When WIN went to Channel 10, I switched over to Prime to watch the Sydney News and recorded WIN’s Local, playing this back at 7.00pm.

Prime has a better Sydney News.

Last night I watched the poor quality 9 local news for awhile but gave up as the Mercury report said it wasn’t really a local news so I went back to Prime.

Playing WIN back at 7.00pm. WIN should not worry about their Local News as it is Local.

Keep it up WIN, good job.  

Richard Cannan, Warilla

With the merger between Wollongong and Shellharbour Councils not now proceeding; Wollongong City Council (WCC) should provide its ratepayers an accounting of how much the proposed merger has cost them!

Allegedly, according to the public comments of some WCC Councillors supportive of the proposed merger; council staff were working “tirelessly day and night” on the merger detail.

If indeed this is factual, then it is reasonable to presume it was an undertaking which would have involved a significant amount of staff time and ratepayer’s money.

Apparently, among WCC staff working on the merger, was referred to as being in the “Bunker”!

Irrespective of whether or not a Bunker actually existed; the merger fiasco has cost ratepayers money.

Just how much and for what; needs to be explained.

Ideally by way of an itemised public accounting from WCC.

The council should also make known what it intends to do about recouping from the Berejiklian administration; WCC ratepayer’s monies lost as a consequence of the decision to abolish regional council mergers.

Barry Swan, Balgownie

It’s a sad day when populist politicians like Nick Xenophon and anyone else of his ilk can convince so many in our society that “the government” is just being heartless when it attempts to use trade-offs in an attempt to make savings and balance the Budget.

The most recent example of this is Xenophon’s stance on the Federal Government’s Omnibus Bill.

Any governments in formulating a budget is severely restricted by the limited resources it has to distribute amongst its constituents.

The task is one of making decisions about directing those resources to where they are most needed whilst at the same time achieving maximum benefit for most of the population.

Unless people are prepared to make sacrifices and/or pay more taxes, the process must include trade-offs, which are now described by the likes of Xenophon as “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.

In any state or national economy there are no Peters or Pauls.

There are sectors and groups that attract varying levels of financial support which are given changing priorities as often as one year to the next.

Opportunists like Xenophon do not discriminate between the needy or the greedy.

They cruise through their political careers portraying themselves as white knights, seeking to endear themselves to as many voters as they can.

Unless they have the wealth and back-up of a Trump-like machine, they will never have to make a direct and meaningful decision about this county’s economy.

If any of them ever found themselves in that position they would simply be exposed for the hypocrites they are.

Richard Burnett, Wollongong