When I was 10 years old, my beloved golliwog was equally loved, alongside my baby doll, Shirley Temple doll and Pinocchio. Maybe poor Pinocchio might suffer the same discrimination for daring to have a larger than normal nose?

I do hope that Stephen Foster’s beautiful ballads Swanee River and Camptown Races etc do not suffer the same fate, or perhaps black jellies babies or licorice blocks may conjure up racial insensitivity towards all who symbolise other than protected species.

Unfortunately political correctness is endeavouring to erode our way of life and threatening our lifetime policies.

HAPPY to be proven wrong, but why would Wodonga Council be wanting to trial a pedestrian shared zone when two major redevelopments will be under way in our city centre and may cause disruption in the city's main street at some stage during construction?

Wodonga residents have been patiently waiting for the Mann and Woolworths shopping centre projects to start and be completed.

Without being an expert in planning, won't those two centres, when completed, totally change the dynamic of High Street and doing a trial before they are finished be a classic case of putting the cart before the horse?

Residents have waited this long for some action on those sites, surely we can wait a bit longer. 

Or is there a hidden agenda and is it related to the $10 million of federal government funding for the Wodonga CBD announced a couple of years ago that hasn't been used yet?

There seemed to be a lot of experts out in force on the world wide web at the weekend, even more than usual, keen to comment on the story about a golliwog in the Beechworth Sweet Co’s advertisement being deemed offensive by the Advertising Standards Board (The Border Mail, July 23).

The issue of discrimination against white people was brought up time and again in the commentary on the matter.

I am a white person. I’ve been white my whole life. It may be the case that I am just plain lucky but I can honestly say that at no point in my lifetime in Australia have I ever felt singled out or discriminated against on the basis of my skin. Not even once.

I find it truly absurd that people were crying foul about discrimination against white people in this country in relation to that story, as if they knew for a fact the person who made the complaint was not, in fact, a white person.

I’m not saying that the golliwog is or isn’t offensive. As a person of white skin, it’s hardly my place to comment. And frankly, even if I had an opinion on the matter, I fail to see how it would be relevant.

Managing population growth is one of the biggest challenges and opportunities we face in Victoria.

Up to 10 million residents could call our state home by 2051, with much of that growth – about 80 per cent – expected to be in Greater Melbourne. 

Each year, our state grows by about 100,000 people, but just 8 per cent of that growth is in regional Victoria.

If Daniel Andrews spent more time beyond Melbourne’s tram tracks, he would discover endless opportunities – a high quality of life, a loyal workforce and people genuinely committed to the future prosperity of their community. The sad reality is that the further you live from Melbourne the less you get from this government.