Stu's Letters Book

A Series of my “Letters to the Editor” (and “Policitians”) INTRODUCTION When family have learned that I often submit ‘‘Letters to the Editor’’, they have asked why I don’t put these into a book form so they can see what I write about. (Perhaps so they can see just who I am!?!?) Prior to the late 1990s, all my writing was done on a portable electric typewriter and no copies were kept, as I considered them of interest only to me. I first got into writing such letters when doing National Service Training at Ingleburn, New South Wales, back in 1952. This came about when one of the daily newspapers published a huge full page spread of how marvellous the conditions were for us National Servicemen. Such things as tennis courts, a golf course, food as ‘‘good as they got at home!’’ Well, this tended to get our backs up, so to speak. It was not that we complained about what we had. Just the opposite, as far as I was concerned. To me, the 3 months in basic training is listed amongst the best ‘‘holidays’’ I have ever had. This, primarily, was due to our two platoon sergeants who had suffered badly as prisoners of the Japanese and believed that Basic Training was far more effective if made fun rather than the usual ‘‘British’’ abusive shouting match. They were proved right when our platoon always won every area in which we represented our battalion. However, we could not let things stand as they were. The erroneous claims were, at least, a far cry from the reality and an insult to our parents. So I was elected to write a reply. We decided that it would do no good to send it to the paper that had printed the story, assuming they would not like to be found wanting. So it was sent it to an opposition paper. It was quite a long letter detailing the many erroneous claims made. These included such claims as: