Re Polly Toynbee’s article (Zahawi, Sunak, Johnson: this is rule by plutocrat. It’s like a stench that’s worse each day, 23 January), I used to put Steve Bell’s cartoons on the kitchen wall day by day. I stopped on 21 January 2011, with his skewering of David Cameron as an inversion of Marx, saying: “From each according to their vulnerability, to each according to their greed.” I despair that I still have no need to change it.
Sue Jolley
Altrincham, Greater Manchester
• Politicians have no need for a chatbot to reply to members of the public (Letters, 22 January); they have staff to do that. Working at the Department of Trade in the 1980s, part of my job was to draft replies for the minister. The recipient of one letter I had drafted complained later that it was a “masterpiece of non-answer”. When my boss saw this, he congratulated me on having “cracked it”.
Sue Firth
North Hykeham, Lincolnshire
• As a long-term allotment holder, I object strongly to Zoe Williams’ inclusion of allotments in her “flag-waving stoicism” comment (Don’t keep calm and carry on: how Britain got a furious new attitude, 24 January). Now more than ever, with the climate in crisis (to say nothing of food politics), tending an allotment is a radical act.
Sue Hogg
Colne, Lancashire
• The fact that Rishi Sunak needs to engage an ethics adviser for advice about Nadhim Zahawi (Report, 24 January) merely confirms the lack of ethics within the Tory party. Or perhaps it’s just an example of Tory outsourcing.
Arthur Stansfield
Wickham Market, Suffolk
• Might the Wombles consider moving to Dartmoor (Thousands march across Dartmoor to demand right to wild camp, 21 January)?
Tim Watson
Worcester
