Are the rules different for politicians and footy players?

If it was a footy player he would be hauled over the coals because it's a bad look for the game.

BANKS closing branches, telephone banking being phased out; all business to be done online. Everything is all about money and profit. Very little face to face human contact.

Social media allows anonymity to say what would not ordinarily be said face to face. Lots of bills cannot now be paid by cash. No longer is housing primarily to own and live in, but has instead become a means of wealth acquisition, and hence we are suffering through out-of-kilter prices. Drive around, and you'll quickly see the 'sold' sign is usually replaced with a 'for lease' one.

Three quarters of respondents to a survey in Australia stated that they would not help someone who strongly disagreed with their views. Whatever happened to compassion and humanity? Beware of placing too much dependence on technology, and good luck.

ALAN Metcalf ("Short-term rentals can deliver long-term pain", Letters, 7/2) regarding your inquiry as to what police officers are going to do when confronted by drunken youths, I think they would do whatever is necessary to defuse the situation. If talking to the individuals and reasoning with them (which they are trained to do,) didn't work, and arrests needed to be made, the officers (who have years of training to deal with these situations as well,) would arrest the youths. If the youths resisted, then the officers would use what is collectively known to all officers as reasonable force.

Even if they're outnumbered, the officers are trained for this situation as well, and if need be, they'd call for backup. Plus I think that the most key factor in all of this is alcohol. Whilst it can and does cause people to become aggressive, alcohol is a depressant, so by its very nature, it slows one's heart rate down, thus slowing down one's reflexes and decreasing one's strength. I don't doubt the ability of any police officers to detain a bunch of young idiots who can't handle their booze, especially as the police are armed with pepper spray, batons, tasers, and hand guns.

JAN Phillip Trevillian ("Not every protester heard", Letters, 10/2), you appear ignorant of the Sydney Opera House false allegation that thousands of protesters yelled out a specific obscenity.

Given the allegation was that thousands of protesters yelled out an obscenity, it is clear that the way of telling if the obscenity was yelled was via ears and audio recordings.

The police report clearly said they had a huge amount of audio - and none of it had the obscenity. There is not one accuser that was able to provide a recording of the obscenity even though we know the accusers would be quick to record that audio. Do you seriously think that the people that are hell bent on making these accusations would not have recorded the obscenity if they could? No audio = no obscenity in my view.

War creates false news stories and allegations on both sides - this is a clear example of a false news story engineered to incite further hatred towards one side of the conflict. This false allegation is not something that will create peace - but rather it will create further conflict and division.

PHILLIP O'Neill ("Build it, but will they come? High-speed rail's big question", Opinion, 12/2) cast more doubts about the very fast train (VFT) between Sydney and Newcastle, ever being completed. VFTs have been promised by Albo in every election he has ever stood for. Most people know that between Newcastle and Sydney lies a flooded mountain gorge called the Hawkesbury River. It would be very difficult and hugely expensive to build a VFT track through that. VFTs require long straight stretches of track to allow trains to safely get up to fast speeds.

In Europe and Japan, they invariably build VFT tracks on flat-plain areas of land. Just as invariably, they are built between high population density areas to justify a market. Newcastle isn't such a population area. Even the USA hasn't built VFTs between their major cities. As pointed out by Phillip O'Neill, catching the VFT in a central city location is needed otherwise the connecting journeys lose the value of a quick VFT trip. The journey out of a central station is completed on standard tracks at normal train speeds.

In 2022, I had the privilege to travel on a VFT between Kyoto and Osaka, only 60 kms but a taste of fast train travel. We were dropped off by a bus at the Kyoto station, with only minutes to spare. At Osaka, we quickly departed and after a short walk joined the bus that was waiting for us. The same bus and driver were already there, parked and waiting for us. How was the VFT an advantage? Is Albo's VFT plan just an expensive illusion?

I WAS thinking who was Australia's luckiest person; I came up with Barnaby Joyce's first wife.

SHANE Dickson ("Thanks for tax cut, but don't bank on relief", Letters, 10/2), states he is getting a $35 a week tax cut then lists a whole lot of items that are increasing in price and wants to be enlightened as to how he is better off. I would have thought that was pretty obvious: without the tax cut, you're $35 a week worse off.

SHANE Dixon asks how we are better off under the ALP's new tax cuts. Simple - the LNP were going to give you none at all.

SPOT on Steve Barnett ("How far from beach are swimmers acceptable?", Letters, 10/2), I have no idea why females feel the need to wear g-string swimmers when they're surfing. Kelly Slater won 11 world titles wearing board shorts, so wearing a g-string can't be about enhancing their performance. Time and place. I say cover up.

STEVE Barnett ("How far from beach are swimmers acceptable?", Letters, 10/2), if you donned the swimwear you mention, that might give a whole new meaning to a phrase often repeated by members of your fan club: "Steve's a crack-up".