Run to the hills

Beryce Nelson writes: Re. “Rundle: you have seven weeks to get ready for a Trump presidency” (Friday). Regarding comments on ‘leadership’ over the past week or more: they all ignore the elephant in the room. What we are seeing right across the globe is the steady demise of the nation state. There are currently more than 60 million people on the move and a global population of 8 billion and rising.  The political and social landscape is now littered with corporate demagogues and political populists who all claim to have the answers – walls, guns, religion, budget fixes, nationhood, etc. None of it is true and none of it matters. We humans have ignored our impact on the earth and the climate for so long that it is much too late to fix.

For the next few hundred years tribalism will continue to emerge and grow across the globe with more and more warlords in the style of Putin, Trump and Assad who will each stake their claim to as much as possible of what is left. The current arguments over who ‘owns’ what lies beneath the melting icecaps of the Arctic Region is just one example. It is time to head for the hills and become as self-sustaining as possible.  There are tough times ahead.

On the ABS

Ian Franklin writes: Re. “Keane: Dear census bureaucrats, the problem isn’t me, it’s you” (yesterday). My, oh my, all that blame shifting – the pollies, IBM, Twitter, the posties, the media (and Bernard), the marketers and those pesky plebians who want to bother us with their telephone calls and electronic mail – Damn them all! Perhaps the ABS would do us all a favour to remember a relatively newer little phrase – “Lies, damn lies and statistics”. Much more succinct, just the way statistics should be!