Letters to the editor

Location not right for crisis accommodation
In response to letters to the editor on Friday, January 13 about the proposed New Victoria Hotel, Eaglehawk.
As a trader and resident of Eaglehawk I know there is a need for crisis accommodation – it’s the location that is not right.
Why don’t we knock down the fountain and put crisis accommodation there.
That is Bendigo’s heart and the New Victoria Hotel is the heart of Eaglehawk.
Melissa Frost Thomas states in her letter “Hotel not a bad thing” that property owners just look for the dollars.
Well, Melissa, take a look at who will be making the big bucks – Mr Ivar Hunt.
Also, P. Tharle’s letter “A need for housing’ stated that it’s only the do-gooders that complain about people like Ivar Hunt and that these people most likely have a nice house and income.
Well P. Tharle, my husband and I live in a modest house with a modest income that we work very hard for.
 M. Webster,
Eaglehawk

Pokie approval does not bode well for Bendigo
The devastatingly disappointing decision of the Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation to allow the number of poker machines in Castlemaine to be trebled, despite significant community opposition, is confirmation that the addiction to pokies revenue of successive Victorian State Governments has evolved into a festering state of moral compromise.
This does not bode well for those Bendigo communities currently attempting to reject or limit the imposition of poker machines.
The Castlemaine decision clearly indicates that the odds are firmly stacked against them, and that the City of Greater Bendigo council is severely constrained in what it can do to protect and serve the best interests and wishes of its constituents.
 In a ruling worthy of a Clarke and Dawe absurdist satire, the Castlemaine decision involved the VCGR actually accepting that an increase in the number of pokies in the town would indeed incur net social detriment.
Yet it justified its decision in favour of pokies expansion by saying that if community opposition was paramount in all cases “it is almost inevitable that all applications for electronic gaming machines would be refused”.
The VCGR is still often referred to simply as The Gaming Commission – a moniker which aptly leaves out any inference that it exists to enforce any kind of regulation upon an inherently socially damaging and irresponsible industry for which we community members will increasingly pay a hefty price.
 Michelle Goldsmith,
Eaglehawk

Greens are economic saboteurs
Letters by Bendigo City Councillors (The future’s renewable, Bendigo Weekly, February 10) promoting multi-national companies keen on feeding their already massive profits with our tax dollars usually raise my ire.
But Keith Reynard’s hilarious attempt to use “the little boy with his finger in the dyke” analogy to disparage those who resist the environmental and economic sabotage represented by the wind and solar plants he spruiks had me in stitches. Like the rest of his nonsense letter, Keith’s analogy is plainly false.
Dutch legend has it that there was once a small boy on his way to school who noticed a slight leak in a dyke.
To prevent a flood the boy poked his finger into the hole and stopped the flow of water. A passer-by went to get help and the dyke was quickly repaired avoiding disaster.
A disaster like the unsustainable erection of thousands of windmills all over our beautiful hillsides, mountain-tops, ocean-beaches and cliffs which will flood Victoria with fly-by-night companies eager to gorge themselves on renewable energy subsidies and electricity feed-in-tariffs paid for with our tax dollars.
Companies which, as international experience shows, abandon the otherwise unsustainable wind farms as soon as the subsidies run out and disappear leaving behind ruined landscapes, millions of dead birds and bats and exorbitant energy prices.
Neither solar nor wind is capable of reducing net CO2 emissions or producing reliable economically generated electricity.
Take Denmark for example, it has more windmills per person than any other country in the world.
Supposedly the vandalism of its coastline was to reduce Denmark’s carbon dioxide emissions, but in reality the number of coal and gas fired power stations it closed down is zero.
As this year’s bitter winter kills hundreds in Europe, where does Denmark’s energy come from? Windmills?
No.
From Polish coal and Russian gas.
Britain is in the same predicament. Despite the investment of tens of billions of pounds in windmills, which desecrate virtually every hillside and coastline in the land, wind power is so inefficient it manages to produce only 0.1 per cent of Britain’s energy needs, with coal, gas and nuclear having to take up the slack caused by its failure.
Because the unsustainable cost of wind power is charged directly to British power consumers, millions of families are now in a state of permanent energy-poverty, with many owing thousands of pounds in unpayable power bills.
It’s clear the Greens and others spruiking so-called renewables are not environmental activists, but economic saboteurs.
 Peter Wiseman,

Mandurang

 

Fairway is the fair way to go to ease tram woe
I wish to make a public plea to VicRoads, and ask that they work together with the Bendigo Tramways and City of Greater Bendigo and carefully consider rectifying Bendigo’s tram and car traffic by installing a Fairway system along Bendigo’s tramway.
A Fairway is a system where yellow lines are painted beside the tram tracks, and all right-turn arrows are removed from the tram tracks. Motorists may turn wherever they are permitted to, providing a tram is not present.
Installing a Fairway would alleviate the issues Bendigo is currently having between motorists and trams at intersections such as Don/Myrtle and Chapel Streets, it would make Bendigo’s tramways more compliant with the road and tram laws outlined in the Road Safety Act and also the tramways in Melbourne, which would in turn avoid confusion when visitors drive in Bendigo.  
Currently, the Bendigo tramways consists mostly of single track and at most intersections along the tramway the tracks are utilised as right-turn lanes.
This is particularly dangerous as cars often attempt to turn in front of oncoming trams.
The Victorian Road Safety Act clearly states that it is illegal for the driver of a motor car to impede the path of a tram, drive and/or stop on tram tracks.
It has been suggested that a way to fix the issue at Don/Myrtle Streets is to remodel the intersection.
This would be a costly venture, and would only fix the issue at that particular intersection, whereas Chapel Street is in fact more problematic at certain times of the day.
Bring Back the Trams Campaign suggests that a Fairway system be installed, as it would be far less expensive and alleviate issues at all intersections along the tramway.
A Fairway would be far less costly for ratepayers, and have less impact on all users of the road. It would give both cars and trams their rights on the road, and allow cars and trams to run in harmony.
Bring Back the Trams Campaign invites the people of Bendigo to air their opinion on the issue, and write or call VicRoads and the City of Greater Bendigo.
Joseph Gould,
Bring Back the Trams Campaign.

History Mission & Vision Staff Profiles About Archive Issues FAQs Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Interact (Social Media)

© Copyright Bendigo Weekly, Bendigo. Website by Design Experts