Polly Toynbee says she will eat her hat if Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves don’t get rid of the two-child cap soon (Starmer will bin the two-child benefit cap and outdo New Labour on tackling poverty – I’ll bet on it, 19 July). As a grandad with less hair than he used to have, I have a number of tasteful hats. I’ll be keeping the tastiest one for her.
Paul Goetzee
Liverpool
• Dr Mark Wilcox (Letters, 22 July) thought Christmas had come early to West Yorkshire when he came across holly bushes covered in berries. Here in South Yorkshire, Christmas is all year long. My garden hollies always have berries. Holly trees love it on the limestone we sit on, and the males have plenty of females to cross-pollinate with, which produce the berries.
Mike Eggenton
Firbeck, South Yorkshire
• Those of us living in more modest accommodation should be glad we don’t have to pay renovation costs as expensive as those faced by Buckingham Palace (King to receive extra £45m of public money as crown estate income soars, 24 July). Oh, but wait a minute, yes, we do actually.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire
• Zoe Wood (Liberating and a huge pain: my week with a Nokia ‘dumbphone’, 20 July) writes that on her morning commute without her smartphone, “it soon dawned on me that I had nothing to read”. I have an idea: buy a newspaper. The Guardian, perhaps?
Crispin Partridge
Whittington, Norfolk
• Over the last few years I have reused various types of rubber bands (Letters, 23 July) to make a ball. It now weighs nearly 600g. Rather a heavy bounce.
Ann Newell
Thame, Oxfordshire
• Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
