Letters I have sent off - Cane Toad Warrior

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Letters I have sent off - Cane Toad Warrior

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Portuguese is NOT for Dummies

April 4th 2007 10:44

An email to John Wiley, the publishers of the 'For Dummies' series of books.

Subject: Portuguese is NOT for Dummies

i saw your book Portuguese for Dummies and i was very offended that you are saying that Portuguese is for dummies. it's not for dummies, many Portuguese people are quite smart and i think your book is racist and maybe you shouldn't say Portuguese is for dummies, huh? what if i brought out a book and called it John Wiley is Stupid, how would you like that? you wouldn't like it at all and i think you would be quite upset so maybe you should think twice before making a book called Portuguese for Dummies.

And their reply

Fw: Portoguese is NOT for Dummies

Hi Luke, I'm sorry to hear that you were offended by this title but please believe me when I say that offending customers is the last thing a major publisher such as ourselves wishes to do. The "For Dummies" brand is exactly that, a brand name. It has been around for many many years now and there a literally hundreds of books written in this series, eg Italian for Dummies, French for Dummies, Fishing for Dummies, Gardening for Dummies, Football for Dummies, Diabetes for Dummies, Pregnancy for Dummies, Windows XP for dummies, etc etc. If you were to look at the dummies website www.dummies.com you will see that this very popular series has books published in all subject areas and to date, I am not aware of anyone else finding the series name offensive. The title "Portugese for Dummies" is not refering that Portugese people are not smart, in fact, it is written for non Portugese people wanting to learn Portugese from a beginners level.

I hope you find this extra information helpful.

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A letter to the Hutt River Province itself!

March 12th 2007 11:35

This was an email I sent to the administrator of an official Hutt River Province website. They never replied. I originally wanted to send a proper letter but the Australian post office isn't exactly co-operative about sending letters to the Province.

My name is Luke Bartolo and I live in New South Wales. I have read about the Hutt River Province many times and I am writing to express my admiration for all you have achieved in the last 36 years. You are a great inspiration to me.

But I am also saddened and frustrated by the lack of recognition that the Hutt River Province gets in Australia (and the world at large as well). It seems the Australian Government does not dare to challenge your rights as a Principality and therefore does not try to impose it's laws upon you, nor does it seek to restrict your freedom as an independent state. However, whilst it does not dare such behaviour, it still persists in ignoring your valid claims to independence and refuses to recognise the Hutt River Province as seperate entity. They think they can have it both ways!

I work in a book store and have searched and pored over many different maps and atlases and found not a single one that acknowledges your existence - and this is a Principality that is 40 times bigger than Monaco, and 30 years older than East Timor!

Now, I am not one to sit by and let injustice slide, so I have taken it upon myself to write letters of complaint to the publishers of these atlases and maps in question on your behalf. I do this in all humility and hope you do not think it too presumptuous. I will also be writing to the Australian Government demanding your recognition, perhaps in the hopes of sparking some kind of reconciliation between our two nations.

Thank you for being such a great inspiration to me and helping me believe that even the smallest of us can rise up and claim our own destiny like the greatest of giants if we believe in ourselves and dare to challenge those who would subdue us.

Regards, Luke.

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A correspondence with Cityrail

December 30th 2006 04:25

Dear Cityrail
I am sending you this ticket as proof of purchase and this letter as a request for a refund of some sort for the cancelled train to Glenfield or thereabouts that would’ve passed through Granville around 7:20 am on this date (1/11/05). I paid for a ticket with a view to catching this train and was subsequently made late to work, which I do not appreciate. If it was my own fault to be late to work I would cop it on the chin but the fact that I paid more than $10 for this ticket angers me in the light of the fact that the service I paid for was not available.

Regards, Luke Bartolo.

----------------

Dear Mr Bortolo
I refer to your letter concerning your request for refund of train fare due to disrupted train services.

Please accept my apology on behalf of RailCorp for the inconvenience caused as a result of your intended service being delayed on that occasion.

I regret to advise that RailCorp can accept no responsibility for inconveniences arising from such instances. One of the provision made under the Transport Administration Act of 1988, reads as follows:
“Times published in the official timetables are those at which it is intended to run services. The State Rail Authority does not guarantee the departure or arrival of services at the time stated, nor will it be responsible for any consequence arising thereform.”
“The Authority also reserves the right to cancel, wholly or in part, any of the services shown in the official timetables, or to vary the stations and locations at which the services will pick up or set down passengers. The times of arrival or departure, as shown I such timetables, must be taken to be subject to such right”.

Consequently, your request for a refund of your train fare must be declined.

Yours sincerely, Kim Steine.

----------------

Dear Mr Steine
I received your letter today and was confused by what it contained.

Where is this Transport Administration Act of 1988? I never read it on the ticket… the train stations haven’t really made available any portable timetables, and last time they did (about six months ago I think? I’m not sure, I’m sure you know when though) I don’t recall reading this Act on there.

It doesn’t sound very believable. I mean, it’s funny how all of a sudden this Act comes out of nowhere and gets cited and I’m not entitled to anything! I’m not necessarily saying that you made it up, but I think there’s something dubious about the lack of public access to such information when it informs our rights when it comes to a service we pay for so regularly.
Also, I seem to recall a time about a year or two ago when the public were allowed a whole day of free travel due to the various delays leading up to this day. I think it was a Wednesday, I clearly remember seeing it on the News. If CityRail could offer such a thing for it’s delays then, why can’t it do the same for me now? You say that you must decline my request, but it’s obvious that things aren’t necessarily that rigid if you were able to compensate people in the past. I’ve pretty much solely relied on CityRail to travel about for 10 years now, I’m not asking for you guys to shower me in riches, I’d just like some sort of material acknowledgement for the hassles I’ve had to endure. I never benefited from the aforementioned ‘free day of travel’ as I didn’t have to work that day, but the cancelled train on the 1st of November this year was the last straw. I’ve had enough of paying for ticket after ticket and having to endure such poor service. I realise it’s a hard job to run such a complicated and underfunded system but hey, I’m not the government so it’s not my responsibility. The money I pay for train tickets are not a donation, I expect to get the service I pay for, and if I don’t get it, surely you guys should be morally obligated to repay me in some way?

Regards, Luke Bartolo (not Bortolo).

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Dear Karyn Paluzzano

December 18th 2006 10:36

I never got a reply to this one

Member for Penrith, Karyn Paluzzano

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To Kelloggs

December 6th 2006 13:15

To Kelloggs “Just Right”, re: your fruit ‘n’ flakes variety.

I am writing this letter to make note of and bring to your attention the recent drop in quality of your product. One week I found ‘Just Right Fruit n flakes’ to be nothing but flakes, save for one or two sultanas. I rose above the chore and chewed my way through the rest of the pack (as disgustingly bland as it was). I wrote it off as a freak occurrence, a small speck on your otherwise spotless reputation. How wrong I was! The following week I found your product to be the opposite – piles of sultanas and apple with one or two flakes interspersed between them. I tried to soldier on through the haphazard nature of your cereal once again but found it was too much, the overload of sultanas left me feeling ill and queasy each day before work, and so I stopped

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Dear OPSM

November 28th 2006 09:09

This is a letter I sent to OPSM a while ago

Dear OPSM

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Dear Coles

November 3rd 2006 10:12

Dear Coles

I thought I’d send you some free market research

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Dear Woolworths

October 23rd 2006 10:44

Dear Woolworths

I was shopping in your Penrith store the other day and I thought to myself ‘Wow, a lot of people sure do shop here!’ and it got me thinking even more, maybe I could operate my own Woolworths

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Dear Australian Taxation Office

October 2nd 2006 10:57

Dear Australian Taxation Office

Today I received a Higher Education Contribution Scheme Information statement in my mail informing me that I had $11730 owing on my compulsory repayment. Now I’m not exactly raking it in right now and I read that you guys had an $8 billion surplus when your delightful treasurer Peter Costello spoke about the budget last year… $8 billion is a lot of money, and $11730 is a substantially small fraction of this. I don’t know what the exact percentage would be, unfortunately I didn’t accumulate my HECS debt on a maths degree. I only earned between 25-30 thousand last year. Anyway, seeing as you made so much last year and I made so little (and it looks like I will continue to make so little) I was wondering if you could let me off and wipe my HECS debt clear. I promise not to tell anyone else. I think you all do a smashing job and I imagine it must be stressful at times and a terrible bore, but I think you guys do marvelously all the same. I figure that the $8 billion comes from all our taxes and so on anyway so it would just be silly for me to pay the HECS as well, especially as my university education has done so little for me in terms of employment. I don’t mean that disrespectfully, I just thought I might as well ask seeming as we all did so well and maybe you could share it around a bit by helping a member of our country’s struggling workforce. I’m a nice person too and I used to give money to Amnesty International and everything so it’s not like you would be helping out some kind of mean person or loafer

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What happened to Centrepoint tower?

September 26th 2006 14:08

7th February 2006-02-07

Dear Sydney Tower

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Dear Subway

September 21st 2006 04:18

Dear Subway

I am confused by your ‘4 Easy Steps’ sign that is displayed outside your stores. In this sign it proclaims that there are only 4 easy steps to choosing the sub I want. But the thing is, it’s not 4 steps at all – it’s clearly 7

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