AFTER reading the information sent to me regarding the dust suppressant, I was left wondering how stupid the Shire of Yarra Ranges must think residents are in this area.
How much of our rates were wasted on the proposed closure of Strangers Road to Coopers Road, just to please four property owners?
If people didn’t take short cuts from Tschampions Road down Coopers Road then up Strangers Road onto the Macclesfield Road we would not have near the problem.
Why did the shire dust suppress Tschampions Road late March or early April of this year? Surely that should have been done at the beginning of the summer season.
Now we hear on the grapevine that Kennedy Road and Tschampions Road will be done this year. Why Tschampions Road again?
Next the shire will be asking the ratepayers to take up a collection for wages.
Where is the rate money from Macclesfield people being spent?
Margaret Boyd
Macclesfield
WOULD you eat your dog for Christmas?
Would you carve her up with a knife?
Then why eat the innocent turkey
Who is just as deserving of life?
Would you kill your kitten for festive fare?
Would you serve her sliced on a tray?
Then why treat the harmless and fun-loving pig
In this heartless and horrible way?
If you think the idea quite shocking,
To murder and slice up your pet,
It is equally shameful and shocking,
To do it to those you’ve not met.
For a hog treasures life just as much as a dog
And a turkey as much as a cat,
And they all have a right to their God given life,
It’s simply as simple as that.
So when shopping at Christmas,
And pass by the enormous array,
Of tragic young plastic-wrapped corpses,
Whose lives have been taken away,
Make a vow that you’ll buy only peaceable fare
And refuse to partake in the kill,
For I’m sure you’ll agree that’s the way it should be
In this season of peace and goodwill.
Jenny Moxham
Monbulk
The veal deal
I CAN remember when I was snatched from my mother. Even though I was only one day old, I can still hear the cries of my mother as she fought to keep hold of me. The first moment I saw her – with her big brown eyes – staring at me as she began to clean me.
The first passing of light into darkness, I was afraid but not alone for my mother stood by me. As a new dawn broke, how I snuggled up to my mother. I did not know that these 24 hours spent with mother were to end and – her milk taken from her – I was denied the milk that nature intended for me so I may grow strong.
You guessed it – my mother is a dairy cow. My own fate – to be bred to become a gourmet product known as “milk-fed veal” to satisfy the palates of food snobs.
I was taken away by truck to a farm and put in the smallest pen you can imagine – with a concrete floor and bars and no straw – just a cold hard floor. I could not turn around nor lay my weary body down.
What had I done, a baby calf just two days old, to deserve such ill treatment?
As milk-fed veal calves we had to become anaemic.
As the weeks passed, I felt bloated, my legs and back ached, I was depressed (some humans pretend that animals cannot feel depression but don’t be fooled) I simply wanted to taste freedom and experience the time with my mother.
At last I was to be slaughtered in other words murdered.
Though I feared losing my life if this were life, then, why be afraid of death?
Surely death would be better than this – no pain, no depression, no reliving the visions of my mother as I shut my eyes in sleep.
A Merry Christmas to all.
Kathleen Timmerman
Chelsea
