“The bus drivers in Yokohama all wore ties, some coats, were very friendly and polite and keen to help, even with limited English. However, no ticket meant no travel!” Letter writer COLIN LYONS says many of the bus drivers in Canberra are “poorly presented, clearly no standard expected”.

Many readers will be familiar with using the trains in Japan, in particular the Bullet Train.

On a very recent trip to China and Japan, we had the opportunity to use local buses in Yokohama. The contrast with the appearance and presentation of the bus drivers in Canberra could not be more marked.

The drivers in Yokohama all wore ties, some coats, were very friendly and polite and keen to help, even with limited English. However, no ticket meant no travel!

Many of the drivers in Canberra are poorly presented, clearly no standard expected. Also, displaying a courteous and friendly approach to passengers is purely optional as many drivers would be better suited to truck driving where none of these attributes matter.

It should be acknowledged nevertheless, that many others display a very good customer service approach. Surely an important aspect of driver recruitment should include training in and insistence on customer service.

What impression does this attitude in Canberra convey to foreign or even interstate tourists?

Finally, in Canberra, pay if you feel like it, but not expected. The transport enforcement officers appear to be a case of “all dressed up but nothing to do”. They certainly have little impact on the extent of fare evasion in Canberra

Colin Lyons, Weetangera

Solar panel waffle ignores the elephant

All the waffle about how much land or how many rooftops that solar panels need ignores the great big elephant in the room – solar panels produce no energy at all for 60 per cent of the time.

It appears your correspondents Fiona Colin (Malvern East, Victoria) or Ray Peck (Hawthorn, Victoria) or Nick Standish don’t understand that.

No matter where on Earth solar panels are installed, it is dark for half the year, when solar panels produce nothing.

For an hour at dawn and an hour at dusk the sun is so low in the sky that solar panels produce only half their rated output. Those are astronomical facts.

For a further 10 per cent of the year it is cloudy, overcast or raining in most places, when solar panels produce nothing. Those are meteorological facts.

Attempting to run a “green” hydrogen steelworks from solar panel powered electrolysers only 40 per cent of the time would be foolish. “Twiggy” Forest worked that out – after spending $300 million of taxpayers’ money. That’s an accounting fact.

Batteries capable of running a “green” hydrogen steelworks for the other 60 per cent of the time, often for days and nights on end, would be prohibitively costly. Steel furnaces cannot afford to go cold, when they turn solid. That’s a metallurgical fact.

Solar panels and batteries are a con created by climate catastrophists and politicians having no technical qualifications. There are other more reliable generating systems.

Anthony Hordern, Jamison

Toora says thanks to Tim Minchin

Tim Minchin recently announced his donation of $300,000 to domestic violence charities around Australia, which was raised during his 2025 Songs the World Will Never Hear tour. 

Canberra, thankfully, was included on his tour map where he performed at five sold out shows at the Canberra Theatre in November, and Toora Women was his chosen charity for the city.

As the CEO of Toora, I am so incredibly grateful to Tim for his extraordinarily generous donation of $50,000. This donation will have a real and immediate impact for women and children in the ACT who are escaping domestic and family violence, supporting safe housing, recovery, and the opportunity to rebuild their lives with dignity.

What makes this contribution especially powerful is not only its scale, but the values behind it.

Tim Minchin has consistently used his platform to speak boldly about gendered violence, inequality and the responsibility we all share to stand up for those too often silenced. Advocacy matters and helps shift culture, challenge complacency, and remind us that violence against women and children is not inevitable and not acceptable.

I am deeply grateful to Tim and to all Canberrans who supported his charitable tour initiative. His generosity reflects the best of our Canberra community spirit.

Kellie Friend, CEO, Toora Women

Trump’s AI slop bucket overflows 

Just when you think Donald Trump could not get any worse, he surpasses himself. 

A week after Easter he unleashed a long vindictive rant on social media against the Pope and his recent views on the Iran war. 

This unhinged narcissistic US president continued his petty one-upmanship pursuits by then posting a copycat 1950s children’s Bible illustration that depicted him as a golden-haired and flowing-robed Christ-like figure healing the sick, with the American flag and war planes flying in the background. 

When considerable negative reaction to this Jesus impersonation caused the president to withdraw his AI-generated imagery, he disingenuously claimed that he was meant to be perceived as a doctor or perhaps a Red Cross worker.

He also blamed the media for drumming up “fake news” by allowing the public to interpret this self-centred promotion as highly inappropriate or even blasphemous.

To paraphrase Socrates, this wannabe physician should commit to healing himself first. The rest of the increasingly damaged and fed-up world would then be able to do the same, free of his deluded messianic and megalomaniacal hallucinations and erratic, self-indulgent military missions. 

Miracles can’t be relied on to assist this, but perhaps members of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association could create a suitable treatment and prevention plan that would help not just one overly powerful person, but would also save many innocent lives, livelihoods and societies beyond US borders. 

Sue Dyer, Downer

The tofu principle

The current Middle-East war can largely be explained by the TOFU principle: Trump Often F#cks Up.

Mike Quirk, Garran 

Say no to Barr’s legacy tram folly

Barely a week passes without a feature article or letter to the editor opposing that white elephant/legacy project known as Light Rail Stage 2B. 

This monolithic, inflexible, outdated, overpriced transport system was never the choice of the ACT community. It was only the choice of Chief Minister Barr as one of his “legacy” projects.This is regardless of its unfavorable Benefit Cost analysis, massive cost, downgrading of ACT credit rating and higher-priority community needs.

The comprehensive and learned 2024 study 21st Century Public Transport Option for Canberra concluded that, “there is simply no justification for the ACT Government to be spending massive amounts of money on Light Rail Stage 2A and 2B, to service less than 10% of Canberra’s commuting public. That is why Light Rail Stage 2B must not proceed”.

Those opposed to Light Rail Stage 2B now have the opportunity to express their opposition to Light Rail Stage 2B via the ACT Legislative Assembly e-Petition E-PET-025-26.

Alec Gray, via email

Left see right and right see left

Paul Temby (letters, cn March 16) is dissatisfied with the classification of journalists as being left or right wing. It is a relative thing. 

Someone who is on the extreme right wing sees all others as left wing, whether they are centrist or extreme left or even right of centre.

Paul demonstrates this in his letter by including Laura Tingle and Sarah Ferguson as left-wing journalists.

For clarification Laura Tingle is one of the best and most objective journalists in the country. Sarah Ferguson is often perceived as right leaning by many from the left of politics. They are by no means the same.

Ross Hudson, Mount Martha, Victoria