‘Harmless and fun’
A lot of people seem to have a problem with Halloween because it's an American tradition, but I think it's harmless and fun for children.
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The notion that Halloween is American is incorrect, it is in fact a pagan tradition.
If people do not want to participate in Halloween just because it's American, they need to look at the American television shows they watch, the clothes they wear that are made in China and the community they live in which is made better by people of different cultural backgrounds.
I, for one, love taking my grandchildren trick or treating.
I enjoy helping them with their costumes and seeing the excitement on their faces when we go out for Halloween.
Eleanor Beste
Natural environment ‘in peril’
Having been unable to elicit a meaningful response from the prime minister or treasurer I would like to pose a question to your regular correspondent, Dr Hewson.
How can the intelligent people who go into politics reconcile the impossible quest for perpetual economic growth, fuelled by an ever-increasing population, with the devastating environmental consequences it causes?
If we are to produce, manufacture, build and consume more of everything then it can only mean that we produce more carbon emissions and pollution, waste, sewerage, clear more land and put every increasing pressure on our waterways, soil fertility, social resources and infrastructure and natural ecosystems and the organisms that require them for existence.
It is clear that nearly all of our natural environments and a huge number of our native species are in poor health and decline, yet all we ever hear spoken of is the need for growth.
How can it be that our political system is so corrupted by the quest for growth that we cannot see the peril in which we have placed the natural environment?
I think we have lost sight of the fact that, in the unimaginable vastness of the universe, amongst the billions of celestial bodies, so far as we know there is but one that is host to every form of life that has ever been or will ever be.