Letters – Episode 31 2017

Below are the letters from Episode 31 2017. Click Here to Watch our Panel discuss these topics and share your thoughts on the letters below.

Hey Mitch and Panel,

We are very obviously and very scarily being watched and probably manipulated. I heard all that stuff with the Russians interfering online with the American Elections, but I really didn’t give it much thought until my Facebook tagging and emails got my Uni mate into a horrible situation.

He’s a student from China. He told me that the stuff that I shared, got his family hassled back in his home country by Chinese officials. His family were warned about “their son’s involvement in anti-Chinese activities and organisations” at Uni. He didn’t do anything. I was the one trying to get him involved in human rights issues like the Yes Campaign. He was so stressed and scared that he begged me never to tag him or send him anything political again.

How can this be allowed to happen in Australia? What else is happening that we are totally unaware of? What can we do? We’ve got to let everyone know? Are the Russians and the Chinese the only ones doing this? We have to stop this before the whole world is scared to act on anything.

Petros, North Balwyn, Vic

Dear Mitch and Sweet & Sour,

They spit, burp, fart, swear, yell and they don’t care who’s around and they do it everywhere in public? Do I say anything or do I keep my mouth shut because I just don’t know? There I was shopping at the local shopping centre during what I found out later was the school holidays and every group of teenagers displayed the same disgusting loud & filthy behaviours.

I may have been quite oblivious before but it’s the first time I noticed this happening and it was everywhere. I was feeling very unnerved by the whole experience and on the way back to my car, feeling really uncomfortable, a teenage boy spat, not at me, but certainly in my direction and had not the slightest inclination to think that his behaviour may have discomforted or offended passers-by. Do the panellists think that this is isolated to particular low socioeconomic areas or has self-respect become a concept too hard to be understood by today’s young people?

Lorraine, Cannington, WA

Hi Panellists,

You know I think we must be living in an intelligence vacuum. We have had what I believe effective gun control laws in place since John Howard took the initiative after the Port Arthur Massacre and gave us the NFA (National Firearms Agreement). We haven’t had a single mass gun murder in Australia in all this time. Not only that, but incidents of suicide by guns and accidental death from gunshot have continued to decline dramatically.

I am so dismayed to find many politicians who have been pursued and seduced by the shooters union or our Gun Lobby here, and they are working on a public strategy to water down the legislation and make firearms more accessible. I was handed a pamphlet today infuriating me because it was spouting those rubbish lines that the American Gun Lobby push, “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People”. It’s begun. When the profit motive is in, the competition will kill community ethics and morality, sooner or later the dollar wins. The Gun Lobby has so much money, I’m frightened that we may end up awash in firearms again like stupid Trumpland. I’ve hopped onto the email to you the moment I arrived home.

Barbara, Allenby Gardens, SA

Leave a Reply Cancel reply