To simply say that you should “roll with the punches” as it has been suggested Julia Banks should have done, is a despicable response, as if she is weak.

If organisations are found to have bullying in their organisation, the responsibility needs to be heaped on the boss and the board of directors and they be sacked.

Peter Corkish, Wollongong

In most first world countries people, in their early fifties, begin to experience early stages of osteoarthritis. 

This could be in the spine, the pelvic area, or knees, or even multiple locations.   In the early sixties these ailments become more debilitating, or people simply begin to stiffen due to aging.

Anyone who has worked lifelong in sedentary occupation, say: as a banker or related functions, including 21 years as a top-level politician, will suffer more. We could be describing the almost 62-year-old Theresa May. 

Yet, I recently endured an overdose of commentary and video, on the TV News and the internet, lampooning her whilst trying to be polite and respectful in two African countries where she attempted to participate in the local dancing culture.   This was despite her age and the probability that she was very stiff and pained, both compounded by travel.

Now, truly, what do you really think the ever-growing numbers of the unintelligentsia, which has pervaded the news reporting industry, would say if Theresa May had declined to dance?

Most certainly it would be along the lines:  Theresa May, Britain’s Prime Minister, when expected to dance with citizens of the countries, hosting her visits, simply stood by aloof, disinterested, and disrespectful. How can news reporters be so cruel, so hypocritical, and so derogatory towards an aging woman? Would they lampoon an elderly parent or grandparent because their bodies no longer met their expectation of flexibility?

Richard Burnett, Wollongong

I have noticed one of your contributors to the letters section Mr Steley resides in Victoria. He sounds like a worshipper at the altar of Premier Andrews socialist regime gauging by his comments.

I suspect he has a subscription to that leftist echo chamber "The Guardian". Each to their own. He should try living in the Illawarra and surrounds seeing his fixation to writing to this parochial news source.

Adam Porter, Nth Wollongong

​​EDITOR’S NOTE: Reader contributed images of our beautiful region you are used to seeing here now run with the letters to the editor online on our website  at illawarramercury.com.au. 

Send us your photos via email to letters@illawarramercury.com.au or alternatively you can post them to our Facebook page.

You can also go online and view some of the spectacular reader submissions or some of our Mercury photographers’ stunning images via our Instagram page @Illawarramerc