Commenting on the story: When the music’s over: ‘Cranker’ threat prompts cultural heritage debate

If the Cranker goes, Adelaide needs to surrender its UNESCO City of Music status. We don’t deserve it. – Alicia Siegel

Thank you for covering the various aspects of this important issue.

I think something for the state government to consider regarding planning approval is; do they want the East End to go the way of the West End? Hindley Street used to be a thriving place, day and night. But not any more.

If we don’t want the East End to end up the same way we’d better change our thinking about how to preserve our local cultural scenes. Especially when a business is thriving. It seems crazy to cut a business down in its prime.

It will affect many other local businesses as well, for example the Cranker doesn’t have food, so many of the patrons are generally eating somewhere nearby at some point.

I hope we can get as many people onboard as possible to contact the Premier about this. – Kati Jenkins

The International Charter on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) has recently put out an investigation into Intangible Heritage, which is an intrinsically difficult thing to achieve.

As a heritage consultant, former pub bartender in my uni days, DA Planner and Heritage Adviser to the City of Adelaide, I understand that the Local Heritage listing of the Crown & Anchor Hotel does not protect the much loved live music land use itself.

The death knell for the Crown & Anchor was a combination of John Rau’s Capital City DPA that lifted height limits from 6 up to 15 storeys on this site, making it more attractive to redevelop for apartments.

As well, the small bar licensing provisions, which whilst great in some ways, has resulted in the significant erosion of the drinking market for Adelaide’s historic and luckily largely heritage-listed pubs, making them less viable and vulnerable to selling out to apartment developers.

Government planners and past planning ministers say that want an active and vital Adelaide that attracts people to want to visit and even live in the City of Adelaide, but in their overzealous pursuit of appeasing the Property Council and other such lobbies wanting weaker planning controls, they have effectively killed the proverbial ‘Golden Goose’.

International student apartment developments do nothing for the vitality of a city, the residents of which largely keep to themselves within the building.

Short of the Singaporean developer being financially induced to walk away from the site or have a change of heart, ‘The Cranker’ as a live music venue and even as a pub, is doomed.

Areas near important live music venues like this need to be zoned not to permit high rise apartments, and at least be required to install extra heavy and expensive soundproof glazing as a planning requirement, given the live music land use is an existing use, even if on the site of the development, as is the case here. – Sandy Wilkinson

Commenting on the opinion piece: A biblical bashing in Dunstan

This made my day, whilst dunking my daily bread into my sacred wine. – Ivana Dawe

I am so sad to read that Matthew Abraham will no longer be writing for InDaily – it was bad enough losing him from the ABC. I love his style.

I despise Facebook and their arrogance in refusing to pay for Australian media content. – Marie Good

I’ll be sad to see Matthew’s column go. It always contains material worthy of comment.

His participation in the relentless and frenetic public obsession with ambulance ramping is consistent with the universal media commentary on this issue.

All this will wear thin and fade into the political ether over the remaining term of this government. Ramping is a national and international problem and is a symptom of the inevitable escalation of the demands on hospital care.

No government, including ours, would ever promise a quick fix. However, the current government’s doubling of the health budget and ongoing resuscitation of the hospital system will see ramping diminish over time. In the meantime, the ambulance service has been dramatically improved and response times halved, so that more patients gain access to ED treatment or timely and selective interim care in a ramped ambulance.

For years now the Ambos’ Union has lobbied for transit areas/wards adjacent to EDs. It is a mystery why this critical suggestion has not been implemented, along with a solution to the dangerous slowing of ED access and patient flow due to the major flaws in the electronic patient record system (was EPAS, now Sunrise EMR).

Ramping will diminish but will always be with us. It will become a time-expired issue in state politics. The government is doing everything possible to improve and maintain our health system. This is presumably why the opposition is unable to formulate or articulate health policy. It should stop flogging ramping as a critical problem – it is a tired old horse. – Warren Jones