Twitter on trigger
Trump's attention span and memory, as suggested by his propensity to resort reflexly to Twitter, demonstrates need for reality testing, as illustrated by his calling for a "determined response" to the "reckless and brutal regime in North Korea" ("Trump says patience with North Korea is over", Sunday CT, July 2, p15).
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While Kim Jong-un's dictatorship does not fit Trump's paradigm, the outfit, i.e. US, over which he presides (owns) is by no means a paragon of virtue to be emulated.
Regardless of how he might manipulate history, Trump will be unable to locate a country North Korea has invaded, illegally; no country whose democratic institutions it has undermined; no country on which it has dropped an atom bomb; no ocean that it has contaminated with radiation; no country to which it has exported terrorism; no country to which it has used extraordinary rendition to torture: and North Korea has not used specious devices akin to Guantanamo to create a fiction of legality.
Nor does North Korea possess sufficient, multi-warheaded, sophisticated nuclear weapons on hair trigger, enough to wreck the planet several times over. Wherever he goes the nuclear trigger goes too. His petulance on Twitter could very well transfer to reflex itching to press the trigger, if for no other reason than to demonstrate, for all time, that he is as powerful, as only he, thinks he is!
Albert M. White, Queanbeyan
Screw truly loose
Without wishing to rain on Aleksandra Bliszczyk's parade ("How Australian wine got its screw loose", July 2, p21), there is an important omission in this account of the rise of screw-top closures for wine. The article leads readers to believe that the screw-top closure for wine started in Australia and spread to other parts of the world.
Readers may be interested to know that bottled white wine with screw tops was available in France in 1983.
I know, because my wife and I purchased supplies in a country town we passed through on our way from Calais to Le Mans for the 24-hour race meeting. It wasn't top-shelf wine, but it was entirely appropriate for the occasion.
Australia may have invented the wine cask, but I am certain we weren't the first to use screw-tops for retail wine.
James Elsbury, Campbell
The new smoker
Julie Power's (July 2) article on brachycephalic (short-faced) dogs, attributed to all brachycephalic breeds the genetic faults identified in any.
I cannot speak for bulldogs (French or English) or Boston terriers, but I have kept and bred healthy pugs for 40 years.
When not overfed, and when exercised regularly, pugs live long (15 years or more, in my experience), healthy and loving lives.
Ms Power quoted experts who claimed "their flat faces, big eyes, little noses and ears — bred by design to shorten their muzzles to make them appear non-threatening — appeal to us because they look like human babies".
I count myself lucky never to have seen a human baby who looked like a pug.
Have brachycephalic breeds become the new cigarette (a vice I recently relinquished), and have we brachycephalic breeders become the new smokers?
J. H. Walker, Reid
Whose interest?
Tony Trobe, architect and author of the town-planning column, "Design matters" in the allhomes insert of the Sunday CT, has disclosed a self-interested support for densification. He wants to split up the suburbs with elbow room to make them also cheek-by-jowel precincts.
He argued from the basis of an irrelevancy, writing, "Canberra is one of the most spread-eagled citieson the planet."
That is as mucha result of being an urban conglomerate of discrete satellite centres as of the average plot size per dwelling.
He expanded his faulty rationale by holding up to mild derision a concept that never existed, writing, "The notion that everyone wants a quarter-acre block is out dated (sic)." Townhouses have been built here for decades.
He sought to seduce with silver, writing, "I often wonder why more people don't weaken to capitalist tendencies ... They have the asset in the land."
He finally advertised his self-interest, writing of himself as the keeper of "a register of interested parties" for "a joint venture with an architect, a builder and a financier".
DISCLOSURE: Mr Trobe has previously allowed me to present my own recommendations as an interviewee in his column.
Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor
Look elsewhere
Amnesty International global chief Salil Shetty (July 2) states that Australia, due to our government's decision as to who comes to our shores, risks radicalisation. So I ask you, Mr Shetty, please do tell who we should be letting in? I'll bet you they will not be wearing a cross.
Could you and your ilk worry about more important problems around the world and leave Australia alone. Comments like yours encourage violence.
Mark Urquhart, Palmerston
Housing solution
The ACT government can achieve affordable housing for anyone by offering an arrangement for the provision of good new suburban housing that also restores home-maker self determination.
The arrangement would be underwritten by government, making it lender-palatable. It would aim to preserve the market while gradually taking the heat out of it; provide roomy, comfortable accommodation; better empower owner-occupiers; curtail current excessive housing industry retail activity; satisfy the government's balance sheet of liquefiable assets; maintain rates income; temper the quantum and pace of housing finance and lending; encourage realistic saving; and de-stigmatise so called affordable housing.
In essence, it would enable signed-up owner-occupiers only (and not just first-timers) to directly purchase the front part (roughly half) of a new block of government subdivided land at market valuation, with a contractual agreement to purchase the remaining part later.
The owner would pay the rates on the full block. After a maximum of, say, seven years, the owner would complete the land purchase, and may extend the house.
Jack Kershaw, Kambah
Futile campaign
ACT Policing's efforts to discourage tailgating have so far proved ineffective. Every year Canberra has more than three thousand rear-end crashes. That's more than are caused by alcohol, speeding or mobile phones.
Their October 2015 campaign was a spectacular failure, catching a mere six drivers for tailgating. They could have charged thousands more if they had bothered to look through their crash reports.
Leon Arundell, Downer
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