Good riddance to bad retail

Keith Binns writes: Re. “Allans Billy Hyde tells stores no heating, no air con” (yesterday). A few years ago, about the same time that one of the major music stores went broke, I wandered into the Pitt St Allans store. There was a security guard on the door so you couldn’t nick anything. I was in the shop for 20 minutes (I timed it) and was not approached by a staff member. I left.  I have no sympathy for retailers who don’t understand that their main selling point is customer service, something the internet can’t match.

On 457s

John Richardson writes: Re. “Time for another look at 457s” (yesterday). While I agree with David Irving’s analysis of the “flim-flam” 457 visa scheme, I fear he did not cast nearly enough stones. While there’s no denying that employers have rorted the system to their tiny hearts’ content for decades, their shenanigans were routinely & cynically encouraged by both sides of politics.

But if David is seriously interested in exposing parasites within our modern liberal democracy, he should forget about the games going-on around the edges and start to question the nature of a society whose political and business elites long ago accepted that systematically “offshoring” tens of thousands of jobs from both the public and private sectors is a socially acceptable and responsible way to turn a buck.