The World Cup is a global event (with an estimated TV audience of 1 billion) but despite its importance to Australia and Australians, the Chief Minister of the ACT will not have a "Barr" of it!

The editorial states that staging matches "would be be beyond Canberra's budget and wisdom has ruled over dreams". Wisdom or blindness?

Thanks to Mr Barr and his advisers, Canberra will be the holder of an unenviable global sporting record which will almost certainly never be equalled. It will be the only capital city of a football World Cup host nation not to stage a match.

Douglas Mackenzie, an apologist for Ian Warden, admonishes N. Bailey (Letters, June 28), for a lack of a sense of humour and appreciation of Mr Warden's satire in exactly the same terms as he did me in my critique of Ian Warden's musings (Letters, May 17). Mr MacKenzie, I, and no doubt N Bailey, do grasp Ian Warden's apparent satire, and definitely do have a sense of humour. It is required to read his letters!

Ian Warden wrote in his amusing satire on Calamity Jane - and himself - "History oft marks a calamity of errors" (Sunday Focus, June 28, p17) that he meets his "haggard companion ... face-to-face (in the mirror) every day for our manly shaving ritual".

That's strange: the manly photo accompanying Mr Warden's enlightening article is sporting an apparently well-established beard. Could he, by some miracle, be sprouting new beards overnight?

I totally agree with Victoria Lilley (Letters, June 28) regarding the new meds rule and opioid changes by the TGA which came into effect from June 1.

Chronic pain robs one of the ability to perform the most menial of tasks, undermining the will to go on in some cases. And it doesn't take a medical science graduate to work out where that leads.

Is this the outcome the TGA is really wanting? An upsurge in the suicide rate?

Surely there is someone in that august department with the ability to come up with a procedure which will screen casual users of over-the-counter painkillers from those for whom medically-trained practitioners have, in their wisdom, issued repeat prescriptions of pharmaceuticals designed to give the user pain relief and a return to some degree of normal mobility.

I call on the TGA to review the ruling or suffer the statistical consequences.

I was disappointed to read Alex Mattea's letter (Letters, July 1) bemoaning the heavy "wog" accents in commercials and sitcoms.

He also refers to himself as a former Italian. This may be because he is now a naturalised Australian citizen or because he was born here, however, one's heritage doesn't change with the granting of a certificate.

The "wog" accents are nothing to be derided.

In fact if you look at the people with those accents you will probably see individuals who not only speak a little differently but usually those same people probably have several other languages besides English in their repertoire, hence their different English pronunciation.

My parents spoke four other languages besides English and I must admit that as a youngster in a small Victorian country town in the early 1950s I used to feel quite uncomfortable at times whenever a couple of the "wogs" got together and spoke their native tongue within earshot of locals, whose attitude was "speak Australian or go back to where you came from".

My parents and the other migrants also contributed a great deal not only to our small community, but to the country as a whole.

Fortunately, over the years, that attitude has changed, and I'm proud to be a naturalised wog and I don't see the stigma attached to foreign ethnicity that there once was.

There would be no sitcom Acropolis Now, or Con the fruiterer, just to mention two, without the "wog" accents.

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