I stand to lose ground-floor views to the water and seated views from my purpose-built deck and wet area.

A three-storey DA has been approved by the council DA assessor despite a number of professional objections from a local town planner and a Sydney-based town planner.

I have been told my property market value will be significantly reduced in the hundreds of thousands, and the council assessor stated that the negative impact to my property is minimal.

Both town planners I used have been disappointed by council's lack of genuine response to their very detailed objections.

Council requested "significant other information" to the DA applicants and this amended DA did not address the main concerns of the original DA objections.

A subsequent DA objection to the modified DA was emailed to council on May 17, however the council assessor decided to progress the DA on question on the same day.

I have sent a complaint to council about the DA decision and disregard for this issue.

Council responded with a tick and flick approach basically stating that my complaint will be documented as a statistic with no further action into the future.

What disappoints me further is that during the DA objection process a compromise of flattening the roof height by 60cm was seen as an opportunity to flatten the roof and maintained overall height of the DA.

An existing resident loses out.

AFTER a lifetime of service in local government and community children's sports I was appalled by the details outlined in the article, ("Fees cripple club's funds", Herald, 11/6).

With the ever-shrinking home building lots, it is impossible for children to get exercise at home, so clubs that make the efforts to organise team sports to get them away from computer games must be a priority for our local government organisations.

The community benefits from the kids' sports are much greater than the costs of council mowing of the grass.

The pandemic has reduced the clubs' ability to get volunteers as the grandparents that for as long as I remember, and I go back 93 years, were always those that carried the clubs, have not come back because of the virus.

WHEN the decision to privatise the electricity grid was made, I did a verbal submission to the enquiry opposing the privatisation of the public utility as I suggested that there would be increased and a diminished service - as we currently have.

The privatisation of the power generation was also a problem as again there would be increased costs and supply concerns.

The generation supply companies would decrease supply to obtain a higher unit price from the retailers which would become a price and a supply issue, if the resellers could not continue to trade they would have to close giving the big players a chance to pounce on a collapsing business to control more of the consumers with their higher prices.

We have all that in place.

There is no clear capacity to set up a stand alone business making available electricity; this and the capacity to blackmail anyone by restrictive supply policies would demonstrate the lack of government capacity to give effective control over the supply and the cost of electricity.

This is not good enough.

LABOR is certainly setting an example of how not to run this country by not addressing their election promises.

Power supply issues, people smugglers, the list goes on.

Their claims boast carbon emissions reduction by the end of this decade, by making coal-fired power stations redundant without having any suitable options in place to combat power drain on the grid, power bills soaring; they talked the talk but aren't walking the walk.

Their decisions will leave us confused and confounded as to their directions they are leading us into.

Not once have I seen a futuristic outline of power generation studies which will supposedly integrate their proposed renewables and how this will handle power demand levels during high demand periods.

I don't believe that storage battery banks will handle peak loads.

England at this moment is a strong reminder of how it doesn't work.

So when you wake up at 4am because your family are freezing and go to turn on your air conditioner and it won't go, keep in mind your voting decisions.

WITH more emphasis on replacing fossil fuel with renewables, the cracks in the current system are starting to show.

We hear a lot said about how the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine.

Some advantage could be gained by deploying load shedding as is common in industry - so that when the grid gets close to capacity instead of blacking out large sections of the load, the electricity supply authority could call on residential installations to load shed.

We have in the past switched our costs at specific times controlled by the supply authority to off peak, one, two or three.

This principle could be more actively employed to switch off heavy consumption items such as air conditioning, hot water heaters etc. rather than switching off the entire supply.

This principle could be subsidised by the government to encourage homeowners to participate and could be a viable investment for the government and consumers.

EVEN financial institution staff don't know what "strata interest" means.

It's nothing to do with property title. It actually is linked to "stratum", a set of successive layers of any deposited substance.

Their bosses say it means "different interest rates apply to different portions of your account balance" but don't ensure their staff know this.

When I called at a branch for advice during the emergency rate exercise I was advised incorrectly.

She said our account was being paid 0.25 per cent on every dollar. That was actually 25 times what some of it was getting. Later another officer relayed the same error.

Their account structures are too complicated for their own staff and meant to confuse. In between these two events their administration, made aware of the problem, made no attempt to correct staff.

Anyone similarly ill-advised during this low rate obsession should seek compensation. Email Australian Financial Complaints Association (info@afca.org.au) to check it out.

I WAS at a cafe in Katoomba earlier this week and saw something unusual. I saw three young kids playing cards with their parents. Most young kids I see these days have a device shoved in front of them by their parents. The worst example of this was when I saw a toddler in a pram with a device in their hands. The person pushing the pram had a device in their hands and was looking at it. Time for a reset I think. Bring out the cards.

THE steep rise in prices of daily living costs comes from supply shortages, not inflated demand. This raises the prospect of recession. So why is another, in this case, basic cost, finance, also being increased?

NICK Maguire, ("Knights need to take action", Letters, 17/6), they should never have got rid of Nathan Brown, mate! Simple!

I'M flying to China to watch State of Origin on TV. With all their reliable power from all those new coal-fired power plants I wonder what the odds are for a blackout before half time in NSW. I'll take 5/4. Giddy up.

COLIN Rowlatt, (Short Takes, 9/6), claims the previous government "did nothing to embrace renewable energy". Really? So, is that the case even though it is known that for the past three years Australia led the world in installation of wind and solar power generation? In the 2021 year alone 3.3GW of roof-top solar was installed and 3GW of solar farms across 27 projects were built. In that same year, two of the country's three largest wind farms were installed. I know that the real contribution of renewable energy is overrated but is that doing "nothing"?

GRAEME Kime, a vocal cheerleader for the LNP on these pages, provides a shopping list of issues caused or neglected by the previous government that he claims need instant attention to get "Australia back on track" but then blames the new government for not fixing them after 20-odd days in power. I'm guessing a lot of Sky News viewing helped form that logic.

GREG Hunt, (Short Takes, 10/6), I think you'll find that both sides of politics only believe one side of the story. It's also quite common for people to falsely attribute quotes to incorrect sources, an example of this being Scott Morrison blaming the Labor Party for the "Scotty from Marketing" nickname (when in actual fact it came from the satirical news website The Betoota Advocate). It's a damn shame that Scott Morrison seemed more focused on the origins of a minor slur than he was on the alleged sexual assault of Liberal Party junior staffer Brittany Higgins.