My wife and I have noticed that over the past two to three years our money doesn’t seem to go that far anymore.

It seems that nearly everything we pay out money has gone up not to mention our Hydro bill which seems like its doubled in price, the supermarket is where we try to save by not buying the basic food because of everything else such as rent, petrol and food we can’t save.   

It appears our NBN is one of the largest bills and we have pay as you go mobile phones, but I think that an essential now because everyone does business through the internet including banking.    

There was a push a few months ago to raise the basic Newstart allowance because people are feeling the pinch.   

They tell me that it’s a lot easier being a pensioner but I will not miss going into my job provider every two weeks and sitting at a computer updating my resume and looking for jobs that aren’t there.

I HAD the disadvantage of having to go from my restful home of Bridport into the big city of Launceston on February 19.

My problem was I had my motor home that needed to be taken in for a service.

I have never in my travels on the big island met a more rude lot of drivers than what I met. I found a parking area, only to be blocked by an idiot that decided to get as close as they could to me while I was reversing into a parking area.

Next was when I found another one only to be blocked in at the front and back of my vehicle by two cars.

The drivers need to go back to driving lessons as to the gap that is needed and not up to the front or rear of a larger vehicle. 

No wonder we can't get visitors to Launceston with these larger vehicles, but then Bridport will welcome you with open arms as we love you to spend your money in our town.

GOOD to know that Finance Minister Mathias Cormann obviously keeps a close watch on his own finances and it is quite understandable that any of us could overlook the fact that we had not paid for a $2700 fare for a private holiday trip. Once again an administrative error is blamed but the media seem to have no problem in discovering the error.

Add this to the $37,000 for use of an Air Force plane to fly home via Adelaide and one starts to wonder if our finances are in safe hands.

HOW about a consensus of engineers, including structural and transport, telling us how to construct a reliable electricity system to lead us into the future?  

After all, they’re all engineers and we don’t query the specialities of scientists.  Or better still how about a couple of doctors.

OBVIOUSLY, the Coalition would enjoy nothing better than the turn back of an asylum seeker boat or two.

Unfortunately, they have maintained that for operation reasons no information on turn backs are released, so how can this information be released to the media?

I think that a leak could achieve the desired result.

THERE are approximately 100 Australian citizens known to have left Australia to fight or join in some capacity IS militants in Syria.

Now that so-called Islamic State fighters have been overrun in Syria they had better not be thinking of coming back here.

The path they chose was one of extremism, beheadings and the like, and that path should never lead back to Australia.

They made their bed, now they can lie in it permanently.

After marriage equality was achieved in Australia, I thought we were finally moving in the right direction. 

I’m therefore appalled to discover that gay conversion therapy is being practised here, largely by those who believe that being heterosexual is against the teachings of the Bible. Among the articles I have read on this topic, the most worrying one was called “Innocence Interrupted” (Marie Claire, January 2019). 

It referred to children in Australia, who had suffered irrevocable psychological damage after enduring various attempts to turn them away from their natural sexual inclinations. One child was made to sit in a bath of ice-cold water while a member of the cloth read to him; another was sent to the school chaplain, without the parents’ knowledge, for a kind of exorcism. 

The article went on to say that “…it’s common for trans-kids to self-harm after they’ve seen chaplains”. Why, then, has the government decided to pour $250 million into the chaplaincy program? 

Apart from continuing to endorse religious beliefs, it is overlooking qualified psychologists and social workers, who have been trained specifically to support children in schools.