Postscript

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday October 4, 2008

SOMETIMES the biggest issues do not feature as prominently on the letters page as might be expected. The financial markets and Ross Garnaut signalled alternative routes to the apocalypse this week, but readers were mostly animated by more local concerns.

The State Government's determination to keep its AAA credit rating at all costs attracted derision, and many suggestions for how to fund the projects that would make Sydney a better city.

For most people that did not include V8 Supercar racing at Olympic Park. One reader wrote simply: "I'm filthy." So was almost everyone else, whether because of the subsidy, the noise, the environmental effects or the disruption to residents and birds - the white-fronted chat may yet be our orange-bellied parrot.

There was an equally passionate but much more evenly divided response to the recommendations on maternity leave. Karen Yen's assertion that having children was a "lifestyle choice" provoked particularly strong feelings, but Gillian Whalley-Okafor won the week's award for keeping her sense of humour in trying conditions ("Lifestyle choice? Good God, I gave birth to a baby, not a Saab convertible").

The proposed eruv in St Ives provoked bafflement and some hostility, as did the claims of the Exclusive Brethren for public funding. Happily they were not too exclusive to join the debate themselves.

Mike Ticher Letters co-editor

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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