I thank him for his response.

You suggested people of my ilk always want things our own way.

The first question you ask is at what point do businesses, including small business, begin to suffer?

That should be your first question. But to finish that sentence you say because rising costs are reducing our capacity to spend.

People of my ilk probably do want things our own way. But your letter implies I can't think that way, but you can.

So the better off don't give their loose change for those that are struggling.

Heard of taxes Tony?

People have made sacrifices to enter their own business, and pay tax.

This tax the government collects pays for aged pension, carer's pension, dole, Medibank, NDIS, infrastructure, schools, hospitals, council projects and the list goes on.

If you think an ex-unionist is going to do a better job, it beggars belief.

I had an entirely different letter scribed before this one.

I will leave that for another time.

Thank you for your blind judgement of me in your letter.

AT a recent John West lecture presented by the Governor of Tasmania, Kate Warner, the Governor explained that whilst the crime rate in Tasmania had actually decreased from the late 1980s, the imprisonment rate had in fact increased - an interesting societal conundrum to possibly consider and question?

MAYOR Albert van Zetten invites Launcestonians to read the city's proposed budget and tell council what matters to them.

However, this budgetary process is one devised to confound and confuse.

Footy fans will be bewildered by the $3 million plus that has been allocated to resurfacing York Park.

By all accounts the current surface is performing quite well.

Apparently, the ground's drains are blocked.

However, Launceston does not have the rainfall to make that the problem.

Anyway, there is relatively cheap and cost-effective equipment available to mitigate the threat of churned up muddy playing surface.

So, let's get one.

The budget is littered with extraordinary expenditures.

It is a financial extraction process that just does not stack up.

There are far too many issues embedded that need attention, issues being ignored by council.

To list some, the staff level appears problematic; the cultural budget is more than challenging; as is the recreational budget.

Then the administration budget is frightening and waste management is an issue worthy of much deeper consideration.

In the corporate world shareholders would now take drastic action.

Launceston's ratepayers need to as well, threatened as they are with ongoing, uncontained and unsustainable rate bills.

SHORTEN is wrong once again trying to compare us with Norway and its electric cars. Norway gives each owner of an electric vehicle a $3400 per year taxpayer subsidy.

The source of electricity for these cars is from Norway's non-polluting hydroelectric dams, which provide 98 per cent of the country's power.

Notwithstanding the fact that Norwegians do not have our vast distances to travel, if we tripled or even quadrupled our wind and solar power Australians we would still be producing mostly coal-fired electricity so coal would still be used to charge Shorten's electric cars, wouldn't it?

OH great white Menzies, mirror, mirror on the wall

Come in come in, please hear our call

Our hands are full, I wield my sword

My "Excalibur", to save my people from the hoards

Of socialist, tree hugging, climate change brats

Ungrateful heathens give us no thanks

With mining magnates our surplus we share

What of the Treaty the battlers? Who the hell cares?

We take from the battlers, the workers and like

Then give pittance back come budget night

They cry, they moan, they shriek with pain

Public hospitals, housing, schools, "not enough" they complain

Their wages we have kept at bay, our surplus to defend

Our token wage offers they knock back, our surplus to the end

How dare they whinge for their mega million dollars we spend

To glorify war, while we leave our wounded soldiers to fend

Ungrateful heathens give us no thanks

We drain their dignity, we let them suffer in the ranks

We care more for housing ancient planes of war

Than housing people, the wretched poor

The pork is not working yet, we're behind, oh my

But wait, our splash cash pork barrel budget is nigh

My armour of curved timber and steel fights just right

With your spirit old mate, we'll turn our fortune tonight

I will pork the barrel to defend

My place on high to the very end.