Gwyn Topham’s excellent analysis (P&O Ferries is not the first in UK waters to hire low-cost workers, 30 March) rightly points out the government’s decision to exempt ferries from national minimum wage rules in October 2020. Yet another case of Britannia waiving the rules rather than ruling the waves.
Andrew Linington
Clevedon, Somerset
• Re women working on farms (Letters, 29 March), I now possess a silver medal won by my 18-year-old aunt Gertie Cooper in a ploughing match (with a horse plough) at Collingham, Nottinghamshire, in 1919. So many men had gone to war and not come back that women could, and did, plough. She was tiny, but the horses respected her.
Linda Marriott
Lincoln
