Support CFA retention
CAN your readers imagine the following scenario? The Ballarat Volunteer Fire Brigade in Barkly Street "closed". The Wendouree Volunteer Fire Brigade "closed". The Sebastopol Volunteer Fire Brigade "closed". The Buninyong Volunteer Fire Brigade "closed". Plus hundreds of fire brigades throughout the state of Victoria "closed".
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The open letter to the people of Victoria (The Courier, November 26, 2014) signed by the 10 VFB Board members, with a total of over 440 years of service to the CFA, serves as a warning this could happen if Daniel Andrews and the Labor Party are elected to govern Victoria.
Permanent fire fighters employed by the CFA and who are members of the fire fighters union have been scurrilous, mischievous and grubby in their actions prior to and during the current state election campaign.
Their aim is, of course, to take over control of, and indeed dismantle the CFA in its present structure. Brigades will be closed and our brave and community-minded volunteers will leave the CFA in droves.
The plan by Labor and the unions will see the demise of the CFA and a code red fire day could see Victoria burn from the Murray River to the coast.
The CFA was established following the Black Friday fires during 1944, and through sound management and planning plus the contribution of tens of thousands of volunteers over the following years, has seen it become the largest fire fighting organisation in the world. Now, Daniel Andrews and his union mates want to dismantle this great organisation. May I urge all voters to support the retention of the CFA in its present form.
- Paul Jenkins, Life Member CFA, Alfredton
Make exhibits affordable
I WOULD like to take the opportunity to have a whinge. Firstly, Women of the Empire Exhibition and the Bling Goldfields Jewellery Display. I would like to see both displays, but do they have to charge the admittance fee that they want?
Pensions/welfare recipients do not have that much money over to throw about.
Also while I'm on a roll - Civic Hall. Why so long in deciding the outcome of the place? Too much procrastinating.
Oh, and the sale yards. There is supposed to be a caveat on them. They cannot be used or sold for anything else; only for sale yards.
- Lorna Delaland, Central Ballarat
Give credit where due
The Hubble Space Telescope celebrated its 26th birthday on April 24, 2016.
It was launched into space, 552km above the Earth's atmosphere to peer into the universe. It has a mirror 2.4m across and 'observes' in visible, near-ultraviolet and infra-red spectra. We can now see, among other things, the spectacular birth and death of stars. Scientists are also able to discern by the light spectrum if any planet has the conditions necessary for life.
Despite two and a half decades of scanning the universe, no other 'Goldilocks' planet with just the right conditions for life has been detected. Either the atmosphere is wrong or the temperature is wrong or the gravity is wrong or the matter-composition is wrong (many planets, like our Jupiter and Saturn are just giant balls of gas, one step and you sink right through).
The facts, so far, dovetail into the conclusion that we are, to put it over-simply perhaps, alone and unique. Sorry no Klingons, Vulcans or Wookies out there, just us Earthlings hurtling through space on the third rock from the sun.
Many an astronaut who has seen Earth thus, has been overcome by what they realise as the design and handiwork of God. The light show extravaganza in the heavens has been there since the beginning of time.
The Hubble only gave us glasses with which to see them better. We slap ourselves on back when we 'discover' a super nova or two. But I wonder if we give credit where it is really due.
- Kimmy Fam, Ballarat