[New] Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2023 from all of us at GC&M News.

Calling all community groups, clubs and associations.

Do you have any anniversaries, celebrations and events in 2023 we can help share?

We’d love to help tell your stories so please reach out to us either at editorial@gcnews.com.au or directly to Mitch and the team at our emails on page 2. Best wishes for the new year from GC&M News!

Response to Doomsday Past

Well said Shane Daly, GC&M News, 20 December, I couldn’t agree more, but we mustn’t forget to mention Tim Flannery’s miraculous prediction that our dams will never be full again, it will never rain again, and our dams would be bone dry within months, so we need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on water desalination plants along our coastline so we will have drinking water, so the government of the day did just that, and started building a desalination plant off the Gold Coast; now this so called lifesaving water plant is nothing but a rusting hulk of steel polluting the ocean, furthermore, it was never commissioned let alone completed and the clincher was Brisbane was under water in a matter of months after Flannery predicted we would have no water by some imaginary date he plucked out of his delusional mind.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, we are dealing with Mother Nature, and nothing these global warming alarmists do or say will have any effect on what happens with our atmosphere.

I admit, I’m not a scientist, but I was always taught that our climate is governed by the sun and the planets within our Solar System, but it’s amazing how they go quiet when weather events like the big freeze that’s currently gripping the USA and parts of Europe occur, so they change the terminology from ‘Global Warming’ to ‘Climate Change’; sadly, you and I both know that governments will continue to pander to these global warming clowns because they will do and say anything if they think will give them more votes on election day.

Peter Bowles Glasshouse Mountains

Help, the sky is falling!

I read Shane Daly’s list of failed predictions with great interest.

I too have done my own research and come up with a few more failed predictions Shane may have missed. Humans really did land on the moon. The Earth is not flat. Covid-19 is not a form of population control. The Covid vaccine does not contain a 5G chip. Airplane exhausts do not contain poisoned chemicals. The government does not control the weather. King Charles is not a vampire. The world is not secretly ruled by lizard people. The list goes on.

The usual vested interests, grifters, conmen, and scammers prey on the gullible and would lead us to believe otherwise.

Unfortunately, the tiny but vocal conspiracy cultists will not be swayed in their misguided beliefs.

Thank goodness we have enough free thinkers amongst us to reject such obvious lunacy.

Caloundra

Curmudgeon, Caloundra

Threat to local business

Re: your article on support for small business - December 20 edition.

Yes, small and family businesses nationwide have suffered financial stress in recent times, due to issues beyond their control.

However, locally the greatest threat to small businesses in Glasshouse Country is the Coles Development Appeal now before the court.

Should this appeal be successful, then a simple DA change could, without public consultation, enable the establishment of professional premises, retail and hospitality in direct competition with existing businesses in the town centre.

When a corporate entity establishes a shopping precinct outside a town centre, their focus is on gaining market share not on short term profit, therefore existing businesses could not compete with the incentives offered.

There is currently DA approval for a full line supermarket with extensive car parking in the retail precinct of the township. This site and empty shops in Beerwah should be where retail expansion occurs, with the industrial site on Roys Road remaining as such for future industrial development. The industrial development will provide employment for many trades people plus their supporting staff and the retail sector will remain where it should be.

Joan Tucker Glasshouse Mountains

Road deaths by falling tree Old Gympie Rd. 31-12-22

Old Gympie Road is a busy rural thoroughfare, with increasing traffic due to tourism, regional development and its use as an alternate for the busy Steve Irwin Way.

Maintenance of this section of Old Gympie Road is the responsibility of the Sunshine Coast Council. These questions should be asked at the Coroner’s inquest.

Does SCC have procedures for checking the potential dangers of roadside vegetation (for example, dead trees and large overhead branches) ?

Was SCC aware of the advanced state of decay of the tree? If so, why was the tree not removed by SCC as a potential road safety issue?

Is the tree on public or private property? Was the tree Heritage listed? (Not likely) Was the tree subject to a native species habitat protection order?

Whatever the case, road safety must be the priority.

This was a preventable tragedy and lessons must be learned.

G. Bradford Maleny

Things I love about Covid

It’s a practice of mine, to always focus on the positives, as a positive outlook keeps you healthy and fighting off those nasty bugs.

1. Soap in public toilets. I mean, it’s a no brainer. Before Covid we had empty soap dispensers.

2. Beliefs. We all have our own beliefstructures about ourselves. Covid challenged those beliefs. People who promoted holistic medicine abandoned their beliefs in favour of the jab.

Others turned away from the pharmacy altogether. What a gift Covid is for us to discover our true thoughts about ourselves and others.

3. Love of our fellow humans. I just love Australians. In times of stress, we band together and look out for each other. During Covid, everyone was polite and courteous. Never before have I felt so much love coming from you all. Thank you.

Mumma Gummy Bear

Ruffled Feathers?

Peter Bowles (GC&M News Dec 13) seems irritated by my pointing out that earlier he had quoted from a maliciouosly fabricated source. He lists three turbine manufacturers that made losses in the last year. Peter seems to think that this means we should abandon wind power, but to me it means we should buy turbines while the are being sold at below the cost of production.

He points out that the Chinese wind turbine industry is expanding and asks “what does this say about your eight month payback period Mr Lowry?”. The eight months was quoted from the Vestas website and refers to the energy pay back period—that is the time it takes for the energy generated to exceed the energy consumed in the turbine’s construction and installation. But in his latest letter Peter seems to be referring to the financial pay back period which is a very diffferent number. He has a very dim view of the quality of Chinese turbines and fears they will fail and “the cost of repairing or replacing them will cost billions”. This is baseless fearmongering. In engineering you get what you pay for, and I am sure any company in Australia buying turbines will do a careful examination of maintenance costs, warranties, engineering quality and so on. So in answer to Peter’s question about “what does it say about payback period”, the answer is—not much.

But it is a pity that Australia cannot build its own wind turbines. In years past we covered Australia with Southern Cross windmills to water stock. Like so many of our industries it appears now to be owned and controlled from the U.S.A. In my experience companies with a head office overseas rarely invest in R&D in Australia. It would be good if we had a government with the vision and courage to establish strategic industries. We have an economy based on barristers and baristas, but what we need need are engineers and others who design and build things.

David Lowry Witta

Disneyland - shudder - I’m finally ready to live my best years.

I’ve been keeping busy of course.

Freed from the shackles of performing to an adoring crowd with my magnificent, but monotonous reptillian circus act, I found a swamp, raised a family and have lived a fairly upstanding existence scavenging for livestock, terrorising humans and the like.

But as middle age started to weigh down on me I found myself become increasingly philosophical and prone to asking nobody in particular: “What is this all about?”.

Is it about reading a good book and being nice to others? Or is it about having a column and right. not taking it anymore (the therapist suggested more placid alternatives).

Everything I need to know about the community has always been within those pages. Who was alive and what they were doing, who was dead or nearly dead, whether the Irwins were on my tail. It was all there.

But there was always something missing. Something with a bit of meat.

Turns out what the paper was missing was me.

Watching the world spiral into its own proverbial swamp was giving me an increasingly violent and nervous twitch, but through various psychotherapy sessions I learned it was because I was pushing all my opinions down into my tail.

I contacted this esteemed paper to see if it would allow me to express myself in a reasoned and logical way via a weekly column and the editor, seemingly desperate for ‘content creators’, rolled over without a fight (ed’s note: no he didn’t!).

He did lay down a few ground rules including rights of reply, free speech and identity.

Apparently I have to allow any readers to engage with me, so I created an email account that I’ll occasionally read. Contact me at snappychat@gcnews.com.au if you must.

You might also have a few questions, like ‘Why should I listen to him?’ and ‘Are you seriously publishing this rubbish?’ and ‘My column missed out to this fool?’

All valid points, and I don’t have any answers. That’s the beauty of your own column.

Now I’ve introduced myself, I’m sliding off to work on my first official column-proper next week. Until then...