This involves a five-hour drive each way, overnight accommodation,meals and fuel.

A not inconsiderable contribution to the Canberra economy.

In past years this excellent event has been conducted on the lawns of Old Parliament House.

Due to a ruling by the National Capital Authority permission to use these facilities was withdrawn and another venue utilised, which was not satisfactory.

It took over an hour to vacate the venue and then face the five-hour trip.

Should the NCA not reverse its decision we will not be back as I assume will be the case for many hundreds more.

Congratulations to them. They have succeeded in damaging the local economy, ruining a previously great event and curtailing the enjoyment of thousands.

Ivor Davies, Newcastle, NSW

Success at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games has generally been judged by the number of medals a country has won.

Thus, Australia topped the list with 198 medals, 80 of them gold, and England came second with a total of 136, 45 of them gold.

How does the winning of medals relate to the wealth (overall GDP) of participating countries?

To get around the confusing picture you get by looking at the wealth and medals won by individual countries it becomes clearer by 'lumping' countries together. Thus the 43 countries that won medals can be divided into three blocs of 14, 15 and 14 countries according to wealth and this shows, as expected, that the most wealthy bloc won many more medals than the poorer blocs.

But the reverse is true for medals per unit of wealth. By this measure of success the least wealthy group of countries were 16 times more successful in winning medals than the wealthiest group.

The same relationship was shown for the London and Rio Olympic Games and Paralympics, for total medals and for gold medals.

It suggests that super athletes are more prevalent in less affluent countries: and perhaps their general populations are fitter.

Malcolm Whyte, Weston

On Wednesday my son sent a letter from Erindale in the ACT to the AFP in Canberra Civic, a distance of approximately 13km or 15 minutes drive.

The letter had to be mailed.

Australia Post in its wisdom, sent the letter to Sydney on Thursday. On Friday the letter was still in Sydney.

I contacted the Minister for Communications' office. They put me on to somebody at Australia Post who told me there is no record of the item, even though the item has a tracking number and is a registered post item, so why did it go to Sydney instead of Civic?

Australia Post say there is no centre here to process mail, this is a lie as there are these facilities here.

We are talking about an across-town mail delivery.

This was a vital letter as it was regarding a job for my son, who now has to wait until Australia Post do their job, find the letter, and get it delivered.

What has gone wrong in this country when the simple things always seem to break down?

The mail delivery people still get an address wrong as we very often get mail for that has our street number, but for a different street close by.

Its about time the people stood up and stopped accepting crap service from government organisations that we pay for.

M. Smith, Wanniassa

John Richardson's letter (Canberra Times 17 April) suggests Russian use of chemical substances against civilians in Britain should not be of concern because of the number of uses of chemical weapons by a wide range of nations, including Britain and the US, in the past.

We all know two wrongs do not make a right. Nor do many.

Ian Lamb, Weston

Donald Trump said he wants and, according to reports is getting, America out of Syria. To the cynic, that only means that he is removing primary soft targets from the arena.

Vladimir Putin may get a shock if he leaves his men and planes there actively assailing Bashar al-Assad's enemies.

Despite the immensity of Russia, Mt Putin has missed his opportunity to join the big guys and help broker a peace in the Middle East. World dominion remains the objective of the recreated Communist bloc.

In contrast, the Americans, for all their bellicosity, "don't do empire" as Tim Lynch, of the University of Melbourne, wrote ("Trump continues a US tradition by attacking Syria in defence of persecuted Muslims", April 17, pp16,17).

The USA's long progression from its isolationism of the eighteenth century, to its adoption of the R2P (Responsibility to Protect) principle established by the UN, leaves it with an onerous and debatable role but one far too established to contest, particularly in the face of a long-stated and long-established target of world dominion by the recreated Communist bloc.

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

After logging-on to MyGov I attempted to access the Centrelink site to report income for my wife, as we are obliged to do ... simply no response. I tried numerous times before deciding to call the Centrelink reporting line, where I was put through the usual hoop-jumping exercises by the automatic messaging machine, before being told that I could also report on-line or by using an App on my mobile phone.

Now, given that we don't have a mobile service where we live and given the online service wasn't working, I could only choose to wait. I was then informed by the friendly machine that the waiting time was more than 30 minutes.

Of course, if one does not report to Centrelink, then you have broken their rules: the fact that their reporting mechanisms don't work doesn't seem to matter. Not their problem.

I actually waited 45 minutes, which is the amount of time that I think every parliamentarian should be forced to listen to Centrelink's dreadful music every day, to help remind them of those they are allegedly elected to represent.

John Richardson, Wallagoot, NSW

The lovely citizens of the Molonglo Valley must be a very patient lot. Even now after years of massive housing and apartment development with thousands of families and singles living there, unbelievably not a single coffee outlet in sight or in prospect. How can this be? Where are the planners, the ACT Government, the local members, the entrepreneurs? Where is the outrage?

John Mungoven, Stirling

K. Beckwith (Letters, April 16) praises South Australia for a container deposit scheme that was introduced 41 years ago.

He fails to mention that the scheme was introduced before kerbside recycling bins that essentially achieve the same result.

He also failed to mention that (according to last weeks TV News) the NSW deposit scheme is a disaster and costing the NSW people a lot of money.

Nor did he mention that the ACT scheme will be based on the NSW scheme.

What is wrong with yellow recycling bins, that almost all Canberrans would already be responsibly using for these containers.

Why ask us to inconveniently take these containers to a remote location when we can just throw them in the yellow bin?

Steven Hurren, Macquarie

Michael Inman and Markus Mannheim's story ,"Chauffered to the rugby by helicopter", CT April 16, while couched as a "joy ride — public servant treat", distorts actual facts and wrongly draws our former "SnowyHydro SouthCare" aero medical helicopter service into their series about ACT public service gifts.

The accompanying photo depicts SHSC engineer Colin Hobbs with the rugby match ball, and the story cites two Justice and Community Safety Directorate staff members being "chauffeured" to the match.

To begin with, Colin Hobbs was not an ACT public servant — he was a member of the helicopter contractor staff.

However more particularly the delivery of the match ball was one of many such planned public relations profiling of the chopper as part of the "SnowyHydro Helicopter Trust Fund's" promotions within its fundraising charter.

The Trust was appointed by Government but operated independent of Emergency Services, as a charitable, community based fundraising organisation.

Well attended public events presented key opportunities to show case being at the ready 24/7 for the 7,000 life saving missions flown over 18 years of service.

This helped the Trust raise many millions of sponsorship, community and organisational dollars to help offset the ACT Government's share of financing the service in partnership with the NSW Government.

A notable example was flying iconic Australian aviatrix, the late Nancy Bird Walton, in to open the Royal Canberra Show.

PR flights undertaken to attract and thank Sponsors and supporters were part and parcel of the strategy.

"SnowyHydro SouthCare" completed its 18 years of service to the community in April 2017 and "SouthCare" is now operated by TOLL, with the aero medical helicopter service fully funded by both ACT and NSW Governments.

Len Goodman AO, Trust Fund Chairman 1998-2006; Special Ambassador SHSC 2007-2017, Belconnen

I live in Tuggeranong so am not affected by the disgusting decision to subject Braddon residents to weeks of noisy nights from 6pm — 7am from light rail works.

It should not be allowed. Apparently this is necessary due to slow progress. Why is this a major issue? slow progress with works is a part of life, it happens for various reasons but is not the end of the world. I only hope the residents can some how have this stopped.

This local government is like a runaway train out of control. If it cannot be stopped I invite the Chief Minister to stay with one of the residents for the duration of the works and see how he functions in the Assembly each day with sleep deprivation.

Residents should not be subjected to this type of treatment. It is not rocket science, the brain needs sleep to function properly. What happens if a resident falls asleep at the wheel of their car on the way to work and has a car crash? Will the government stand up and take responsibility? Pigs might fly.

Phil Nicolls, Monash

So inner north residents will soon suffer through noisy nights from light rail work as the government is to permit a catch-up of slow progress by the contractor on Stage 1.

This means excavation and tunnelling machinery will be operating throughout the night, possibly for up to three weeks, and workers will collect double and triple time.

So why the slow progress? The cost will be recouped by the contractor; taxpayers can be assured of that. How many more of such hikes will we see, especially approaching scheduled completion at end 2018, when the Government would accede to any demand to finish on time?

Sleepless nights are only the start of woes for residents on both wrong sides of the track. Wait till the rat-running starts past their doors.

M. Flint, Smart Canberra Transport, Erindale Centre

Problems with the NBN are not due to the technology (Barry Harris, Letters, April 18).

I have a fibre to the node (FTTN) connection that is capable of 123 Mb/s, but delivers a verified 11.02 Mb/s on my $40/month 12 Mb/s plan, which is sufficient for my needs.

The problems I encountered are incompetence and greed – incompetence by my telco in the way the connection was actually made, and with double billing (both eventually sorted) – greed by some telco companies that on-sell the NBN to many customers while purchasing bandwidth from the NBN that only allows a few customers to use the NBN connection at the same time.

Bruce A. Peterson, Kambah

Perhaps it's time for the government to pass legislation similar to that of the European Union: Regulation 261/2004 of EU Law that compels airlines to compensate passengers for flight delays, cancellations and denial of boarding.

Compensation can be as much as a refund of the costs including those relating to flights already taken, but that are of no use now to the traveller.

Surely a law like this would stop airlines cancelling flights for their own reasons and leaving us all in the lurch frustrated and stressed. I speak from experience.

Margaret Robertson, Kambah

THRILLS AND SPILLS

My prediction the ABC would lose support by deliberately dumbing down its programs has started coming true as shown by the crash in local radio ratings. The irony is the policy was designed to boost ratings, ignoring opposition voices from across the country. The reaction against axing Genevieve Jacobs should have sent warning bells to management, but all we got was that they were, " ... thrilled to announce a refreshed line-up for 2018".

Eric Hunter, Canberra

AN ACQUIRED TASTE

Re the peacock plague; don't waste them, just eat them.

Graham Hannaford, Ainslie

ABSENCE OF FACTS

Michael Lane states an argument of belief and his assertions add nothing to the resolution of the "dismissal" controversy (Letters, April 17). His "facts", whether accepted or disputed, are not inconsistent with an active conspiracy contributing to Whitlam's displacement. Whether the "facts" are "unpleasant" is also a matter of opinion, in this case, apparently, of the headline writer.

Lawry Herron, O'Connor

HOW WOULD THIS WORK?

If you're right about the Legislative Assembly being little more than a large council, Karna and Julian O'Dea (Letters, April 17), does that mean we can take away education, transport, health and infrastructure and it wouldn't make any difference to our lives? Other councils don't have these responsibilities.

L. Armstrong, Curtin

MIND YOUR LANGUAGE

Michael Collins of Banks (Letters, April 17) tells us "if it wasn't for the US you would be speaking Japanese". Were it not for the Russians (with some 30 million casualties) and the Chinese (with some 17 million casualties) the whole world would be speaking German or Japanese.

Roger Terry, Kingston

MONEY TALKS IN AFL

In response to Doug Foskett (Letters, April 13), spare a thought for the hundreds of thousands of Canberrans who don't back GWS yet in the past 10 years coughed up $23.5million and shortly look good for a further $30million chosen by the "stakeholders" AFL Melbourne, GWS and Andrew Barr. There was a time in 2014 when AFL Melbourne offered to contribute at Manuka for players amenities but they no longer need offer.

B. Moore, Kingston

EXPORT BAN NOW!

New Zealand does not allow the export of livestock for slaughter, and Britain is likely to introduce a similar ban after Brexit. (At present British live sheep are exported, but only to Europe.) It is time for Australian politicians to make a principled stand for animal welfare and ban all live exports for slaughter.

C. Williams, Forrest