Andrew Bolt’s influence

Tim Stephens writes: Re. “How Bolt is setting the Liberal agenda” (yesterday). I was wondering how Andrew Bolt has a greater knowledge of the world’s climate that the collective wisdom of the world’s climate scientists. I thought scientists were university trained and had access to millions of dollars worth of high tech equipment and years of records, not to mention the peer review process. So what and how does Andrew do it? He must be the world’s smartest man. No wonder Andrew wants the Liberals to make it harder for people to go to uni if the result is these idiot climate scientists — what a waste of taxpayer money.

Melina Smith writes: To have a man like Bolt reside in one of the most successful multicultural societies in the world and want to destroy its social fabric by allowing people the freedom to vilify is a sad state of affairs. Mr Turnbull was correct in his assessment of Mr Bolt’s character. He has the freedom to go elsewhere and leave us all alone.

On D-Day and democracy

James Burke writes: Re. “We should have kept the mining tax” (yesterday). Let’s give Maire Mannik the benefit of the doubt and assume she’s not some wingnut apologist for European fascism, despite her bizarre assertion that D-Day had nothing to do with democracy, because Germany introduced female suffrage before France did. Instead let’s remember that the liberalising Weimar government was a democracy (if deeply flawed), and by 1944 had long been overthrown by the Nazis, who murdered millions of women and their families, and enslaved millions more. The French government formed by the first election in which women voted was a democracy (if deeply flawed), and replaced the vicious Petain regime. This happy event being a direct result of D-Day, which despite vital participation by French and other forces (including many brave women) was mainly the work of the US, the UK and Canada, deeply flawed democracies in which women were eligible and enthusiastic voters. A lot of people died as a result of the failure of European democracy in the 1930s. Democracy’s looking pretty ragged again these days, so we shouldn’t be too flippant about it.