Every day readers tell me about their encounter with a hostile establishment, disinterested business or scammers, and often, too, they'll relay what is simply an observation. While these are always interesting not all can provide the structure for a column, but in The Herald today I tell of three such calls I received in succession.
One is about Apia (formerly Australian Pensioners Insurance) increasing its premium for landlord insurance for a house from $562 to $1426 when it learnt that the house was in Maryland NSW, not Maryland Tasmania! And another caller despairs that he must wait at least seven weeks for a simple plastic part for his three-year-old Whirlpool washing machine.
But today I'm especially interested in your response to a third caller who told of an incident at a prisoners' family barbecue at Cessnock Correctional Centre on Sunday. One family was cooking pork sausages, which they'd bought at the jail, on the provided long barbecue when a family identifying themselves as Muslims - they appeared to be of Lebanese background - protested that pork was being cooked on the plate they'd be using. The first family was not receptive to this concern and continued cooking lunch, whereupon the second family protested to the supervising prison officers. The prison officers then told those cooking the pork sausages that they could continue to do so only if they put tinfoil on the plate.
Was that an inspired compromise? Should there be such compromise?
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