I guess it is time for your reporter to change location

Sir I am sorry but Benedict Mander completely misses the angle when in “Red tape congests Venezuela’s roaring car trade”, July 11, he describes the governments “new rules that 30 per cent of cars sold from next April must have dual natural gas and petrol tanks” as something extraordinary. I just need to ask what extraordinary measures he believes the Crown would have to take to reign in car sales if it sold petrol at 4 cents of a dollar per litre and if it subsidized the import of new cars by means of an exchange control system.

When a foreign reporter does not see the absolute grotesque in the state giving away petrol at prices below distribution costs, I guess that reporter has been to long in the country and has become blind to its realities. There is supposedly a study that shows that people after having lived long enough close to a railway station do not even hear the trains, because of natural anatomic process of adjustment.

Let the nosy naggers also have a go at it

Sir, when you opine that the “Stern review offers counsel of hope” October 31, but only if the world acts quickly to curb climate change you place though the responsibility primarily in the hands of supra national entities such as the European Union and a Kyoto protocol, though if we really are going to have a chance to save the world we must get the world into action. One small but potentially very important step all of you Europeans could take is to start shaming the Americans for their exaggerated gasoline consumption on the roads. Somehow they seem to believe gas guzzling is “macho” and you got to them it is of irresponsible wimps. For that action you can call to arms al those horrendous nosy naggers that were so horrendously effective in getting people to stop smoking.

Nicholas Stern climate change global warming