Some bus drivers ‘better suited’ to driving trucks
“The drivers in Yokohama were very friendly and polite and keen to help, even with limited English. However, no ticket meant no travel!” says Colin Lyons.
“The bus drivers in Yokohama all wore ties, some coats, were very friendly and polite and keen to help, even with limited English. However, no ticket meant no travel!” Letter writer COLIN LYONS says many of the bus drivers in Canberra are “poorly presented, clearly no standard expected”.
Many readers will be familiar with using the trains in Japan, in particular the Bullet Train.
On a very recent trip to China and Japan, we had the opportunity to use local buses in Yokohama. The contrast with the appearance and presentation of the bus drivers in Canberra could not be more marked.
The drivers in Yokohama all wore ties, some coats, were very friendly and polite and keen to help, even with limited English. However, no ticket meant no travel!
Many of the drivers in Canberra are poorly presented, clearly no standard expected. Also, displaying a courteous and friendly approach to passengers is purely optional as many drivers would be better suited to truck driving where none of these attributes matter.
It should be acknowledged nevertheless, that many others display a very good customer service approach. Surely an important aspect of driver recruitment should include training in and insistence on customer service.
What impression does this attitude in Canberra convey to foreign or even interstate tourists?
Finally, in Canberra, pay if you feel like it, but not expected. The transport enforcement officers appear to be a case of “all dressed up but nothing to do”. They certainly have little impact on the extent of fare evasion in Canberra
Colin Lyons, Weetangera
Solar panel waffle ignores the elephant
All the waffle about how much land or how many rooftops that solar panels need ignores the great big elephant in the room – solar panels produce no energy at all for 60 per cent of the time.
It appears your correspondents Fiona Colin (Malvern East, Victoria) or Ray Peck (Hawthorn, Victoria) or Nick Standish don’t understand that.
No matter where on Earth solar panels are installed, it is dark for half the year, when solar panels produce nothing.
For an hour at dawn and an hour at dusk the sun is so low in the sky that solar panels produce only half their rated output. Those are astronomical facts.
For a further 10 per cent of the year it is cloudy, overcast or raining in most places, when solar panels produce nothing. Those are meteorological facts.
Attempting to run a “green” hydrogen steelworks from solar panel powered electrolysers only 40 per cent of the time would be foolish. “Twiggy” Forest worked that out – after spending $300 million of taxpayers’ money. That’s an accounting fact.
Batteries capable of running a “green” hydrogen steelworks for the other 60 per cent of the time, often for days and nights on end, would be prohibitively costly. Steel furnaces cannot afford to go cold, when they turn solid. That’s a metallurgical fact.
Solar panels and batteries are a con created by climate catastrophists and politicians having no technical qualifications. There are other more reliable generating systems.
Anthony Hordern, Jamison
Toora says thanks to Tim Minchin
Tim Minchin recently announced his donation of $300,000 to domestic violence charities around Australia, which was raised during his 2025 Songs the World Will Never Hear tour.
Canberra, thankfully, was included on his tour map where he performed at five sold out shows at the Canberra Theatre in November, and Toora Women was his chosen charity for the city.
As the CEO of Toora, I am so incredibly grateful to Tim for his extraordinarily generous donation of $50,000. This donation will have a real and immediate impact for women and children in the ACT who are escaping domestic and family violence, supporting safe housing, recovery, and the opportunity to rebuild their lives with dignity.
What makes this contribution especially powerful is not only its scale, but the values behind it.
Tim Minchin has consistently used his platform to speak boldly about gendered violence, inequality and the responsibility we all share to stand up for those too often silenced. Advocacy matters and helps shift culture, challenge complacency, and remind us that violence against women and children is not inevitable and not acceptable.
I am deeply grateful to Tim and to all Canberrans who supported his charitable tour initiative. His generosity reflects the best of our Canberra community spirit.
Kellie Friend, CEO, Toora Women
Trump’s AI slop bucket overflows
Just when you think Donald Trump could not get any worse, he surpasses himself.
Trump as a golden-haired and flowing-robed Christ-like figure healing the sick. A doctor, he says.
A week after Easter he unleashed a long vindictive rant on social media against the Pope and his recent views on the Iran war.
This unhinged narcissistic US president continued his petty one-upmanship pursuits by then posting a copycat 1950s children’s Bible illustration that depicted him as a golden-haired and flowing-robed Christ-like figure healing the sick, with the American flag and war planes flying in the background.
When considerable negative reaction to this Jesus impersonation caused the president to withdraw his AI-generated imagery, he disingenuously claimed that he was meant to be perceived as a doctor or perhaps a Red Cross worker.
He also blamed the media for drumming up “fake news” by allowing the public to interpret this self-centred promotion as highly inappropriate or even blasphemous.
To paraphrase Socrates, this wannabe physician should commit to healing himself first. The rest of the increasingly damaged and fed-up world would then be able to do the same, free of his deluded messianic and megalomaniacal hallucinations and erratic, self-indulgent military missions.
Miracles can’t be relied on to assist this, but perhaps members of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association could create a suitable treatment and prevention plan that would help not just one overly powerful person, but would also save many innocent lives, livelihoods and societies beyond US borders.
Sue Dyer, Downer
The tofu principle
The current Middle-East war can largely be explained by the TOFU principle: Trump Often F#cks Up.
Mike Quirk, Garran
Say no to Barr’s legacy tram folly
Barely a week passes without a feature article or letter to the editor opposing that white elephant/legacy project known as Light Rail Stage 2B.
This monolithic, inflexible, outdated, overpriced transport system was never the choice of the ACT community. It was only the choice of Chief Minister Barr as one of his “legacy” projects.This is regardless of its unfavorable Benefit Cost analysis, massive cost, downgrading of ACT credit rating and higher-priority community needs.
The comprehensive and learned 2024 study 21st Century Public Transport Option for Canberra concluded that, “there is simply no justification for the ACT Government to be spending massive amounts of money on Light Rail Stage 2A and 2B, to service less than 10% of Canberra’s commuting public. That is why Light Rail Stage 2B must not proceed”.
Paul Temby (letters, cn March 16) is dissatisfied with the classification of journalists as being left or right wing. It is a relative thing.
Someone who is on the extreme right wing sees all others as left wing, whether they are centrist or extreme left or even right of centre.
Paul demonstrates this in his letter by including Laura Tingle and Sarah Ferguson as left-wing journalists.
For clarification Laura Tingle is one of the best and most objective journalists in the country. Sarah Ferguson is often perceived as right leaning by many from the left of politics. They are by no means the same.
Colin Lyons is absolutely correct. We have some great bus drivers who are friendly, helpful and kind to passengers. We also have some who are rude and inconsiderate, who don’t answer when you greet them or thank them, who throw you around the bus like a package as they take off too quickly and swing around corners too sharply.
The job is not to drive an empty bus but to drive people safely to their destinations. That means considering their needs. It means giving older people, those with mobility problems or those laden with shopping or children a chance to sit down before taking off. It means being polite and professional in dealing with people. Those who do this well are a delight and I always compliment then because it is not always the case.
As the employer, the ACT government needs to recruit and manage their employees so that they know what’s expected and are proud of their work. Currently, it seems that they lack the ability to do this well. It is the employer at fault for hiring the wrong people, not setting the right expectations and not managing to those expectations. It would also help if they properly recognised and rewarded the many bus drivers who do focus on their passengers safety and well-being. This is a job valued by tourists as well as the many vulnerable passengers who rely on public transport to get out.
Anthony Hordern just represents the latest denier of new technology. It is clear the world is finding a better way to meet its power needs, and solar power is part of that solution. It is not perfect, but there is not a single issue dribbled on by Anthony that won’t be solved, or isn’t indeed well in the process of being sold.
The only people trying to con the world are denialists like him. I’m sure however he’d be happy to live next to a coal power plant and chomp down the coal particles they spit into the air, day after day…..
I hope that other readers are also spotting the weaknesses of Anthony’s assertions, like Jim here.
If we are talking about elephants, let’s consider what could be considered the elephant in the room when it comes to fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas.) I’m sure that no-one can successfully argue that the fossil fuel industry is a closed-loop system. Emissions into the atmosphere are not spontaneously replenishing the stock in the ground, at least not on a timescale that will stop them from being depleted if the current pace of consumption continues. (However, there is an argument to make that consumption will slow as it becomes more energy-intensive to mine those stocks.)
Therefore, are we to presume that all the steel we ever need can be forged with the finite stock of fossil fuels that remain? If false, steel will eventually have to be forged with renewable energy, sooner or later, right? In which case, investment and innovation in renewable energy will pay dividends, perhaps just not on a timescale that suits the folk who would rather we borrow against future prosperity as quickly as we can and gamble on future generations to solve whatever problems we leave in our wake.
If we wish to talk about accounting, how about the following? Let us consume fossil fuels at the same rate that they accumulate. If we consume them at a higher rate, then we owe a debt and shall work towards returning the carbon to where it was or replacing fossil fuel consumption so that the rate falls below the rate of accumulation. The latter offsets the excessive consumption.
Are the companies extracting and burning fossil fuels doing it for the benefit or everyone or just their shareholders? When it is no longer profitable to continue doing so will they keep doing it as a charitable service? Are they setting aside profits now in case they are legally ordered to pay compensation in the future for any harms or damages their activity may cause?
If there is a less expensive way to collect and store solar energy than panels and batteries, then great! Let’s start rolling it out. Otherwise, to paraphrase Jim a bit, there are improvements in the pipeline. Those investing their wealth into the R&D and those contributing their time and intellect are helping us all get to a sustainable energy system sooner.
Isn’t it quite obvious that solar energy isn’t falling on every square metre of the Earth’s surface at all times? Who needs to be reminded of that?
Instead, doesn’t it make sense to ask if those unwilling to contribute to the sustainable production of energy should at least be expected to modify their consumption of non-renewable energy to leave more reserves available for future humans? Don’t they have an equal entitlement to those reserves as we do?
"We have public finances that are debt ridden, weighed down by devouring interest beetles, so that once sound limbs (such as education, health, public housing, access to justice) are in danger of dieback.," but HUGH SELBY has an idea..
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