Help is available for young mums struggling to breastfeed

I never even considered bottle-feeding her but at my six weeks' check up my obstetrician handed me contraceptive pills and said: "Don't take them till she's six weeks old." I subsequently obeyed him, my milk dried up, she was put on the bottle, and at two years developed eczema and asthma which have plagued her for the rest of her life.

After the next child was born I was separated from her because I developed gastroenteritis (from food supplied by visitors, not the hospital, I hasten to add). I used a breast pump to try to keep my milk supply going, but it was much less efficient than a baby, and she had by now become used to the technique of sucking from a bottle - which is much different from breastfeeding.

Prior to the birth of my third child I found the Nursing Mothers Association (now the Australian Breastfeeding Association) and learned more about the process of breastfeeding.

I successfully fed him for 12 months thanks to the ready availability of generous mothers who served as counsellors.

Any mother-to-be should get in touch with the ABA and prepare herself for this great adventure to give her baby the physical and emotional benefits of breastfeeding.

All obstetricians and hospital clinics should refer their mothers to this wonderful organisation.

Of course, there is a small minority for whom breastfeeding does not work, and these women deserve support. It's not a competition.

The article about Outabox, the company that apparently manages club member databases, has drawn attention to the reasons this information is collected.

If the clubs, and the ACT government, cannot offer us the digital security we demand, we say it's time to amend the rules. Outabox certainly can't deliver.

I'm a member of three clubs, all of whom hold my full name, my residential address, email, contact phone number and my driver's licence number. A scammer's delight.

Why do ACT clubs hold this sensitive information? Is it because of the Gaming Act? Mr Rattenbery has apparently gone to ground.

I don't play the pokies, so why do the clubs have to retain my driver's licence number and leave me open to fraud?

I want to opt out of clubs holding my driver's licence number.

Please do not forget that Canberra United, despite words to the contrary, has not yet been saved. It is a work in progress by a few devotees.

This is a time when greatest exposure is needed to promote Canberra United and the silence of the owners, Capital Football, is disappointing.

The Canberra United website lists "latest" news from two weeks ago. The Canberra Times has reported Manchester City scouts are abroad in Canberra picking up our promising youngsters from beneath our collective noses.

Come on, Capital Football, you are the owners, please show us the best that you can do in public relations and actively promote our Canberra United.

Roger Quarterman's letter (April 30), claiming that nuclear power stations do not need vast amounts of coolant water for their operation, is authoritative and almost persuasive.

Yet why generally site nuclear power stations on the coast? The Fukushima nuclear power plant was by the sea, even though the Japanese coast was known to be subject to tsunamis, with catastrophic results.

The letter appeared to defend nuclear as a way of generating power, so it is only fair to point out its disadvantages, of which there are three major ones.

After the advent of renewables, which are cheaper and quickly installed, nuclear power is seen as costly, and takes perhaps 10 years to build - time we do not have.

Nuclear power is also perceived as dangerous.

Also, many nuclear power plants produce plutonium as a by-product of their operation. This has obvious security implications.

A nuclear power plant is a sort of glorified steam engine, prompting at least one scientist to comment nuclear power was "one heck of a way to boil water".

On April 30 bulldozers started destroying the bush at Lee Point (Darwin), a refuge for a large collection of endangered birds including eight species of finches and an important heritage site for First Nations people.

The destruction of this important area of biodiversity is being undertaken by Defence Housing Authority (DHA) for housing development.

DHA has caused similar damage in the Mt Lofty Ranges in SA and is planning to develop some endangered grassland at Lawson.

Why has the federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek allowed such developments? Why can't the Albanese government bring DHA to heel and amend its mandate so it cannot cause further environmental destruction?

In the Punch and Judy world dictated to us by those in government and media ever more tenaciously determined to control the narrative, once politically and arbitrarily a "friend", a foreign sovereign nation is always a friend.

And, even more importantly, an enemy is always an enemy. No matter the actual facts. Imagine the public political, media-fanned response if it had been China or Russia to conduct such espionage activities as now revealed about India? Modi good, Putin bad. And of course, Biden and Bush best.

We all know that the US only acts in Australia's interests. No facts can get in the way of that belief.

If several sensible independents were already in the ACT's Assembly a proper study of Canberra's transport needs, including public transport, would have been published years ago ("Billions in projects credited to light rail", May 1).

The government's recently released report predictably attributes everything to the light rail. However, it falls far short of an overall study of the transport, environmental, financial and land-use impacts of a city-wide transport system, including a comparison between different options for public transport such as light rail and/or buses running in dedicated lanes. Nevertheless, ACT Labor is ploughing ahead with light rail. The Greens want to construct stage 2 more quickly than Labor. Neither party seems concerned about the opportunity cost. For every $1 billion borrowed for light rail the local community could instead have around 500 more nurses. The Liberals have ruled out stage 2B.

In October, vote for sensible independents before any other candidate. They will cooperate with MLAs on either side of the fence, provided the proposal being raised will improve our local community. Party MLAs nearly inevitably vote along party lines. This results in Labor/Greens scratching each other's back and opposing the Liberals as a matter of principle.

Re your excellent editorial of May 2 "Meta's new oracle peddles fake news".

"AI" can be used to mean artificial irresponsibility, artificial insanity, artificial idiocy.

A friend looked me up on ChatGPT recently. It reported that I died 10 years ago.

I pinched myself, considered the claim carefully, and on mature reflection decided they had got it wrong.

My friend agreed and wrote back to ChatGPT, telling them to improve their account. But they managed, amazingly, to come back with an even more incorrect response.

Admitting I was alive, they insisted that I was an internationally celebrated and admired leader in various fields of activity.

If truth be told not so. We had a good laugh.

As someone who walks daily on recreation paths in many parts of Canberra, I can support Peter James (Letters, May 3) and strongly disagree with John Widdup (Letters, May 2) regarding the practice of cyclists ringing a bell or calling out a warning when overtaking pedestrians.

Occasionally I keep a count of people following the legal requirements and the score is usually about 5 per cent.

On Wednesday morning in over an hour near Lake Burley Griffin only one cyclist called out "on your right" and no bells were rung at all.

In many cases the bikes didn't even have a bell attached that could be rung at all.

A graphic and hilarious narration, and true competition for Margaret Pomeranz's expert cutting commentaries on the ABC's The Weekly with Charlie Pickering ("The reality episode where Farmer Wants a Wife became 'adults-only Play School'", April 30).

The grief a Labor prime minister suffered from attending the women's rally shows how well advised Morrison was to decline the insincere "invitation" to be the butt of theatrical protests (back-turning, booing, shouting down).

From time to time I read and hear about the Ukraine war. Surely it is the Ukraine invasion?

If you want to help women, help men also. For ages now, men have been killing themselves at a frightening rate. That's a clear indication something isn't right. But who's got time to talk about this?

Neil Gaughan's valedictory, categorically stating Canberrans have been "protected" by an inexperienced police force, begs the question why said deputy commissioner had not addressed the issue and, contractually, why Andrew Barr imposed on citizens the continuing AFP arrangement.

Re Susan Kover's letter (May 2) on the Jewish right to self-determination in the Jewish homeland. What about the right of the Palestinians to self-determination in their homeland of Palestine?

How much longer do we have to put up with the tortured performance of the Immigration Minister, Andrew Giles? It's time for Mr Albanese to put him out to pasture because he's an embarrassment.

The safest place for personal details is in a paper file in a locked filing cabinet in an office. Online data is not safe.

In recent weeks our PM has had a welter of Dorothy Dix-type material to perform and he's not done too well. Another deficiency of the "voice", perhaps?

I support Jeff Day's letter (Letters, April 30) on men driven to end their lives because of sustained coercive control by partners. Sadly, men, older ones in particular, are conditioned to keep silent, and to "grin and bear it". It's not only women whose lives are ruined. Men are also victims, no matter how many fewer of them there may be.

If the Aussie T20 selectors can drop Steve Smith why can't they drop the self-serving David Warner and include Jake Fraser-McGurk? Surely Warner has enough money by now to be able to afford to give the game away?