Thanks to John Langmore (''Budget policy in obsessive trap'', November 17, p15) for his sensible article on surpluses and deficits.

He uses the word ''shibboleth'' to describe our erstwhile obsession with budget surpluses.

The word ''fashion'' would have done just as well.

Fashions come and go in public administration and budgeting just as they do in hemlines and other details of what we wear.

Let's hope this particular budgeting fashion goes the way of flared trousers, wide ties and Zapata moustaches.

Perhaps then governments would feel less inhibited about pursuing fiscal policy that actually makes sense which includes going into deficit when certain circumstances do warrant it.

David Stephens, Bruce

Money and health

It would be good if the experts advising us to stop leakages of air from our houses in order to save energy and money (''Camera shows cash flowing through gaps in our houses'', November 17, p5) got together with the experts who say our hermetically sealed buildings facilitate the proliferation of airborne biological and chemical nasties that are bad for our health.

An agreed position from the experts would help simple folk, like me, to know whether to seal our homes, to save money, or whether to allow some transfer of air, to promote good health.

Gordon Fyfe, Kambah

The popular choices

I heard John Howard speaking on the ABC's AM program in an excerpt from the TV presentation of The Howard Years.

He was speaking about overturning the Labor Party's ban on old-growth forests in Tasmania.

He said that it was obviously the right thing to do (because it won them so many seats).

That was one of Australia's biggest problems under the former prime minister he equated what was right, popular and politically expedient, not what was morally correct, ethically justifiable, or socially desirable.

Colin Hales, Kippax

Humanity crimes

John Howard systematically subverted our democratic institutions.

He cultivated deep social division for political gain.

He conducted vicious personal attacks against those who disagreed with him.

His examples to our children include the non-core promise and systematic lying.

He pushed the policies that have given us the financial meltdown. Our debt ballooned under his governments.

He squandered a decade critical to our chances of avoiding runaway global warming, while pandering to rich sponsors.

Worst of all, he put legitimate asylum-seekers in concentration camps. Children, women, men, almost all legitimate refugees and innocent of anything more than seeking a new life, were vilified and suffered punishment, despair and psychological trauma for years in remote deserts.

The ABC should not be giving Howard another platform for more of his pompous strutting.

Instead, he should be named as a hate-monger and a subversive.

He should be facing a court charged with crimes against humanity.

Geoff Davies, Hawker