I commend Andrew Barr for acting swiftly to withdraw funds from the greyhound racing industry ("Barr bans greyhound races after inquiry", July 8, p1).
However, it's regrettable that it took a scandal of these proportions to generate the action.
It's a scandal of almost equal proportions that the government continues to channel taxpayers' money towards supporting what are essentially commercial entertainment enterprises masquerading as sport.
Community involvement in sport is beneficial, and there is a good case for helping amateur participative sport for the community health benefits it generates.
No "sporting" activity in which the participants get paid, or spectators must pay to watch, fits this category.
They should be required to survive on their own commercial merits and the financial support of their fans, regardless of the predilections of the Chief Minister.
Roger Quarterman, Campbell
Self-regulation failureThe NSW ban on greyhound racing points to an even sadder state of national affairs than that industry's astounding cruelty and more general Australian get-rich-quick opportunism.
Whether because an unbridgeable moral abyss has been identified in Australians' values, or because a paralysing incapacity is now recognised in our government processes, it's clear that no one believes we can effectively prevent and regulate anything any more, but only punish after the crime (political donors excepted) if Four Corners and Fairfax have exposed the abject failure of self-regulation (aka non-regulation).
Not greyhound racing, not live exports, not banks and financial services, not visa and employment rorts, and certainly not building construction standards.
You would think Australia started out as felons in a penal colony. Because that pretty well is where we are now at.
Alex Mattea, Kingston
We're not laughing
Why is John Howard smiling ("2003 decision on Iraq war was right at the time, Howard says", July 8, p5)?
Why does he think his role in the criminal conspiracy of the war against Iraq is funny?
How can anyone think like Howard still does that the decision to invade Iraq was right? Even the man who brought down Saddam's statue and had more than a dozen members of his family killed by Saddam thinks the war was a bad idea, saying Saddam had been replaced by 1000 Saddams ("Man who took sledgehammer to Saddam Hussein statue wants it back", July 7, p7)!
Just what is it that Howard doesn't get?
When Julie Bishop says the cabinet was acting on the best available advice, why isn't she demanding that the people who gave this advice are held to account for their gross dereliction of duty?
Howard must be held to account and so should the incompetent advisers who led us into that despicable and disastrous conflict.
Greg Ellis, Murrumbateman, NSW
Question of intelligence
I note that John Howard doesn't waver from his decision on the Iraq war.
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in 2003 when cabinet received substantive information on the two issues: Iraq and climate change. Possibly the conversation went as follows: "These climate scientists don't know what they are talking about but this intel on Iraq is complete and accurate!"
Dr Tony Martin, Duffy
Europe must also plan
Paul Malone wrote "when the new Brexit leadership takes over, they will realise what a pickle they are in" ("Leavers had a dream but no plan", July 3, p27).
Equally, the EU has no plan with or without Britain.
As Malone wrote: "To survive, the European Union must loosen its ties and most importantly rid itself of the euro."
Britain never bought into the euro and wisely so.
It complained over massive levies against its relatively healthy economy post-global financial crisis.
It recently obtained some relief from supporting EU immigrants on the dole with child allowance for multiple children back home.
Britain is well out of the ongoing EU implosion signified by the steady collapse of the Schengen agreement.
Malone said Brexit "was driven by racism". This seems harsh considering his article on July 10 last year, titled "Shattered Euro dream threatens EU with disintegration", which acknowledged the problem of sovereign rights.
Malone also noticed that Northern Ireland had "a clear Protestant/Catholic divide with Catholics voting to [remain]".
Brexit has resurrected the possible secession of Scotland. Scotland, with Ireland, is Rome's foil. The separation of church and state is a subtle deception, as the Soviet Union discovered to its chagrin in Poland a few decades ago.
The Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Third Reich and now the EU have all sought to unify Europe.
Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor
Left holding the damsel
Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, modern Sir Lancelots, engaged in a pas de deux, to rescue the damsel, Britain, from the clutches of the dreaded European Union ("Leavers had a dream but no plan", July 3, p27).
However, it appears they mistook poms whingeing about being overcharged for damsel's cries of distress and, now to their cost, find she didn't want to be liberated after all.
For their deceitful misdeeds, fate has dealt with them harshly, condemning Johnson never to achieve his dream of dwelling in venerable No.10 and Farage booed by the EU parliament.
Farage and Johnson were masters of illusion. They successfully sold a chimera to sufficient numbers of people to achieve their aim.
Those who, akin to Hans Anderson's child, saw the king as naked, failed to counter the simulacrum of prosperity as "a nation once again".
If there ever was a post-EU "plan", its content and detail were kept under wraps by the cognoscente, hidden from the masses.
Most of the 28 countries that joined the EU benefit from membership.
Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, with largely agrarian economies, receive funds that raise their standards of living.
France and Germany continue to be dominant partners because of their powerful economies.
Greece, largely agrarian, was disadvantaged by political corruption, which abetted its wealthy citizens to regard tax as optional.
When it fell into debt, the IMF pounced, as is its wont, vulture fashion, privatising everything and impose grinding austerity on Greece's citizens.
Albert M. White, Queanbeyan, NSW
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