Paying for online news
RUPERT MURDOCH is reported (''News to charge for web access'', August 7, p20) as saying that News Corp's newspapers could no longer afford to give away the content on its news websites.
He intends to charge for access.
Mr Murdoch knows that news items are not copyright.
You and I can use these items if they are news.
Those of us who subscribe to multiple newspapers do so for many reasons.
At the present time one can tap into the world's great newspapers and magazines, including some that News Corp owns, and read, sometimes ahead of their appearance in print, good articles and trivia.
We choose.
Some newspapers we don't buy, because they contain too much trivia.
We might look at them on the net, if only to see if they have picked up significant items.
If Mr Murdoch reckons he can make a dollar by selling his online content, here's one reader who won't pay that dollar.
He won't buy his papers, either.
Brian McNamara, Lyneham Fairer trade
CRISPIN HULL trotted out the stock-standard guilt line on global poverty, with one exception (''We can and must do more to fight world poverty'', August 8, Forum p15).
He did observe that increased globalisation had succeeded in halving the share of people living in extreme poverty.
Well, he didn't exactly say that.
He erroneously and solely attributed that success to development aid.
When he mentioned trade, it was of the boutique ''Fair Trade'' kind trade which allegedly avoids exploitation.
Forget exploitation.
Ask those being ''exploited'' on low wages (because plenty want those jobs) whether they'd prefer no job, like their neighbours.
Fact is, exploitation by foreign investors feeds them, and through time leads to acquisition of skills and understanding of systems of management and trade while encouraging emergence of local entrepreneurs.
What they mainly need is stronger property rights and access to credit.
Want to personally do more to stop global poverty?
Strongly reject Dick Smith-style populist protectionism here and buy un-Australian.
Every time you buy from a country poorer than ours, you send them money with a clear message about what we can use more of.
Tom Waring, Ainslie Fossilised policy
THE Prime Minister's allocation of $94 million for the training of young people to participate in ''green'' building and construction industries is a laudable but inadequate contribution to his attempt to acquire ''green'' credentials in the climate change debate (''PM vows to grow green job schemes'', July 31, p1).
No policy shift is outlined to transfer a fraction of the huge and inequitable subsidies from the polluting coal industry to the variety of clean, endlessly renewable energy technologies which Australia has developed, which could generate many interesting jobs and export potential and which, given economies of scale, could become competitive with fossil fuel industries and make Australia an example of a carbon neutral economy by mid-century.
No doubt, like his Coalition predecessors, Mr Rudd is afraid to upset the carbon polluters in the fossil fuel and related industries at the big end of town, who fail to see that their own survival is at stake unless they put their weight behind achieving a new and sustainable industrial revolution.
Bryan Furnass, Hughes
Grech the victim
I THINK Greg Ellis (Letters, August 8) has misread the recent correspondents he cites and accuses of ''all seeking to excuse Godwin Grech''.
My reading of the correspondence leads me to conclude that what is being sought is a bit of humanity in the future treatment by all who have used and now abandoned Mr Grech.
He has admitted his role in the Utegate affair, undertaken when all those around him knew of his serious health problems.
Here I agree with Ellis when he criticises the Treasury hierarchy for its inaction.
For that department, or the Opposition, or Government, to now pursue MrGrech would be unconscionable.
The man should be given every assistance to regain his health without any further public persecution.
Incidentally, I think Treasury probably did Greg Ellis a favour by not appointing him to a senior position: it probably wasn't his kind of department.
E.L. Fisher, Kambah
Healthier statistics
IN THE report ''Women flock to health professions'' (August 2, p9) we read that ''the number of female GPs is to jump 250 per cent, from 24,000 to 56,000''.
In fact the rise is 32,000, only 133 per cent of 24,000.
It is true that 56,000 is 233 per cent of 24,000, rather less than 250 per cent, but that is not the rise.
Michael Travis, Cook
Eat those greens
KAREN McVEIGH'S piece on organic food (''Split views on organic food report'', August 2, p24) reminded me that the green foliage of all brassicas is edible and delicious when properly cooked. Have you ever wondered what happens to the leaves and stalks of broccoli, cauliflowers and brussels sprouts? I suspect that they are trimmed off and left to rot in the fields.
Why could they not be washed, the sometimes woody centre spine removed, then packaged and quick-frozen to be marketed as ''Gourmet Greens'' or some equally fetching title? And they would sell at least, I would buy them. I bet the thrifty Chinese don't waste any edible greenstuff.
We need to review our grossly wasteful appetites and food choices for those coming years when, having failed to control population growth, we are nine billion mouths to feed and facing further drought, rising sea levels and desertification due to global warming.
Colin P. Glover, Canberra City
Weak on Uighurs
Who is artistic director Simon Weaving kidding when he asserts that the Canberra International Film Festival's refusal to screen the controversial film of exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer is because the film lacks the required level of artistic merit? (''ACT festival screens out contentious Uighur film'', August 8).
In the wake of Chinese Government protests and the sabotage of the Melbourne Film Festival's film website by Chinese hackers, the Canberra film festival organiser is clearly running scared of an oppressive global superpower.
CIFF organisers owe it to Canberra filmgoers to let them judge the artistic merit of this immensely topical film for themselves.
More importantly, they owe it to all Australians to show that we will not be bullied by a foreign government in our own democratic backyard.
John Bell, Lyneham
Accord at last AFTER all these years of reading Mike O'Shaughnessy's letters I finally read something from him we can both agree about.
I agree with his sentiment in his letter (Letters, August 7) that ''No one gives a damn for the ... rats''. Me neither.
Mike Hughes, Gowrie
Email a friend