Chook taken down a peg
WHOEVER had the idea to create a fake advert (Herald, July 5, 2014) making reference to the events recently laid public in the UK courts needs to have a good think about why they did so.
By joking in this manner, the perception I have of you is that you share similar thinking processes as the perpetrator now serving a prison sentence. You appear to attempt to normalise sexual abuse and think a little bit of listening will get those “let down” back to normal.
Making a joke of it once again abuses the children and young women who were abused. Can I suggest you read some of the transcripts of the trial, read the witness impact statements and then reread the advert and ask yourself the question—is it really funny?
Ann White
Bull Creek

Affordable my ar…
IT is pretty disgusting to see marketing for new luxury apartments at Leighton spruiking “free beach with every apartment”.
Like at South Beach, we all knew residents of the wider area were being utterly ripped off when these developments were first mooted, and that targeting luxury sales to wealthy elites with the illusion, if not the reality, of their own private beachfronts was inevitable.
And yet the rhetoric around these projects included such nonsense buzz-words as “affordable housing”, all of which were enthusiastically propped up at the time by our development/business/real estate leaders. If this is a good outcome for the common wealth, I will eat my own barf.
Warren Hately
Margaret River

Just too darn many peeps
FREO dwellers, note the media reports, look around and ask yourself “why are we allowing this to happen?”.
Under current policies 1000 people are added every day to our national population, 670 of them immigrants. Yes, that’s one-million-plus every three years and tracking for a population of 47 million by 2054, only 40 years away.  Driven by vested interests, all this is proceeding as infrastructure and institutions across the board are being overwhelmed, government budgets are in crisis and unemployment is rising, especially for the young.
Environmental degradation proceeds apace in our largely arid and fragile continent. The rate of population growth needs to be slowed by reducing our immigrant intake with the aim of eventually stabilising the population at a sustainable figure.
This is not about racism or antipathy to refugees, it’s about policy that would help keep Australia as a good place to live and which could offer immigrants and the home-born employment, affordable housing and an environment to be appreciated and enjoyed.
Mark world population day on July 11 by getting on to your MPs and asking where they stand on this issue.
Clive Huxtable
Gibson St, Beaconsfield

Pets meet brutal end
THIS past weekend at my parents’ property on Gibbs Road in Banjup, our family’s pet sheep, Timmy and Donna, and goat, Julia, were savaged to death by what we can only guess is a dog or pack of dogs.
My brother who is looking after the property while my parents are away on a trip overseas made the sad discovery on Saturday when he could not see the three of them as usual in the back paddock.
Timmy’s body was located fairly quickly. Julia’s was found in the bushes after some searching (dousing our glimmer of hope she had somehow escaped to safety).
Both were found in a terrible state but thankfully not suffering anymore. Donna was found huddled in the small shelter where the hay is kept.
On Sunday morning my brother again looked out at the back paddock and was shocked to see Donna laying there, still, on her side, in the rain. The dogs had come back and killed her.
The news of the terrible death of these beautiful, innocent creatures is heartbreaking. Unfortunately this is not the first time such an attack on animals at this property has happened.
The incident has been reported to the City of Cockburn but we are told there is little that can be done to find the culprits. Clearly these dogs belong to someone who has left them to roam as they please.
We implore you to keep your dogs contained and if you see any dogs roaming and unattended in the area please report it to the local council ranger.
Renee Zuks
Hansen St, Coolbellup

No Freo for grand-dad
VENIE HOLMGREN, now resident of Victoria with David and Su, really enjoyed reading the letter from her old friend Ted Zeffert (Herald letters, June 28, 2014). She says, one thing he got wrong was that Grandfather Holmgren worked on the Bunbury waterfront, not Freo. Just for the record.
Rick Tanaka
Holmgren Design
Fourteenth St, Hepburn, Victoria