Some questions for John Gay

Anne Johnston West Tamar

My first question to Mr Gay is: Is this the vineyard that produced the 80,000 bottles of wine that were sent back from Sweden because of the perception of taint?

The Mercury, Wednesday:
Log truck fleet badly unstable
Road funds and priorities
ON the Stateline programme (ABC, Fri 10th Nov) John Gay was seen to proudly boast about some footage of a Chilean pulp mill (not named, but I suspect that it was the Nueva Aldea mill) where a vineyard was growing up to the fence of the pulp mill.

My first question to Mr Gay is: Is this the vineyard that produced the 80,000 bottles of wine that were sent back from Sweden because of the perception of taint?

Another question: Imagine you are a wine importer and can choose wine from a region without a pulp mill or from a valley with a pulp mill — all other things being equal, which are you going to choose?

And for wine, substitute any other horticultural or agricultural product.

A final question: Are all of the small Tamar Valley businesses that produce wine and fine foods to be sacrificed on the altar of John Gay’s pulp mill dream?

Anne Johnston
West Tamar

And, John Gay’s dream

THERE is a man in Tasmania with a big dream: his name is John Gay.

John’s dream is to build a behemoth of a pulp mill on the banks of the Tamar River.We’re told that this mill would be the biggest single development ever in Tasmania.

We’re also told that only positives would come from this development — it is going to be wonderful, not only for John’s business, but for all the small businesses in the Tamar Valley.

There will be no adverse effects whatsoever on horticultural, viticultural, agricultural and tourist businesses in our valley in John’s dream.

In fact, in John dreams tourists will flock to admire all the extra log trucks on our roads; they will come to see vast tracts of cleared land, newly burnt and poisoned; they will come to photograph rows and rows of monoculture industrial tree farms where food-producing farms used to be.

Yes, maybe we’ll lose a few tourists (those greenie, leftists undesirable types) who used to come here to engage with the widerness and wildlife, but this would be more than compensated for by all those “industrial tourists” who will come to admire John’s beautiful dream sqatting on the banks of the Tamar.

Dream on, John, dream on!

Susan McMahon
Exeter