Is there some legal or Latin term for the logical black hole whereby the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs can deny a request to clean up the River Deben because not enough people swim in it, yet must surely understand that the reason more people don’t swim in it is because the water isn’t clean enough (Bathing water status rarely granted in England, analysis finds, 23 March)?
Judith Martin
Winchester
• I hope the irony is not lost on French protesters that the postponed state visit was being undertaken by a man who started a new job at the age of 73 (King Charles’s visit to France postponed amid protests, 24 March).
John Hubbard
Bournemouth, Dorset
• If men were far more likely to suffer from urinary tract infections than women, would they still be considered “no more than a painful annoyance”? (E coli from meat behind half a million UTIs in the US every year, study suggests, 23 March).
Penny Spinks
Wargrave, Berkshire
• I think Styx Kershaw (Letters, 23 March) is being too harsh on Boris Johnson. He clearly could not hear the party downstairs above the noisy junketing going on in his own flat. A common experience in our London council flat in the swinging 60s.
Bill Sheils
York
• I suggest that the pervading culture which Boris Johnson oversaw at No 10 is best described as “institutionalised exceptionalism”.
Molly Ludlam
Edinburgh
