Perth Voice Interactive

Sinister smell
I READ with growing dismay your article, “Dirty driver poos on park verge” (Voice, March 5, 2016).
And now I smell something far worse than excrement…
As I read it, I thought of the predicament that person was in, having to take such emergency action. I felt for all those people in similar situations, those with any gastro-intestinal issues (of which there are many).
Who would do such a thing if they could avoid such a humiliating action. I felt very sorry for that person. Then, to make things worse, this thing takes an ugly twist in my opinion. This is where the thin line is well and truly crossed.
Please tell me, (Chatfield cartoon, Voice, March 12, 2016) what is the difference between “black face” and “brown face”. Your cartoon clearly shows a distinct “colour” other than white, which I find completely offensive. Surely the man is not embarrassed, and this is racial stereotyping at best.
At first I was just sorry for the person, and a little disappointed in the paper for considering that worthy of news. I sense something more sinister, and much smellier.
That you chose to put this on the front page beggars belief.
Mark Baker
Angove St, North Perth
The Ed says: The man taking the test was depicted — for want of a better term — as “non-white” because the eyewitness had described the driver as being of either middle-eastern or south-Asian descent (you’ll note we didn’t refer to ethnicity in our stories). If the man had been described to us as caucasian that’s how he would have been depicted in the cartoon. We do not necessarily accept there was a gastrointestinal emergency: the man had his own toilet roll with him, and a public loo was just metres away. We believe a taxi driver doing a poo in a public park is news that’s in the public interest, and too bloody bad if he’s embarrassed — he should be!

Sick excuse
AFTER reading the latest on the “Swan Taxi sewer truck” I cannot believe how many institutions are buck-passing, finding excuses and, in general, want to let this man get away with it.
As for Swan Taxis believing this “shit” excuse about their driver suffering from extreme pain in the stomach due to food poisoning, and him being sick and throwing up and suffering from fever, I ask Swan Taxis to ask the driver why he was driving in the first place.
At the very least he should get some sort of reprimand for driving and putting members of the public in danger.
What a load of bull “shit”.
Larry Arrigoni
Loftus St, North Perth