Below are the letters from Episode 18 2013. Click Here to Watch our Panel discuss these topics and share your thoughts on the letters below.
Dear Panel,
Can someone please tell me what it is that makes a stalker? I have a male friend who is a clever student at Uni with me who would joke with me often that he was stalking out another, with whom he’s developed a mad infatuation!! Affectionately I called him my stalker mate.
Now I find that it’s really not so funny, as I have been subjected to a stalking incident for which I had to call in police. Thankfully my episode is over but now since my experience I can’t find anything funny about my friend joking about stalking. He doesn’t get how threatening I felt when it happened to me. We’re still great mates but he thinks I’m having attitude and nothing else. So please tell me how do I get him and all my friends to understand how unfunny, joking of stalking really is? And what really is in the head of those males and females who stalk out others?
Penny, Seaforth, SA
Hi Mitch,
Can anyone honestly fall in love on the internet? My cousin, who lived in Perth, left his wife because he developed a relationship over the internet with a woman who lived in Sydney. He’d never met this woman in the flesh, yet he left his beautiful wife of 3 years, hopped on a plane and moved to Sydney! I haven’t seen him in Perth since, and that was 4 years ago!
My brother who was never interested in travel, decided to head straight to Winnipeg, in Manitoba, Canada because he met (as my dad says) some tart on the net three months ago. He’s been there for a month and seems so happy with his Canadian new lady friend. It seems men are far more keen to meet people on the internet and travel half way around the world to be with their woman of the web, than women are. The only reason I’m asking for advice is because I’ve met some men on the net and feel a little attraction to one of them, but I can’t work out why I’m attracted, and that worries me big time. Is it real over the net? Can it work long term? Should I be the one hopping on a plane to meet a distant man? Is this the way of the future??
Carie, Tuart Hill, WA
Hello Sweet and Sour,
Yes, I agree! We must take a step back for the sake of our community and put up the legal age to drink alcohol to 21. The statistics tell the real story; Aussie kids are far more alcohol and drug abusive than their American counterparts who don’t get the right to drink until they are 21. Kids continue to mentally develop right up to the age of 21 (and in many cases well beyond) and alcohol abuse is proven to negatively affect the brains development.
To me it’s just common sense now that we just need to take things back. And to those who say that kids can vote at 18, drive at 17 and enlist to kill at 16, and that’s reason enough to keep the drinking age where it is, I say that perhaps all of these ought to be brought up to the age of 21. It’s for the sake of our whole community. We just need political will to get this done!!
Kareena, Liverpool, NSW