The conflict in Georgia is one more example of the problem of national self-determination.

Ever since the League of Nations adopted the notion of recognising the rights of ethnic groups to their own territory, aspirational separatist movements have produced conflict.

Complications have followed when embedded minorities, such as the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, have been thwarted in their aspirations by the actions of the great powers, first within the league and subsequently in the United Nations.

The UN suffers from having no formal method of determining how borders can be adjusted to recognise these aspirations.

Too often, these are settled on a case-by-case basis, or, as in Israel/Palestine, are not settled at all. In others, such as Burma, the persecution of minorities is generally ignored because the economic resources involved are insignificant, or there are no geopolitical implications for the great powers.

Iraq and Kosovo, on the other hand, had immense geopolitical consequences and we have seen the great powers joining in to influence the outcomes, but only after considerable violence on both sides.

As usual, in the latest conflict, the aspirations of the two pro-Russian enclaves in Georgia have been manipulated by the Russians and Western powers to meet critical balance-of-power and economic pressures.

The resurgence of Russian nationalism that the oil resources have produced confronts a United States administration in its dying days and burdened with economic problems and the odium surrounding its ill-advised Iraqi intervention.

And as usual, the pawns in this conflict, the people of Ossetia and Georgia, will pay the price for the failure of the UN to address such fundamental questions as how to determine borders on the basis of legitimate national aspirations, and how to accommodate minorities too small to be viable nations.

Don Brown Narrabeen

Never mind the report card, what about funding?

Teaching and schools will improve when the profession can attract intelligent and motivated people. This will be achieved only with adequate funding, smaller class sizes, ample support staff and a physical environment that is pleasant and functions well.

If Julia Gillard is to search the world for an education model ("Tell-all report cards to compare schools", August 12), she should look not at New York's system, but at Finland's, which for many years has been rated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as the best in the world. It has highly qualified teachers, a uniform syllabus, all co-educational schools, no private sector and no league tables.

Annette Kent Hunters Hill

It is too simplistic to measure the excellence of teaching by test results. A bright student could do well on a test no matter what the teaching experience.

A teacher who can help a child with learning difficulties to grasp just one simple concept or learn to read may be a far better teacher than another whose students score well in a test.

Just because New Zealand and other countries pit school against school doesn't mean that we should.

Margaret Grove Abbotsford

Forty years ago US education was a beacon of excellence, but in 2002, when UNICEF ranked education in 24 countries, it came 18th.

Today 30 per cent of students in the US don't graduate from school and those who do are poorly prepared for university, further study or gainful employment. So why does Ms Gillard attempt to implement US strategies in Australia, which is achieving far better results?

Alph Williams Red Rock

Teaching can be an exhausting, stressful occupation, with little prospect of short-term financial advancement. It is unsurprising that, at times, some teachers adopt attitudes intended to protect their sense of power and self-regard. In those few cases where groups take up such values, they can, over time, become part of school culture.

Such habits may have little impact on the children of middle-class parents, who have the ability to negotiate their students around potential roadblocks to learning. They can have devastating results for the children of the underprivileged.

Where destructive aspects of a school culture are challenged, the challenger's most powerful weapon is information. Data on school performance belongs to the community, not some few bureaucrats and politicians. The proposal to publish school outcomes data represents real hope for further improvement in educational outcomes for Australia's underprivileged children.

Noel Beddoe Kiama

Would I be naive to assume Julia Gillard will include the publicly funded private schools in her push for standardised testing and transparent reports?

Gus Plater Saratoga

All public schools have special needs, since they accept students with disabilities, challenging behaviours and specific learning needs. Any public school can identify the students who need more assistance, and know what is required to help them reach their full potential. How can comparing results of schools assist students? By all means identify best practice, quality teaching and innovation, but recognition alone is not enough.

Will "tell-all reports" mean more relevant development for teachers? Or increased access to learning support programs? How about more resources for teaching and learning? Or will they be used simply to point the finger at supposedly poorly performing schools?

This is a fruitless exercise. We know what our students' needs are. Just give us the resources to fulfil them.

Sharon McGuinness Thirroul

How to remove hardened criminals from drug trade

I agree with Andrew Woodhouse (Letters, August 12) that the past may not justify the future, but those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Illegal use of opiates and cocaine in Australia between 1910 and 1930 was not common because the vast majority of those who abused those drugs could obtain them from a legal source, as do thousands of Australians who misuse over-the-counter and prescription drugs for recreational purposes today.

The difference is, in those days people who used drugs didn't need to mix with criminals to obtain them, their trade did not see mark-ups of many thousands of per cent and there was no incentive for networks of corrupt police and other officials to protect the trade or skim off these ample profits.

Many users would happily obtain currently illegal drugs on prescription or over the counter and would be chuffed to think the profits were going to build schools and hospitals or pay their nan's pension.

The "social causes" of drug dealing are that many people enjoy drugs, are willing to pay for them and, without any governmental controls on strength and quality, it remains a crook's market.

Andrew Potts St Peters

Paying the price of a duopoly

Paul Sheehan's disclosure of the Big Two's war on their suppliers ("Report's disparities only small fry", August 11) should be required reading for those who want Australian farmers and food processors to stay in business.

As a contractor to one of the Two, I had access to the central buyers, whose continued employment was contingent on their ability to deliver an ever more painful deal to their suppliers, under threat of contract cancellation.

Suppliers pay premiums for shelf space at eye level and in the prized "gondolas" at the aisle-end. Many suppliers are forced to stock retail shelves themselves, while those who deliver to warehouses are assigned a just-in-time delivery slot, which they miss at their peril. The savings touted in the weekly catalogues are commonly funded by the supplier, while the supermarkets retain inflated margins.

We need genuine competition, like Aldi, more than most of us know.

Alan Miller Pottsville

I often shop in Bangkok. When I was in Australia, two years ago, a 400 gram punnet of blueberries cost $8.99 at the Big Two. In one of Bangkok's elite supermarkets, also with huge mark-ups, a kilogram of blueberries from New Zealand (much better quality, firm and unblemished) costs about the same.

So what you have in Australia is the wrinkled local produce, sold by the duopoly at more than twice the price of its air-freighted, primped equivalent from New Zealand.

Melody Kemp Vientiane, Laos

Too little care in child care

We accept as fact that infants and young children must bond with a primary care giver if they are to have healthy emotional growth ("Human warmth is more important than a hot meal", August 12).

Yet as a society we try to ignore the emotional damage that will result from child-care centres having a ratio of one carer to five infants. It is impossible for one person to provide the emotional nurturing required.

Robin Barker is the voice of common sense. We ignore what she says at our peril.

Elisabeth Goodsall Wahroonga

Robin Barker points out that a majority of Australians believe babies and toddlers are better off being cared for by their parents than by child-care workers. In the light of that fact, quality of care, though important, should not be the chief focus of attention.

Vastly improving maternity and paternity leave would be the best way of ensuring babies receive the care most people believe they need.

Gregory Thiele Lewisham

Curves before kitsch

Chris Burns (Letters, August 12), rather than even more buildings in this beautiful yet congested city, could we dare to be different? Let's have more green space: lawn outside Town Hall, trees along George Street, and turn Martin Place into an oasis.

Claire Wallace Rozelle

Spare us the massive erection syndrome. I, too, have lived with the skylines of Jakarta and Sydney. If one can prefer the kitsch of fake fluorescent imitations of Big Ben, or Greek temples perched atop huge glass towers, to the curves of the Opera House or the Coat Hanger, then one is welcome to move to Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai or Houston and eschew places such as Sydney, Rome, Paris or Athens.

John Court Denistone

Break the silence over Anwar

I was heartened to read the editorial "The ordeals of Anwar" (August 11). It defies belief that Malaysia's Government would attempt a reprise of its 1998 charge of sodomy against Anwar Ibrahim, which involved corruption and collusion at the highest level. Again, the survival of a corrupt government is behind the conspiracy.

World leaders protested against the sham trial of Anwar in 1998, but now they have been silent, Kevin Rudd included. One hopes they will not remain silent until this charge gets to court, where the judges whose appointments brought the Malaysian bar to the streets in protest sit in waiting.

Arthur Wyndham Exeter

White Pages wastage

The problem is not that Michael Dawes-Smith, Pat Lindsay (Letters, August 7, 9) and people of that ilk prefer to look numbers up in the White Pages, but that those of us who prefer to use the computer cannot opt out of receiving the telephone books.

Think of the resources to be saved if they were not automatically delivered to people who will throw them out or use them to mulch the garden.

Daniel O'Brien Redfern

Scrap that M4 toll

Phillip Cooney (Letters, August 12) is right about misleading M4 charges, but two sections of the motorway were built before the introduction of the toll. They were from Penrith to Prospect, and from Mays Hill (west Parramatta) to Strathfield. The toll came in when the "missing link" was constructed between these two points. However, the toll gates were constructed at Auburn, on a previously "free" section of the motorway.

The contract with Statewide Roads ends in 2010. The people of western Sydney and the Blue Mountains trust the State Government will abolish the toll when it resumes ownership.

Ken Morrisey (Holroyd City councillor) Greystanes

It's hard to believe so many are watching this dross

Michael Carter (Letters, August 12) bemoans the lack of cultural sensitivity on Channel Seven's part. I agree. However, it's not the inane programming or shallow understanding of the world on commercial television that is most difficult to endure. It's the idea that such dross is allowed on air because it can find a sizeable appreciative audience.

Letters like those by Glenn Jacobus (August 12) accentuate the average Australian's limited understanding of China. Yes, official reinterpretation does occur. But Chinese citizens do understand the meaning of lofty words such as "freedom", as people here do. They are repulsed by the moralistic tone often attached to these words.

Derrick Kwan North Epping

Sorry to dent the wide-eyed magic of the opening ceremony, Bill Mathew (Letters, August 11), but "those tireless drums of Africa", such "a stirring reminder of the birthplace of humanity", are hollow. The stench of death hangs over northern and southern Sudan, Darfur and Chad thanks to the Chinese-backed Khartoum government. Beijing has also supplied Robert Mugabe's bloody regime with the weaponry to further suppress the Zimbabwean people.

Barbara Chapman Hawthorn (Vic)

Surely the real measure of China's success in showcasing itself via the Olympics will be the number of athletes who overstay their visas.

Ian Johnston Bowral

Primal scream

Can we roll back digital TV? What a waste. Our set-top box offers Prime, Prime1, Prime2 and Prime3 (and with the right box we could also have Prime HD), but we get only one standard Olympics coverage from the Seven Network - the same as on analogue TV. I couldn't even watch the Boomers live, just the second half replayed after the game was over.

Stephen Nicholson Port Macquarie

Does Channel Seven not realise this is a global event and audiences want to appreciate amazing performances from other nations? It has a severe case of island fever. I wish we had the BBC's coverage, which allows the viewer to "press the red button" to select whatever you want.

Michelle Ryan Naremburn

How boring is Channel Seven's coverage? Let me give you an example: an hour of interviews with "proud Olympic parents" saying the same thing repeatedly during prime time, when they should be cramming in highlights.

Sam Fields Seven Hills

Pot of fool's gold

If Michael Phelps wins eight gold medals it will just show that swimming has too many events. Should athletics get jealous of the medals available in the pool they should add to the program the 100m running backwards, the 100m skipping, the 100m crawl and the medley.

To win eight gold medals in athletics you would need to win every distance from 100 to 800 metres, including the hurdles and both relays (100m and 400m); if you are fast over 100 metres in the pool and you are American, you will already be looking at six golds - 50m, 100m, 200m and three relays.

Ken Mansell Chapman (ACT)

Once news of the "trauma" of Trickett's vomit and Schipper's zipper makes its way around the globe ("Revealed: the drama behind their golden moment", August 12), no doubt the people of the Caucasus will be able to put their suffering into perspective.

Stan Bear Mosman