How do we know we can trust the latest polls? | Brief letters

Drs Mellon and Prosser explain (Letters, 6 May) why the opinion polls were wrong at the last general election – a failure to obtain representative samples. Specifically, pollsters did not contact enough people from hard-to-reach groups that do not vote in elections. What I want to know is, has this mistake been eliminated in the current polls, which are being respectfully reported, on voting intentions? Are the pollsters now doing the job properly? Can we trust these polls?
Oliver Williams
London

•I agree with Chris Birch (Letters, 9 May). Subtitles flash on and off, cover translations, appear at different places on the screen and sometimes continue over the following programme. Theresa May gabbles, Jeremy Corbyn has a beard, both impossible for lip-readers. It’s no wonder we retire to bed, exhausted.
Jean Jackson
Seer Green, Buckinghamshire

• I don’t find it at all strange that a teenager would have Margaret Thatcher’s picture on his bedroom wall (G2, 9 May). Our son had her picture on his dartboard.
Barbara Freeman
Leicester

• Richard Carden (Letters, 8 May) perhaps misses the point when he attributes English councils’ democratic deficit to first past the post. Since 2001, every council without an elected mayor has by law had a quasi-mayor (the leader) making almost all the decisions. In effect that’s one-person rule (give or take a small sofa cabinet chosen by the leader) irrespective of the council’s political balance.
Nick Beale
Exeter

• The correspondence regarding grandparents (Letters, passim) reminds me of a very old joke: My grandparents were called Pearl and Dean but we knew them as Grandma and Grandpapapapapapapapapapapa.
Steve Vanstone
Wolverhampton

• A friend of mine used to refer to his daughters’ long-term unmarried partners as his “sons-in-love” (Letters, passim).
Dr Brigid Purcell
Norwich

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

How do we know we can trust the latest polls? | Brief letters

Union leader Walter Reuther’s reply to early automation | Brief letters

The UK government now says that due to the election all e-petitions will be closed, though people can still read them. Petitions will have to be restarted after the election and signatures cannot be transferred. What a terrible way to treat the public. Some of these petitions have already reached the target of 100,000 and were due to be discussed, such as “Drivers over the age of 70 having to be tested every three years”. We should insist the new petitions committee ensures that the popular ones are discussed and do not have to start again.
Ann Paterson
Didcot, Oxfordshire

• Like Andrew Mayers’ brother (Opinion, 25 April) I had electroconvulsive therapy in 2006 after three years of “treatment-resistant” depression and it gave me my life back with minimal side-effects. When I had a relapse last year, the NHS psychiatrist had no hesitation in prescribing it again and I was completely well within a few weeks. It saddens me to think that Andrew’s brother was not offered that option. Surely the NHS should not hesitate to offer ECT immediately to anyone who has benefited from it in the past.
Ian Arnott
Peterborough, Cambridgeshire

• After years of hard training, Ellie Downie wins the Gymnastic European Championships. The Guardian honours her with the smallest article in the sports section (22 April). Perhaps she and all the other girl gymnasts should have been wearing high heels to work to get more recognition (Ministers accused of cop-out over refusal to outlaw rules on high heels, same edition).
John Wilson (former gymnast and coach)
Long Melford, Suffolk

• Regarding the rise of the robots putting jobs at risk (Report, 15 April and Letters, 25 April), Walter Reuther, the US union leader after the war, was shown around a Ford plant in Cleveland in 1954. A Ford official pointed to some automatically controlled machines and asked Reuther: “How are you going to collect union dues from these guys?” Reuther replied: “How are you going to get them to buy Fords?”.
John Richards
Oxford

• I can’t cope with any more bad news; first Brexit, then Trump and now Bananarama to make a comeback (G2, 24 April).
Ken Balkow
Sheffield

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

Union leader Walter Reuther’s reply to early automation | Brief letters

If Colin Dexter had married a woman from Rotherham | Brief letters

The moderation-better-than-dry theory is built on a fallacious interpretation of statistics (Drinking can be good for the heart – but only in moderation, 23 March). A significant proportion of those over 30 who are absolute abstainers are former alcoholics – many having quit drinking on the basis of urgent medical advice. Though “former and occasional drinkers” were separated from the non-drinkers in the study, the dead former drinkers are notably absent from it. The drinks industry will no doubt be delighted with the apparent results.
Kevin Bannon
London

• Ian Mitchell’s GP doesn’t need to read the Guardian (Letters, 25 March). If he is like most doctors, he routinely upwardly adjusts patient-reported alcohol consumption by a factor of two, or three, or four.
Dr George Rylance
Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex

• Colin Dexter was apparently of the opinion that had he moved to Rotherham, rather than Oxford, he would never have become a writer (Obituary, 23 March). This may well be true. But, if like Anthony Trollope, he had married a woman from Rotherham, he might have been still more prolific.
Martin Brayne
Chinley, Derbyshire

• Not only has “anent” (Letters, 24 March) survived in Scotland: it has undergone mutation. Some years ago in the Scottish Office I was asked to clear a draft beginning “I have received your comments on my letter of … , and note your comments thereanent”.
Sebastian Robinson
Glasgow

• Re the letters about encouraging new cartoonists (15 March and 24 March), before this all goes any further can I just say how much I enjoy the Doonesbury classic cartoons? New cartoonists, yes, but please not at the expense of what seems like an old friend rejuvenated.
Bernadette Crowley
Wallasey, Merseyside

• I can’t understand why the Scandinavian and Nordic nations are so happy, given the price of their beer (Report, 21 March).
Michael Cunningham
Wolverhampton

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

If Colin Dexter had married a woman from Rotherham | Brief letters

Look on the sweet side of Love Actually | Brief letters

The Vogue photographs of Theresa May show her in clothes and surroundings of smug luxury (‘Trump was actually being a gentleman’, 21 March). They should have been juxtaposed with photos of the homeless, the bedridden elderly receiving negligible care or workers suffering squalid conditions – with Mrs May’s ambiguous claim as the heading, “The Tories help people to rise up”. Surely, time for the people to “rise up”.
Peter Cave
London

• Sadiq Khan’s summary of the Battle of Cable Street (G2, 16 March) makes two omissions. In listing the coalition that defeated the fascist march he fails to mention the leading roles played by the Independent Labour party (ILP) and the Communist party. Did he forget or didn’t he know?
Barry Winter
Leeds

• Hadley Freeman (whom I like a lot) goes over the top with her hatred of Love Actually (Opinion, 21 March). The characters played by Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and Alan Rickman did not sexually harass their female subordinates in the workplace: Alan’s secretary threw herself at him, and the other two relationships are rather sweet. I agree the film is cloying mostly, but Bill Nighy rescues it.
John Richards
Oxford

• I overheard my seven-year-old grandson telling his four-year-old sister to clean her teeth, “or you will end up looking like grandma” (Tooth extractions on children under four rise by quarter, 21 March).
Barbara Symonds
Birmingham

• My mother would make bread pudding for my dad to carry with him when he competed 12-hour cycle races in the 1950s (Letters, passim). It was much missed by me when he stopped racing.
Jenny Haynes
Horkstow, North Lincolnshire

• Ta-ra, Chuck (Obituary, 20 March).
David Hinton
Bournemouth, Dorset

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

Look on the sweet side of Love Actually | Brief letters

A can of Spam is less dangerous these days | Brief letters

Naomi Elster writes: “There isn’t currently any strong evidence that eating too much red meat causes cancer”, before noting that Cancer Research UK is a “reliable source … for advice and support” (The truth about cancer diets, G2, 16 January). However, responding to the WHO’s October 2015 International Agency for Research on Cancer report which classified red meat as “probably carcinogenic to humans”, Professor Tim Key, Cancer Research UK’s epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, said: “Cancer Research UK supports IARC’s decision that there’s strong enough evidence to classify … red meat as a probable cause of cancer.”
Ian Sinclair
London

• The letter headed “Standing in solidarity with Brazil’s Lula” (14 January) shows a remarkably one-sided view and a lack of concern for the facts. An example: “Investigating Lula, prosecutors have been unable to find any illegal activity committed.” This is nonsense. Lula has been charged on various counts including money laundering, being a member of a criminal organisation, influence peddling and misconduct. More than 50 Brazilian politicians, past and present and from various parties, have been charged with illegal activities and Lula is one of them.
John Fenn
London

• As was said of Wall Street corporations when the US supreme court granted them “personhood”, I’ll believe robots are people when the state of Texas executes one (Letters, 17 January).
John Smith
Sheffield

• I don’t know about corned beef as I don’t buy it, but Spam has replaced the old key opening with a ring pull, presumably to reduce hand injuries (Letters, 17 January).
Michael Cunningham
Wolverhampton

• I have crunchy peanut butter on Weetabix (Letters, 17 January). My family think I’m weird, though they appreciate my lack of conversation over breakfast.
Lynn Alexander
Barton le Clay, Bedfordshire

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

A can of Spam is less dangerous these days | Brief letters

Experiencing Trump image overload | Brief letters

The news section of the Guardian on 14 January contained four pictures of the US president-elect (pages 6, 26, 28 and 41), not to mention the political cartoon rendering on page 29. It seems to me this is helping to create an icon. As I admire and appreciate the excellence of the Guardian, I wonder how you determine when enough is enough, or in this case, too much.
Tom Miller
Stromness, Orkney

• Surely if NHS hospitals didn’t have to pay business rates (Rates pain for hospitals, 12 January) the problem of NHS funding would almost be solved. Or perhaps they should declare themselves a charity, as private hospitals do, and ask for an 80% rebate. I suggest the Guardian starts a petition to stop this anomaly.
Moira Robinson
Kidlington, Oxfordshire

• I have a question for your anonymous correspondent (Letters, 16 January). If the job of a GP is the cushy number, why do so few medical graduates want to make a career in that branch of the NHS?
David Nove
Duffield, Derbyshire

• I remember from my childhood 65 years ago that my mother had a Weetabix butter spreader (Letters, 16 January) which I believe she had inherited after my grandfather died. It was a short knife with a rounded bulbous blade end which was cross-hatched (presumably to aid the spread of hard butter on crumbly Weetabix) and bore the legend “Weetabix Spreader”.
Judith Kent
London

• I used to note that, during interviews, politicians began their answers with “clearly”, while scientists began with “so” (Letters, 16 January). “Clearly” has all but disappeared, while “so” is widespread. Evidence that we have stopped listening to politicians?
Jennifer Gale
Littleham, Devon

• I would suggest a fourth cause of finger cuts that need hospital treatment (Letters, 14 January) and that is the one after the ceremony of the corned beef tin and the key.
Linda Gresham
Birmingham

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

Experiencing Trump image overload | Brief letters

Getting better all the time? Not any more… | Brief letters

“We continue to push VW to take action to compensate the UK consumer,” says the Department for Transport (Report, 12 December). But why is it that comment on the “dieselgate” scandal focuses on compensation to owners? It is city residents in general that suffer the health impacts, and it is the NHS that bears the costs of caring for them. VW should make payments that reflect these costs, and city leaders (including London’s mayor) should be holding Chris Grayling to account for achieving this.
Alan Wenban-Smith
Board member, Transport Planning Society, and former chairman of Birmingham Health Authority

• “Whatever happened to convalescent homes?” asks Mary Conn (Letters, 7 December). First we need to ask “Whatever happened to the concept of ‘convalescence’?” I haven’t heard this word used in decades. Perhaps there’s been the odd PhD about its demise; if not there ought to be. Its bizarre disappearance coincides to some extent with the ever-increasing brutality (and short-term stupidity) of government policies and practices that oblige people to function fully before they are recovered (whether being prematurely discharged home before they are ready, and/or prematurely forced back to work).
Jill Rakusen
Leeds

• I am a wheelchair user who has been very impressed by the help provided by platform staff and train guards. They help me board the train, show me to the right seat, and phone ahead to advise staff at my destination that I will need help leaving the train. If guards are abolished (Q&A: Why Southern rail passengers are facing such travel misery, 14 December), who will provide this service – or will I no longer be able to travel by train?
Sarah Benton
London

• So there is to be a leadership election in Unite (McCluskey rival attacks focus on Labour, 14 December). I’m not a Unite member myself; but I wonder if I would be allowed to register as a “supporter” and vote for Gerard Coyne?
Simon Elliott
Brighton

• A self-sown Helleborus x hybridus has been in flower since September. One giant leap for plantkind (Letters, 13 December)?
Margaret Waddy
Cambridge

• “Antwerp passes London as cocaine capital” (15 December). Is this another unforeseen Brexit effect?
Anders Clausager
Birmingham

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

Getting better all the time? Not any more… | Brief letters

Father Christmas far from being fake news | Brief letters

Your choice of verb (NHS crisis exiles children to Scotland for specialist care, 12 December) must have made many Scottish readers sigh. “Exile” is an emotive way to describe a journey to the top third of our island. It shows an attitude all too commonly found in articles about anything from national house prices to public transport, where “the north” turns out to mean nothing further north than Newcastle, and where “national” maps are sometimes cut off at the Borders. Your headline could just as well have read “Scotland’s specialist care units welcome children denied beds in England”.
Susan Tomes
Edinburgh

• Ho ho ho? No no no! Far from being “false news”, as Kevin Meethan asserts (Letters, 12 December), the existence of Father Christmas is a superb contemporary example of profound myth. The good news is, there is more than one kind of truth; the false news is that “existence” is limited to certain physical forms. Christians believe that Christ is, in some sense, the “logos” truth; this casts no doubt whatsoever on the fact that Father Christmas is the “mythos” truth in which so many “millions” of us are currently (merrily) “colluding”.
Father Alec Mitchell
Manchester

• At age five I was disappointed to discover that Santa didn’t really exist. This was nothing compared with the devastation I experienced two years later when I worked out that God didn’t exist either.
Dr Allan Dodds
Nottingham

• Does Nicky Morgan not know the cost of a Savile Row suit? (Theresa May trousers row: angry text exchange between Tories revealed, theguardian.com, 11 December)
Victoria Paleit
Southmoor, Oxfordshire

• Geneticists have shown that one in 10 people, throughout the world and since humanity began, was not sired by the person they believe to be their father. This renders everyone’s research into their forebears totally meaningless (Opinion, 8 December).
J David Ruddlesden
Burton upon Trent, East Staffordshire

• There are roses, hollyhocks, primroses and antirrhinums all flowering simultaneously in the garden (Letters, 12 December).
Pauline Wilson
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

Father Christmas far from being fake news | Brief letters

Snowflake’s fourfold symmetry is pure fantasy | Brief letters

When is a snowflake not a snowflake? Answer: when it has fourfold symmetry, like the graphic used with your article (Poor little snowflake, G2, 29 October). How could you make such a mistake? If you are determined to include a snowflake graphic, please get it right. Your snowflakes appear to be made of cubic ice, a metastable polymorph not seen in blizzards or snowballs. An interesting idea but sadly a fantasy. Regular bog-standard ice comprises a hexagonal array of water molecules, so snowflakes likewise have sixfold symmetry. You silly snowflakes!
Roger Davey
Chester

• Young people’s need for “safe spaces” is completely understandable. I’m quite old now but still need mine: it’s my bedroom, usually with a favourite book and a cat. But speakers’ platforms and debating chambers are intended as verbal battlegrounds and have no business being anybody’s safe space.
Jan Chamier
London

• Here’s a revolutionary idea from Jeremy Hunt (Apprentice nurses without degrees to learn job on wards, 30 November). Roll back 50 years and that’s what student nurses were doing, I was one of them. It would be interesting to know if patients’ mortality rate improved when this practice was replaced by insisting nurses get a degree first.
Sarah Akhtar
Stoke-on-Trent

• The Brexit aide’s notes mention having cake, eating it and “French likely to be most difficult” (Caught on camera, G2, 30 November). Understandable really, they’ve got history with cake.
Terri Green
Langley, Warwickshire

• I was encouraged to read that scientists reported that playing tennis can result in a 47% reduced risk of death (Report, 30 November). I had always worried that it was 100% – new balls please!
Murray Marshall
Salisbury

• Apparently the new fivers are 20% pony and 1% monkey (Petition calls for end to animal fat in plastic £5, 30 November).
Alasdair McKee
Lancaster

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

Snowflake’s fourfold symmetry is pure fantasy | Brief letters

Playing politics with passports to the NHS | Brief letters

The government’s sudden interest in tackling health tourism (Show your passport for NHS treatment, 22 November) is a transparent distraction tactic. The unclaimed cost of treating non-entitled patients is said to be £200m, a mere 1% of the amount the government is trying to strip from the NHS budget through its ludicrous and unachievable “efficiency savings” target.
Dr Bob Bury
Leeds

• Last year, while staying with French friends, I fell down a short flight of steps which resulted in my going to A&E. At reception, I was asked for my passport along with my EHIC card and the usual name, address etc. It took no longer to process than any of the other information. If it can be done in France, why not here in the UK?
Freda Worland
Harpenden, Hertfordshire

• To understand the present state of British universities, institutions whose success depends on free and open discussion, we need only read your letters pages where academics fear to have their names and employing universities displayed (Letters, 21 November).
Nick Williams
Auchenblae, Aberdeenshire

• So the Department for Transport can pay £50m to provide Wi-Fi on some trains (Report, 22 November) and yet families are being turned out of their house to wander the streets. We seem to have lost our way.
Gill Johnston
Peterborough

• As students at UEA 40 years ago, my boyfriend and I had a friend in the coypu eradication unit on the Broads. He left a freshly eradicated coypu on our doorstep in Norwich which we skinned and butchered. I roasted it with carrots and potatoes and we found it delicious (Letters, 21 November) – even better cold the next day.

Certainly not rats!
Helen Wolvey
St Albans

• Will the Queen insist that all the plumbers working on the palace (Report, 19 November) are Corgi registered?
Gerard Gordon
West Kirby, Merseyside

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

Playing politics with passports to the NHS | Brief letters

Crowns, clowns and Clement Attlee | Brief letters

Lucy Mangan is moved by the portrayal of Winston Churchill in The Crown (Acutely scripted, subtly acted quality soap – The Crown reigns supreme, 5 November). I wonder how she feels about the portrayal of Clement Attlee. The man who did so much to improve the lives of millions upon millions of Britons is shown as a mediocre, seedy intriguer.
Douglas Graham
Hamilton, South Lanarkshire

• The late Queen Mary would be very flattered to know that her crown, that of a queen consort with no constitutional authority (though she had a good eye for antiques), represented the royal prerogative on page five of Friday’s Guardian (Whose prerogative?, 4 November).
Peter Forster
London

• Many Guardian readers will be familiar with Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of “morphic resonance” concerning the interconnectedness of everything. So it may be no coincidence that the adoption of Donald Trump as GOP candidate coincided with the outbreak of scary clowns all over the US.
Alistair Mant
Steyning, West Sussex

• 126 years and counting: Somerset winning the county cricket championship (Chicago celebrates as Cubs end 108-year wait for World Series win, 4 November).
Nick Williams
Taunton

• In Ottery St Mary, the secondary school is “outstanding” and there’s “not a huge amount for teenagers to do” (Let’s move to…, Weekend, 5 November). Could it be, faute de mieux, that the teenagers are doing their homework?
Elizabeth Dunnett
Malvern

• How are those who are chided for visiting doctors with sprains, flu and colic (NHS clogged with 40,000 dandruff cases a year, 5 November) supposed to know that they don’t have a fracture, sepsis or appendicitis?
Dr John Doherty
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Crowns, clowns and Clement Attlee | Brief letters

Don’t leave translator out of sexy threesome | Brief letters

Really interesting article about this new French book (A global history of sex, Family, 29 October). I am dismayed at the fact (and this happens all the time) that you do not mention the translator, without whom this book would not be available in Britain. Why is it so difficult to recognise that the translator is as important as the two authors? So thank you, Will McMorran, for your translation of The Story of Sex. Signed: A fellow translator who will not give up!
Catherine Roux
Hillend, Fife

• Of course doctors don’t infallibly know best (Letters, 3 November), but I’ve found that my usual question to doctors – “What would you do if it was you?” – has always met with a useful and, I think, honest answer.
Brian Smith
Berlin

• I remember my teenage daughters mocking a teacher at school for wearing jeans “at her age” (G2, 3 November). When I met her she was 24 or 25! Now they are all in their 50s and I am 83 and still wearing them. They haven’t mocked me, in my hearing, yet, but then I do help them out with their gardens from time to time when needed.
Lizzie Hill
Guildford, Surrey

• Now that Theresa May has condemned Fifa for opposing players wearing red poppies by players on Armistice Day (Report, 2 November) I hope she will encourage them if they wish to wear the white (peace) poppy.
Denis Cobell
Chair, Right to Refuse to Kill

• Not being au fait with Mexican restaurants, is “Wahaca” the noise one makes having dined at this chain, now suffering from a suspected norovirus outbreak? (Report, 3 November, theguardian.com)
Annie Wharton
Kelso, Scotland

• Odd to think that the Earth started with a big bang but may end with a Trump (As polling day looms, Clinton urges America to step back from the brink, 3 November).
Paul Dibden

Eastleigh, Hampshire

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Don’t leave translator out of sexy threesome | Brief letters

Male contraceptive jab is really the elixir of eternal youth | Brief letters

Perhaps you expect us to know that “French painter Vigée le Brun” is Louise Élisabeth Vigée le Brun (Rare appearance for portrait of Emma Hamilton, 24 October). The artist’s gender is crucial to this painting’s many observational subtleties and thematic ironies, not least because here a celebrated woman artist (uncommon, to put it mildly, in 1790), in depicting a woman who famously made a career out of presenting herself in “attitudes” for the male gaze (here “Lady Hamilton as Ariadne”), shows us – wittily but not bitchily – how this sitter also confronts the gifted appraising eye of another woman.
John MacInerney
London

• One of my grandchildren went to the Globe with school, no doubt to enjoy “the conditions within which Shakespeare and his contemporaries worked” (Letters, 27 October). Her mother asked what she thought of the performance. “It rained,” said the child. “Well…?” from her parent. “No fucking roof,” was the reply.
Christine Hawkes
Cambridge

• Side effects: acne, depression and increased libido (Male contraceptive jab effective in trials, 28 October). Have they finally stumbled on the elixir of eternal youth?
Jean Glasberg
Cambridge

• Katy Guest (The Week in Books, Review, 29 October) reports that David Cameron has sold his memoirs for book publication, but is still in need of a title. Could I suggest Laugh Out Loud?
John Pawsey
Milton Keynes

• Could I suggest Making a Pig’s Ear out of a Silk Purse.
Dave Crook
Birmingham

• My GPs’ surgery now refuses to accept magazines on the grounds of “health and safety” (Letters, 28 October). I have managed to sneak a few in, though.
Rosalind Clayton
York

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Male contraceptive jab is really the elixir of eternal youth | Brief letters

UK already celebrates LGBT History Month | Brief letters

“Asked … whether he thought there should be a gay history month along the lines of black history month, Corbyn said: ‘There could be that…’ ” (Report, theguardian.com, 27 October). Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans History Month has existed in the UK since 2005 and has a major impact on schools throughout the country. We still celebrate it every February. I should know because I am the CEO of the charity that runs it.
Tony Fenwick
CEO, Schools Out UK/LGBT History Month

• I am grateful to Mr Fox for explaining that the EU is putting politics over prosperity (Fox warns on tariffs, 27 October) as I was assuming that they were putting principles over profit.
Steve Shearsmith
Cottingham, East Yorkshire

• Surely, with the active use of stents and microchip implants, the medical profession can invent some non-invasive valve procedure that can switch on and off the effect of a vasectomy (Letters, 27 October)? I freely offer this idea to the world as long as it is for ever known as a stop-cock.
Stephen Andrews
(Happily had the snip 30 years ago)
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

• With Bake Off the nation’s favourite programme, and 10 million watching the final episode (Royal picnic wins Bake Off crown for teacher, 27 October), is it just a coincidence that, in the same week, Public Health England issue dire warnings about a major increase in Type 2 diabetes?
Peter Davis
Dovercourt, Essex

• Bob Dylan did not “change rock from teenage to adult music” (Notes & queries, 27 October). His fans simply got older.
Michael Short
St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex

• You picture Christ’s tomb (Jesus Christ’s tomb uncovered, Eyewitness, 28 October). No mention of any bones. That would be an atheist’s dream, surely!
Jerry Stuart
London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

UK already celebrates LGBT History Month | Brief letters

Kea simply takes its share of nature’s bounty | Brief letters

From your report (22 September) on the endangered New Zealand parrot the kea: “its destructive habits such as … attacking stock and habitually stealing food”. A wild creature has no concept of harm or property, so both “attacking” and “habitually stealing” are demonising anthropomorphism. The kea, like any other predator species, is simply and instinctively taking its share of nature’s bounty, the only way it could have survived until now. By any rational criterion, a wild animal is beyond human conceits of blame and responsibility.
Alex Watson
North Nibley, Gloucestershire

• Samuel Gibbs fingers a poor battery as the iPhone 7’s big weakness (Technology review, 24 September). This after five hours’ music, three hours’ browsing, photos, emails, etc. Allowing for seven hours sleep where do, you know, people, fit in?
Bill Steedman
Edinburgh

• It’s autumn. Cue creeper-clad cottage at Llanrwst (Autumn’s glow, 19 September), red deer in Richmond Park (Stag in a green scene, 23 September) again. Wales has hundreds of picturesque cottages next to rivers and Britain six species of deer. Any chance of some variety in 2017?
Kate Gibbs
Llanfairfechan

• Homa Khaleeli’s article “Snap, crackle and filth” (Family, 24 September) reminded me of my father’s oft-repeated “Nothing wrong with good clean dirt.” This was in the 1950s, and 60 years later my brother and I are in excellent, unmedicated health.
Stephen Lee
Ryde, Isle of Wight

• Re the obituary of Sir Trevor Jones (24 September), please note that a Bootle accent is not a Liverpool accent.
Joyce Blackledge
Formby, Merseyside

• I was taught to drive by a Welsh woman fluent in both English and Welsh. I asked her what she thought of bilingual signage (Letters, 24 September). “Terrible,” she said. “I have to read everything twice.”
John Shimwell
London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Kea simply takes its share of nature’s bounty | Brief letters

Miracles, midsummer and minor ailments | Brief letters

Janis Sharp (Opinion, 17 September) writes “support through difficult times means so much to someone whose life is in limbo. The good that exists in our world and the power of the people in it can and does achieve miracles.” I have set up a petition calling on the Ministry of Justice to overturn Lauri Love’s extradition order. We can at least make our views known about this cruel decision – and try to achieve a miracle – rather than just thinking it’s somebody else’s problem. The petition is at: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-the-extradition-of-lauri-love
David Smith
Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire

• It is so disappointing that after Saturday’s marvellous Refugees Welcome march, there has been almost no publicity from the BBC or the press – not even from the Guardian. Thousands of mainly young people, with colourful banners and placards, enthusiastically chanted “Refugees are welcome here”.  Politicians and actors added their voices in Parliament Square. These young people are our future, yet their voices clearly haven’t reached Theresa May, who is even now preparing to speak discouragingly at the UN summit on refugees in New York.
Thelma Percy
Bognor Regis, West Sussex

• I too am a lover of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Reports of my death, Weekend, 17 September). When I am sad I play the DVD. Two weeks ago I went to my granddaughter’s wedding in a forest outside Paris, beside the river. The weather was very hot and it was magical. It reminded me of that beautiful play. I danced even though I’m 86 years old.
Shirley Betteridge
Southampton

• Perhaps some old folk remedies will re-emerge now that the NHS no longer offers treatment for a variety of “minor ailments” (G2, 19 September). I’ve been told that the best cure for a ganglia, for example, is to hit it hard with a Bible.
Alison Jeffers
Manchester

• Please do not interfere with Rufus (Letters, 16 September) It is the only crossword I have any hope of finishing. I can’t even get started in all the others.
Rev Cecil Heatley
London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Miracles, midsummer and minor ailments | Brief letters

Leave the useless husband out of it | Brief letters

Kenneth Clarke in Laura Kuenssberg’s documentary on Brexit (Last night’s TV, G2, 9 August) commented that “the referendum result was not simply about Europe”. Exactly so. It occurs to me that the success of the leave campaign’s bus message (“We send the EU £350m a week – let’s fund our NHS instead”) had little to do with Europe but indicates the high priority the electorate gives to more spending on the NHS. Our government might do well to recognise this.
Derek Gambell
Bromley, Kent

• No suggestions for an affordable holiday in the UK (Any answers?, Money, 13 August) but a question. Would you have published the sentence “if your useless husband had failed to book anything …” if the words had been “useless wife”? What does the style guide say?
Jennifer Henley
London

• Can it be true that one of the founders of this restaurant, where queueing is the norm, is named Wai Ting? Or is Marina O’Loughlin having us on (Weekend, 13 August)?
John Pilsbury
Wrexham

• There’s no need to go abroad to taste weird-flavoured ice-cream (Cheesy ice-cream takes Czech town by storm, 10 August). I tried a Blue Vinney cone overlooking Chesil Beach in Dorset a few years ago. I love blue cheese; I adore proper ice-cream; but one mouthful of this disgusting concoction was quite enough. Still, it helped me get my own back on the thieving seagull race. A hungry bird swallowed it whole and I swear there was a look of surprise on its face for a full two minutes. The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch, eh?
Caroline Thomas
London

• Ian Watson (Letters, 13 August) is fully entitled to his controversial views on the quality of my singing but, just in case anyone is wondering, I would like to make clear that I am not the Mike Pender who was lead singer with the Searchers in the 60s.
Mike Pender
Cardiff

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Leave the useless husband out of it | Brief letters

Live screenings from regional stages, please | Brief letters

Your correspondents are too quick to praise live screenings (Letters, 2 August). Live screenings may be a valid experience when I see overprovided and oversubsidised London audiences flocking to performances beamed from Newcastle, Wakefield, Truro etc, where costs are cheaper and where professional theatre is comparatively rare. The present arrangement is a stale excuse from so-called national companies to avoid their responsibilities to those of us for whom London is not accessible.
Don Moore
Garstang, Lancashire

• What constitutes high quality? What if I don’t like opera (OK, I quite like Carmen) and only drink beer? Does that make me a northern heathen? Any road up, it’ll be reet when I see Gandalf and Jean-Luc Picard at’t Lyceum next Tuesday. No wine at the interval!
David Elsom
Sheffield

• Maybe this hand-washing thing (Letters, 3 August) comes from the US. WH Auden criticised “the American habit of washing one’s hands after pissing, as if the penis were an object, too filthy for any decent person to touch”. Americans do seem particularly enthusiastic about it, often scrubbing up as if they were about to carry out open-heart surgery.
Bev Littlewood
Richmond, London

• Regarding “Honestly, you really must come round for dinner soon” (30 July). I did once hear the Swedish language referred to as ordfattig (word poor). That apart, I loved Andrew Brown’s article and please do insist he drops round for supper – anytime.
Deborah von Kohler
St Austell, Cornwall

• Samantha Cameron’s stylist and George Osborne’s aide are in line for OBEs on top of generous salaries (Report, 1 August). No award for Josh Coombes, a young barber who gives free haircuts to the homeless in Exeter, there no doubt thanks to Cameron’s and Osborne’s austerity measures.
Sue Boulding
Baschurch, Shropshire

• So the Guardian is encouraged to drop titles and stick to the given name and surname (Letters, 3 August). An excellent idea. Quakers have been doing this for more than 350 years.
Janie Cottis
Wantage, Oxfordshire

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Live screenings from regional stages, please | Brief letters

Tips for when the phone scammers call | Brief letters

Your article about scammers (How a phone call from ‘the bank’ cost an unsuspecting couple their life savings, 30 July) gave much good advice. However, when advising people to take a name and ring back it should have emphasised that they should use a different phone or leave it for a while before doing so. I write from bitter experience, having called back straight away not knowing the scammers were still on the line – even when I thought I was speaking to the police, having dialled 999.
Aileen Taylor
Trowbridge, Wiltshire

• Alfred Hickling asks if anyone can recall Kander and Ebb’s “clunkers” such as Flora the Red Menace or The Rink (The World Goes Round review, 1 August). We here in Richmond certainly can. Both of these clever, socially aware musicals have had successful productions on the tiny stage of our wonderful Orange Tree theatre. Flora was such a success that it was revived at least once. As for The Rink, we have an abiding memory of an intricate dance routine by six actors on roller skates in a space about 15 feet square – and no crashes!
Sylvia and Bernard Marder
Richmond, London

• Michael Carley of the University of Bath (Letters, 29 July) claimed that our skies haven’t been clear of aircraft for 200 years. Aeroplanes were invented in the early 20th century. Before then there were hot-air balloons, but how many? Were they regularly floating over the Yorkshire moors, Snowdonia, the Lake District, Cornwall, Devon or Scotland? I would hazard a guess that most people had never seen any form of aviation until the 20th century.
Caroline Compton
Oxford

• At my gym, there’s a sign on the door leading out of the toilets that says “Now wash your hands” (Letters, 2 August). So I go back to do it again. I’m sending this letter from my smartphone while trapped in a cycle of hygiene. Please rescue me.
Roy Kettle
Hitchin, Hertfordshire

• Back in the glory days of Bronco toilet paper, in the lavatories of some public buildings, each crackly, non-absorbent sheet bore the message “Now wash your hands”. Probably not an option with today’s softer loo paper.
Margaret Waddy
Cambridge

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Tips for when the phone scammers call | Brief letters

Vitamin Dietary supplements Come Up Brief Once Once again

As soon as again the U.S. Preventive Providers Activity Force (USPSTF) has concluded that there is no good proof to support the program use of multivitamins or most person or blend nutritional vitamins by wholesome grownups to stop cardiovascular ailment or cancer.

The USPSTF also recommended against the use of two distinct vitamins — beta-carotene and vitamin E. Beta-carotene has been linked to a significant enhance in the chance for lung cancer among smokers, although “a large and constant physique of proof has demonstrated that vitamin E supplementation has no effect on cardiovascular disease, cancer, or all-trigger mortality.”

For other vitamins or multivitamins, the process force located handful of considerable harms, however they stated the evidence was insufficient to permit definitive assessments of the risks and positive aspects.

The recommendation statement, published in Annals of Inner Medication, updates the USPSTF’s preceding 2003 suggestions and incorporate new evidence about vitamin D, calcium, selenium and folic acid. An initial draft of the recommendation statement was published final December. The USPSTF statement is broadly consistent with equivalent statements from the National Institutes of Health, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American Cancer Society, the American Institute for Cancer Research, the American Heart Association, and the American Academy of Household Doctors, all of which identified no proof that nutritional vitamins could aid prevent cardiovascular ailment or cancer.

The USPSTF states that nutritional vitamins and minerals are important to general well being and notes that “a diet plan wealthy in fruits, greens, entire grains, fat-totally free and lower-body fat dairy items, and seafood has been related with a diminished risk for cardiovascular ailment and cancer.” The group also acknowledges that some people with nicely-defined conditions may possibly advantage from specific nutrients. Folic acid, for instance, when taken by pregnant females can support avoid neural tube defects, and vitamin D  may be advantageous in older folks to stop harm from falling.

Virtually half (forty%) of  U.S. adults take at least one particular dietary supplement, and nearly a third (32%) take a multivitamin supplement. In 2010, people in the U.S. invested a lot more than $ 28 billion on dietary supplements.

Vitamin Dietary supplements Come Up Brief Once Once again