We seem to be fixated on treating the whole volume of contaminated water that arrives at the treatment plants.

In addition, there are occasions when the volume to be treated is too great, so overflows into the river are occurring.

I wonder if, instead of treating the whole volume of water arriving at treatment plants, whether consideration has been given to treating the sewage before it enters the combined stormwater/sewage drains.

There are many residences in Launceston that have combined systems and we presumably know their addresses.

So, if we were able to automatically inject a measured volume of either chlorine, bromine or iodine solution into those toilet bowls each time they are flushed, this would serve to kill off the e-coli that is causing so much angst.

Alternative treatments include applying ultraviolet light, filtration, ozone or boiling, but these are less practical and less effective.

There may also be a need to mash up the solids in an intermediate tank to increase the surface area for reaction, but this detail is a bit yucky.

If the council paid for the equipment, its installation and the consumables, I am sure residents would be happy to comply.

There would be no need to provide larger water detention dams or replumb the combined sewage/stormwater residences.

Then we only have to concern ourselves with runoff from paddocks where animals defecate and contribute e-coli.

AS THE saying goes "you can put lipstick on a pig but at the end of the day it is still a pig".

Just as you can give a structure a fancy name such as a Warren, half through, underhang truss design and throw fairy dust over it by virtue of fancy lighting.

At the end of the day it  is still just a boring common truss bridge.

Developer Errol Stewart has striven to add aesthetic value to his projects in our city and must feel let down by the choice of bridge launching from his attractive Seaport precinct over to the soon to be completed and equally attractive Silos development.

I can only echo the comment by Alderman Hugh Mckenzie that he (and the collective members of council) are not qualified to make this decision.

This decision should be made by a panel of persons with architectural artistic vision.

The council has dropped the ball.

IT'S finally come to fruition. Big brother is watching you.

Facial recognition is just the first step in controlling the masses.

Imagine if Hitler or Stalin had had this type of technology in the 1930s. The abuses would have been even more horrendous.

And this is just one of many examples of how facial recognition could be used.

The concept is not horror fiction it is reality.

Its uses could be at rallies, protests, tracking opposition politicians, shopping centres (studying people's shopping habits), and further, the fallibility of the technology itself.

Once again we enter the realms of fallacious reasoning.

State premiers hoodwinked into turning over state powers to the Commonwealth without proper public debate.

New ideas, philosophies, values and freedoms cease to exist and critical and open discussion is suppressed or paralysed.

Why would any sane person vote for either of the major political parties.

Both parties are bereft of logic, human emotion and sound reasoning.

Our choice is a Hobson's choice.

THE goal of the Colonial War was to ultimately destroy a race of people. That is called genocide, John Coulston (The Examiner, September 26).

The only thing that can be done is for the government to step up and start the process to negotiate a treaty. It shows no interest in that, so the ghosts of Tasmania’s troubled past linger on.

Michael Mansell knows all about those ghosts. We should lobby the Tasmanian government to do the fair and proper thing. It is certainly high time.

I FIND it curious that we should be urged to pray for the families of the victims of the recent Las Vegas shootings (The Examiner, October 6).

For those who choose to allow religion into their lives then they must know that it was their God who allowed this monstrous act to occur; so not much point in praying for compassion from such a cruel and uncaring deity. Meanwhile, for those grounded in rational, logic and common sense, a continued effort to instigate tough gun laws in the US and take on the lamentable albeit powerful NRA becomes an even stricter imperative.

Pray all you want, but sure as eggs there’ll be more and more incidents of this kind. Take away the guns and we might see an improvement in the appalling US killings by firearms statistics.

WAITING for the Greens to have a good idea is a pipe dream that we all share with Malcolm McCulloch (The Examiner, September 30).

One feels that they enjoy being different. That "compromise" is a dirty word, progress a mortal sin, employment a social evil and keeping families together totally undesirable.

Let us be thankful that their tiny voice in the tiny wilderness of their own creation will never form a government.