I’d like to say to Jim Wallace that I am Muslim and gay – although Islamic clerics would say the two are mutually exclusive (”Not a time for the twit averse”, April 26). I attended the dawn service at the Sydney Cenotaph and stood shoulder to shoulder with fellow Australians to commemorate and honour our fallen heroes.

While we pray for and remember them, it is worthwhile to also remember that Australia is a young and ever-changing country. The heritage we should be preserving, and for which our soldiers die for, is freedom, our love of this land and a shared goal of bettering our lives through hard work.

If Mr Wallace’s father does not recognise the Australia he fought for, perhaps it is because tolerance and acceptance are slowly replacing fear and ignorance.

May Ahmed Marrickville

Even in the time of the Anzacs, Jim Wallace, gays and Muslims were serving in the Australian armed forces. Their sexuality or Islamic heritage framed the nature of the Australia that they fought for, just as a Christian heritage framed the fight for others.

David Rogers Wavell Heights (Qld)

As recognition of past courage, loss and suffering the Anzac Day commemorations are well justified, but they give the overwhelming impression that the most worthwhile and honourable thing that any Australian can do is be involved in a war.

A person could dedicate themselves to helping others in such fields as medicine or education and might receive recognition but anyone in uniform in wartime is automatically seen as a hero forever.

This is wrong. Proper recognition has turned into quasi-religious emotional fervour and oversentimentality.

The rhetoric is often childishly self-congratulatory. Australians are not the only ones who show courage and endurance in war.

Even if it is only one day a year this is not good for our nation and society. It detracts from the genuine significance of the day.

We need to pull back from this excess and return to a more restrained and dignified Anzac Day and to end the silly rhetoric which equates our military experience with our whole national identity and spirit.

Michael Powell Marrickville

The Korean War is not a forgotten war (”We will never forget you, Gillard pledges”, April 26). A large number of Australians are aware of the war and there have been a good number of books written on it over the years, and the campaign is well covered in The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History.

Added to this, there’s a large and very impressive memorial dedicated to the war on Anzac Parade in Canberra, which is seen by thousands of visitors every year.

If Australians want to talk about so-called ”forgotten” wars, perhaps they should look into the Sudan campaign (1885), the South African War (which was the first war Australia was involved in as a nation), the Malayan Emergency or the (Indonesian) Confrontation, all of which claimed the lives of Australian servicemen.

Christopher Jobson Monash (ACT)

Is Australia the only country where the head of state, the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Affairs Minister and the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs all honour their war dead by being overseas?

Barbara Walsh Neutral Bay

The Royal Easter Show opened at 11am on Anzac Day; the zoo at 9am; the Australian Museum at 9.30am; pubs and clubs, normal opening hours; city and suburban shopping centres opened at 1pm. Thousands of Sydneysiders will have spent the day at the show, feeding the poker machines or having hours of retail therapy, while some will have joined the protest at Villawood Detention Centre at 1pm in support of human rights for asylum seekers. And according to Joy Cusack (Letters, April 25) it is the protesters who have poor taste?

Leoni Hubbard Springwood

We have the resources to address skills shortage

The calls by mining companies, echoed by the Herald (”When the talent goes West”, April 26), for more immigration of skilled workers would be more convincing if these mining companies had instituted large-scale apprenticeship training programs and cadetships along the lines of those run for many years by semi-government and government-owned enterprises such as the Postmaster-General’s Department, Cockatoo Island, the NSW Railways and Qantas.

Many of these tradesmen and engineers subsequently went into private industry, providing the skills base for much genuine economic growth. It is not too late for such training programs to be re-established now by the mining industry itself, or preferably by TAFE, funded by a super profits tax closer to that proposed by the Henry tax review. It amazes me that the mining industry has not already suggested this.

Norman Carter Roseville

Your editorial talked about a skills shortage and Australia’s need for more skilled migrants. However, not long ago, the Herald received and published letters talking about skilled migrants not being able to get jobs and driving taxis to make a living. So how will more skilled migrants solve our immediate skills shortage problem?

How about getting our highly qualified taxi drivers into skilled jobs first?

Mankin Leung Croydon

Given the impending gloom in your editorial which states, ”Australia is facing an acute skills shortage”, why doesn’t the government make it easier for parents, namely mothers who want to work, to get around the tax/childcare disincentive?

Terry Simpson Point Clare

Making a noise about quality

Hear, hear John Swanton (Letters, April 26). I, too, despair of the inability of some sound engineers to get the basics right at live concerts. They and the venue operators have a responsibility to allow the entire audience to hear the music as the artist intends.

We pay a lot of money to attend concerts and should not leave them feeling cheated and disappointed because the sound mix is poorly and unprofessionally arranged.

On April 19, at the State Theatre in Sydney, the Elvis Costello concert was a total failure to most of those seated in the circle area upstairs due to abysmal sound mixing. Everything was totally lost behind the loudness of Costello’s guitar work throughout the entire concert. He deserved much better than this, and so did we.

Leonie Wain Beverly Hills

While I hate to derail John Swanton’s heartfelt rant against inferior sound equipment at concerts, I must point out Cold Chisel never played at the Star Hotel.

Nick Andrews Coogee

Antibiotic overkill

Dr Seidler (Letters, April 26), when writing in regard to surgical tourists being the conduit for superbugs into our hospital system, fails to acknowledge a far greater risk: the overprescribing of antibiotics to patients.

Antibiotic resistance was noted as early as the 1940s yet we failed to heed the harbinger of things to come and not only has the medical fraternity continued to indiscriminately hand out prescriptions for antibiotics, agriculture profligately uses them in animal feed.

If we are to circumvent revisiting a pre-antibiotic era and preserve our arsenal against the microbial world, as patients we need to stop expecting a silver bullet for every sniffle or gut pain and the medical fraternity should treat antibiotics as a godsend rather than a panacea.

Chris Woodley Vaucluse

New recruit dons the Aldi colours

Congratulations to Aldi (”Aldi abandons colour additives”, April 25). For its moral stand in removing colour additives and preservatives linked to increased hyperactivity in kids from its products I present it with a consolation additive – that of my shopping support.

I subtract same from the two grocery chain monoliths who refuse, with lame excuses, to do the same – shame.

Chris Roberts Lilyfield

In 1987 our doctor suggested that our three-year-old ”hyperactive” son may be reacting to the artificial food colour tartrazine, contrary to research at the time that indicated that artificial food colours had no effect on behaviour.

After removing tartrazine red and yellow from his diet, his behaviour improved significantly.

The failure of Coles and Woolworths to ask food manufacturers to remove artificial food colours from manufactured food is simply a copout.

With their market dominance, they cannot be seriously suggesting to the general public that they cannot influence the content of food at the same time as they are phasing out the additives in their own-brand products.

Stephen Kirk Blackbutt

Debt over subsidies

John Newton (Letters, April 26) suggests Paul Sheehan should have spent five minutes researching the affordability of solar energy. My suggestion is that with 10 minutes of research Mr Newton would have found that the solar energy future of Spain for example is in doubt, and new construction is being put on hold because the country can no longer afford the massive government subsidies the industry requires.

Most governments today are saddled with debt and cannot afford to squander resources on producing electricity in ways that consumers cannot afford.

David Tester Woollahra

Ronda Wakeley (April 26) says ”We are already paying much more for our electricity and petrol”. We aren’t. I have lived in the same house for 36 years, with much the same appliances, and I have kept a record of my bills over the years. Just looking at the past 10 years, my real cost, adjusted for inflation, has halved. It is a simple fact that electricity prices have risen by less than wages and inflation. Hence there has been an incentive to use more, not less.

Michael Harrington Bonnet Bay

I am surprised that Paul Sheehan, in criticising an emissions trading scheme, uses the fact that it is a derivatives market as a point against it (”The great carbon chasm that could swallow Gillard whole”, April 25).

Derivative markets are useful if properly regulated. It was only because US banks invented financial instruments that the Republican Congress refused to have controlled by the appropriate authority that derivatives earned a bad name.

Anton Kamaralli Cooranbong

John Hastings (Letters, April 25) criticises the Newcastle MP Sharon Grierson as being out of touch for claiming that there was not a lot of fear in her electorate about the carbon tax. He goes on to claim that he lives in Newcastle and that he and the good old boys of the Belmont barber’s brains trust are all duly terrified by it.

Does he not realise that he lives, not in the fair city of Newcastle, but in the just as fair city of Lake Macquarie, in a different electorate altogether? Furthermore, Ms Grierson is in contact with a wide cross-section of her electorate, including possibly some of its barbers, wider even than the single establishment mentioned.

Ross Considine Tighes Hill

That old argument

Like the fundamentalists he thinks he derides, Caven Tootell (Letters, April 26) demonstrates an identical ahistorical and one-dimensional reading of the two Old Testament texts usually cited by the mockers of faith. Both are from ancient Semitic legal material and as the late High Court judge Lionel Murphy would say, law needs to be interpreted as to its intention, not its literalistic wording.

Further, for Mr Tootell’s information, ancient city gates were the place of judicial proceedings. Today they are called courthouses: Google Earth may help him find them.

In particular, Christianity has always held that the Old Testament is the promise of which Jesus Christ is the inner meaning and fulfilment.

David Griffin Vincentia

Women had little to enjoy in the 1950s

I disagree with Gerard Henderson’s praise of the 1950s as quiet, but not dull (”The way we were: quiet, maybe, but certainly not dull”, April 26).

As a child of the ’50s I was lucky enough to attend a selective high school and gain a scholarship to Sydney University. However, most girls were not and our mothers lived very dull lives indeed.

There were only limited educational and professional opportunities for women and girls, most leaving school at 15 after an education dominated by cooking and sewing, with the option of commercial classes if you were lucky.

Our mothers, regardless of intelligence, had little life outside the home and few appliances to help with the drudgery of housework.

A lot of sewing and cooking were done, not because it was always enjoyed, but because there was little choice.

Entertainment was very limited – to newspapers and radio – I grew up on Blue Hills and The Argonauts, like so many others.

My mother was not a left-wing intellectual and she did not like Bob Menzies either.

Mr Henderson’s article belittles the experiences of so many good Australians in the 1950s who had little to thank Menzies for and who sat by disappointed while the press pilloried the Labor Party, the Cold War destroyed all commonsense and people who had suffered through the Depression and sent their sons and husbands to serve their country in World War II waited until the 1960s and ’70s to enjoy the better lifestyle those men and women had worked and fought for.

Vivienne Parsons Thornleigh

Listen to the voice of experience

Michael Koziol, I’m concerned about the community you would shape if politicians allowed your views to trump all others in our diverse nation (”Let wisdom of youth lead social agenda”, April 26).

Why should only those who live in the future be allowed to have a voice in it? Who can predict his or her own lifespan? Should only those in the military decide on the defence budget? Elderly people have wisdom from life experience to draw on and share. Many care about the wellbeing of this great country (which they built) that they are handing on to their grandchildren.

Here’s a tip: if you want your opinion listened to, show some respect for the opinions of others.

Sophie York Turramurra

Rights and wrongs

Lecturing China on human rights while getting tough on asylum seekers (”Villawood simmers”, ”Beijing demands respect”, April 26). Hypocrisy?

Leonora Ritter Bathurst

Just play the game

Michael Cockerill’s sober assessment of soccer’s woes (”Death by review: more navel gazing is not the way ahead for the game”, April 26) misses a vital point. Soccer in Australia must compete for air against three other football codes. This happens in no other country.

So the question is: is there a plausible solution to soccer’s woes? I doubt it. I feel we should love the game with its warts and all instead of madly believing that one day a genius will write a report with the perfect recipe for success.

Save the paper, save the trees.

Andrew Dettre Roseville

A battle royal

It boggles my mind that someone can write about the sexism of the rules of succession of the British monarchy while seeming to accept the principle of succession (”The female factor sets up a right royal mess”, April 26). The passing of political authority from parent to child by ”divine right” is absurdly out of place in the 21st century.

If the constitutions of all the countries of the Commonwealth require amendment, it is to remove the unelected and unrepresentative constitutional monarchy from our constitutions.

Garry Feeney Kingsgrove

Is there anyone at Channel Nine left in Australia?

Richard Pocock Elizabeth Bay

Judging by recent contributors on the marital state of our Prime Minister, Hollywood studios crunching out titles like The Uninvited, The Undead, The Possessed and Autopsy have missed the boat. The next cult gore shocker should be The Unmarried. ”Just when you thought it was safe to wear white … Be waryof things without rings.”

David Jordan Dee Why

If only …

Suggesting that weight loss comes down to magic numbers is too simplistic (”Doing the sums on weight loss is simple”, April 22-23). The article suggests that everyone will lose a kilogram a week if they create a 7500 weekly calorie deficit, overlooking the significance of diet history.

When people restrict their eating over the years, or yo-yo between losing and gaining weight, or dabble in fad diets, their metabolisms can be severely damaged. For this reason, plenty of people do ”everything right” – counting calories and exercising to create the necessary deficit – and fail to achieve the weight loss promised.

Lisa Phillips St Ives

Car camouflage

This rainy Easter, as many times before, I ponder the question: why is it that the most popular car colours are the most dangerous? I often drive on the F3, which often has poor visibility because of mist and rain, and the most common car colours are white, silver/grey and black, which are extremely difficult to see at these times.

It would be interesting to see if these coloured cars are involved in more accidents than the easier to see red, blue and yellow.

Source : Sydney Morning Herald