One of the few remaining opportunities we have to show good-natured tolerance and friendliness towards a stranger is when you both walk towards each other and there is that fleeting moment of eye contact, grinning and both stepping aside in the same direction, followed by a smiling and jocular “sorry”. Cameron Roh and other “pavement vigilantes” (Letters, 9 November) seem intent on creating a dystopian Orwellian urban environment, with the population marching in single file towards a future of grim conformism.
Bob Caldwell
Badby, Northamptonshire
• Have I broken a record in smug letter writing (Letters, 12 November)? My first letter to the Guardian was written with my friend Maureen Statham about 1950 when we were at school. It proposed the need for a bin to stop people throwing used bus tickets on the bus platform.
Margaret Martlew
Sheffield
