I am saddened to hear some staff are being verbally abused when shopping in Eden, because they work in Bupa. Please join with this organisation in supporting our aged residents and excellent staff. Why not volunteer and see for yourself.

Robert Allen, Eden

Merimbula is in trouble mainly because of decisions made by Bega Valley Shire Council.

It started when the council approved the Woolworths development at Tura despite a warning from its own retail consultants that it would have an "intolerable" effect on Merimbula. The council went ahead. The consultants were right. Tura people stopped shopping in Merimbula and ever since the Merimbula CBD has struggled.

It didn't end there. Other council decisions made things worse.

The council sold one car park to Aldi and built roads across another. There is now less public car parking in Merimbula than there was in the 1980s.

Council closed the Merimbula library and its Merimbula office. It allowed businesses to buy houses in Merimbula Drive with the result that workers who would otherwise be in the Merimbula CBD are not there.

It helped make Bega the regional centre, resulting in most of the district's public servants and the hospital being located there.

Its Development Control Plan makes it impossible for commercial property owners to replace their ageing properties. It fails to address Merimbula's most important planning issue, which is how an attractive lake foreshore can be created in the CBD.

But planning issues are only part of the problem. The fact is the council favours Bega. It spent millions of dollars on its own premises. By contrast, Merimbula got nothing.

Every year its wages bill pumps millions of dollars into the Bega economy, creating jobs and supporting retailers.

What is needed is for the council to put staff in Merimbula, return the library, improve the lake frontage, replace the lost car parking, update the Development Control Plan, remove the ugly poles and cables, replace the truly dreadful toilets in the Palmer car park and support tourism with guaranteed annual funding.

When all that happens, the town will get going again.

The NDIS is supposed to be taking the "dis" out of disability. Instead it is more disabling than the disabilities it is supposed to be addressing.

In truth I have not read or heard one positive about it from all forms of media or in any of the many forums I have attended.

It appears to be one of life's unsolvable mysteries because absolutely no-one including those who are charged with implementing it even understands it.

Many organisations including local ones have to spend the vast majority of their time that should be used helping their clients completing an ever-increasing pile of useless documentation that will be fed into a computer that will make the decisions based on numbers not individual people.

I have absolutely no time or use for quantitative data. As my old Nan used to say, "figures don't lie but liars can figure".

All the data needs to be qualitative so you can get each person's individual stories. Haven't you ever been given a tick-a-box questionnaire that didn't really cover what you really wanted to say? These forms are designed to give their designers what they want to hear rather than what you want to say. Luckily there are people across all communities that have a heart and care about those who are so vulnerable.

Frank Pearce, Bega