantly dropping out, but now it is getting past the point of frustration. It is now to the place of stupidity for our first-world country.
When Nepal had its shocking earthquake in 2015, one of our friends there had no trouble with communications during the whole time of that severe disaster, nor for his whole year of volunteering there.
He could email and phone the rest of the world on his mobile – everything still worked perfectly.
Meanwhile, we in such an affluent society as Australia, being one of the world’s top countries, can’t maintain such a simple thing as constant internet connection or complete mobile phone coverage. How stupid and incompetent does that make us look?
Enough is enough, powers-that-be. Get your act together before you face a big fall.
- Corinne Knopper, Cooranbong
Renewable power cheaper
SOME facts to consider, courtesy of the Climate Council, for those people wondering whether building new coal-fired power stations will reduce electricity prices.
In Australia, the latest wind-powered generators are producing at between $60 and $73/MWH. Solar is as low as $78/MWH. Both are already lower than current coal-fired plants. Gas fired plants are currently $94 - $114/MWH.
Any new high-efficiency, low-emission (HELE) coal plants, promoted by the government, will be over $130/MWH: and way over if they were to incorporate carbon capture and storage (CCS).
As further proof, despite what the government would like you to believe, the reality is, from 2006 to 2016, the three states with the highest percentage of power supplied by renewables have experienced the lowest percentage increases in electricity price.
No wonder one of the first acts of this government in gaining power was to try to do away with the Climate Council.
- Richard Mallaby, Wangi Wangi
No clarity in the airport
I WOULD like to have whinge about the clarity, (or lack thereof), of the loud speaker system at Newcastle Airport. Last week while waiting to board a plane to the Gold Coast the announcements being made were almost impossible to understand in the waiting area. Muffled would be the best way to describe them and combined with the normal chatter of people waiting in the waiting area (as is only to be expected), complaints were coming from all direction that the announcements being made were as good as useless. Surely it is not too much to ask that Newcastle Airport provide a reasonable level of clarity for their announcements.
- Ian King, Warners Bay
Citizenship test
WE have a British monarch as the head of Australia, and yet a politician with British citizenship is ineligible for office.
I am Irish born. When I was interviewed many years ago for Australian citizenship by an Australian official, I informed her I would not swear allegiance to the Queen.
She replied: “ I understand, just pretend to mouth the words”. I was quite taken back by her comment, so I mouthed “Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi”. The constitution of Ireland proclaims you are an Irish citizen if one of your parents was Irish born, no matter where you happened to be born.
- Richard Ryan, Summerland Point
Making Wests stronger
SO if Wests takes over the Knights will they deliberately take all the good players out of other teams in the local comp and put them in the Knights reserve grade to deliberately weaken them to make the Rosellas stronger?
- Colin Geatches, Mayfield