Perth Voice Interactive

Spending saves
MY latest supermarket receipt states in a bold print I saved $3.90. Illogical reasoning arrives at this amount. It assumes I would have bought certain items at the original recommended retail price, before various discounts. Not necessarily so. I spent what I spent. “Saved” nothing. Here the story ends.
Belle Watson
Fitzgerald St, Perth

‘appy now
I AM happy to help save the City of Bayswater $5000 (Voice, June 20, 2015). The app it wants is already available and free (snapsendsolve.com). Which is lucky because I suspect $5000 is much less than what the final cost would actually be to develop a decent app.
James Peart
Brown St, East Perth

Business belted
YOUR story on the Vincent rate hike (Perth Voice, June 6, 2015) did not give the full story. Without trying to sound like a caller at a bingo night, I think it is important to present a fuller picture.
Overall, Vincent rates will go up by 6.5 per cent which is the largest increase since 1999. However, most of us will only experience a modest 2.8 per cent increase. This is because the city is introducing two significant changes next year which will see about 2100 ratepayers on the minimum rate pay between 2.8 per cent and 28 per cent more, and will see about 1600 businesses pay 8.5 per cent more than this year.
The argument put forward for the significant increase in minimum rates is that Vincent has not kept up with other local governments.  There may be some merit in this argument.
Two arguments have been put forward for increasing commercial rates. The first is the rates collected from businesses should reflect the total gross rental value of those businesses. The claim is businesses represent about 26 per cent of the gross rental values so they should pay about that proportion of rates.
However, an analysis of the draft budget shows that businesses represent 26.7 per cent of gross rental values but are asked to pay 28 per cent of the rates. This results in a $370,000 “subsidy” by businesses.
If the proportionality principle was correctly applied most residents would pay about 4.8 per cent more than last year, and businesses would only pay about 3.2 per cent more than last year.
The second argument for increasing business rates is businesses are paying a smaller proportion of the rates after the 2014 revaluation of all properties in the city. The implication being they were paying their fair share a couple of years ago but have now become bludgers.  Perhaps businesses were paying too much in the past and the independent revaluation has corrected the anomaly.
Rather than accepting the independent valuations and accepting there will be winners and losers every three years, the city is arbitrarily setting a benchmark without any supporting information to justify what businesses should pay.
So the take-home message from all of this could be that even though overall rates have gone up by 6.5 per cent most of us will have a modest rate increase because businesses have been slugged more than their fair share.
Dudley Maier
Highgate

Cornish credit
GREAT article by Stephen Pollock regarding the “report it “ app being promoted by the tree-loving councillor Chris Cornish (Voice, June 20, 2015).
The “plant tree here” category within the app would certainly be useful to inform the city about what, if it was looking and listening, it should already know.
Chatfield’s cartoon on page 4 unfortunately identifies Cornish as the problem, when in fact, he is a significant part of the solution: it is elected representatives Albert and (I love trees, but) Sabatino who are the problem as they undermine—by voting to kill trees—the city’s “Garden City—Quality Lifestyle “ motto.
Greg Smith
Rose Ave, Bayswater

How?
IF God made them male and female how do we end up with transgender?
Raymond Conder
Central Ave, Inglewood
The Ed says: Sigh.

Rule Britannia
IT is interesting to note John Simpson Kirkpatrick of “Simpson and his donkey” fame, who saved hundreds of diggers at ANZAC Cove, Gallipoli and was killed on May 19, 1915 aged 22 years was one of 40 per cent in those Australian forces who were born in England.
They would have sworn and signed an oath of allegiance to Australia and to the King of England, his heirs and successors like their fellows.
I wonder how many of those lived another 60 years to irreverently lose their Australian citizenship under prime minister Gough Whitlam?
A home to honour those heroes? I think not!
Gordon Westwood
Coode St, Maylands