Mind altering

Sir: I was quite surprised to find the spread of mind altering drugs had reached Wandandian NSW but judging from the letter from Susan Armstrong in 5th December edition it sure has got a firm hold.

Obviously criticism, any criticism, of the “Great Ego” must come from the riff-raff of your big C Conservatives readers who fail to recognise how much better of they are with the “Innovative Communicator” leading the country.

To suggest Mr. 15% was going to thrash Abbott and ignore the fact that Abbott had disposed of both Rudd and Gillard suggests the mind boggling “medicines” had well and truly kicked in.

As a Conservative for more than 50 years I hope you continue to print letters similar to the Armstrong missive just to remind us just how dangerous and less than trustworthy Turnbull and his cohorts are.

Have yourself a Merry, Merry Christmas and a Great New Year.

Cheers,
Grant Watt
Glenning Valley NSW

Kiwi cartoonist

Sir: I’m sorry to be picky but there are limits. The cartoonists George Cruikshank and James Gillray may well have been great Englishmen, but David Lowe whose work appeared in the Evening Standard before, during and after WWII was a New Zealander.
Stephan Wilson,
Lower Hutt, NZ.

Once in Royal David’s city

Sir: The former Labor Foreign Minister Bob Carr’s recently published views on Israel and Jerusalem are unbalanced, ahistorical and verging on the hysterical.

As an unelected Julia Gillard ‘Captain’s Pick’ parachuted into the Senate and into the important role as Australia’s Foreign Minister, Bob Carr displayed all the delusional egotism, intellectual shallowness and incompetence that one would have expected given his political record. He is, if course, entitled to his opinions but he besmirches the high political positions he has held by offering up historical delusions and fabrications as an excuse for anti-Israel political invective.

Carr’s argument that ‘the story of Jerusalem is now being fabricated’ and that ‘Judaising and eliminating the Arab character of this great Arab city is a shocking thing to be taking place’ is indeed shocking – it is shocking that anyone, let alone a public figure like Carr, should peddle such vicious, malicious and demonstrably false nonsense. Current Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, Labor MP Michael Danby and senior West Australian Labor leader Luke Walladge are to be commended for their principled rejection of Carr’s ravings.

Jews have lived in Jerusalem for over 3,000 years. Jerusalem is mentioned in the Jewish Bible many hundreds of times but not once in the Koran. Despite a history of invasion, occupation and expulsion Jerusalem has for most of its history had a primarily Jewish population and even at times when Jews were a minority in Jerusalem it has always remained at the heart of Judaism and in the hearts of Jews wherever they have lived. To claim, as Carr does, that Jerusalem is an ‘Arab city’ is nonsense.

I trust that Carr and others who share his views reflected over Christmas on the fact that Christ was a Jew, born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, both, like Jerusalem, then Jewish towns. Hearing, perhaps even singing, popular carols such as ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ might lead them to recall not only Christ’s ancient Davidian ancestry but also the fact that Jews lived in Jerusalem and what is now the land of Israel for some 1700 years before Christ’s birth.
Dr Bill Anderson,
Melbourne, Vic

Uninspiring

Sir: The cracks are beginning to show. The appointments of Michaelia Cash, Kelly O’Dwyer, Julie Bishop and Sussan Ley are purely symbolic and certainly not competency based. Peta Credlin would have wiped the floor with these airheads. They do not inspire much confidence and are not fully conversant with their portfolios.

It was no better in the Rudd/Gillard governments. Cabinet ministers such as Swan, Combet, Conroy and Garrett were just as incompetent. The only two of any stature, John Faulkner and Lindsay Tanner saw the writing on the wall.

I can remember a Canadian federal minister on arrival in Ottawa quoting that he spent the first few months in parliament wondering how he reached such dizzy heights and then spent the next two years wondering how his ministerial colleagues reached such dizzy heights!

Human motives are rarely pure and never simple – Theodore Dalrymple

Regards,
Bernard Corden
Spring Hill, Queensland

Who your neighbour is

Sir: I have a huge respect for Matthew Parris. However, in writing about ‘The question Christianity does not answer’, I feel he has rather missed the point. The lawyer asked Jesus ‘Who is my neighbour?’ and is given the story of the Good Samaritan.

Jesus never said ‘everyone’ is your neighbour, but he did say, depending on circumstances, anyone can be. Christians are asked to give help when and where they come across need. If everyone did that, we would have no reason to consider problems in far off places.
Dr David Miller
Abergele, Conwy

The greatest festival

Sir: Bruce Anderson (Drink, 5 December) is incorrect to imply that Christmas is ‘the greatest festival of the Church’. The greatest festival of the Church is Easter.
John Gilroy
Cambridge