If the Nobel committee can have the wit, imagination and generosity to award Bob Dylan the literature prize, which isn’t an obvious choice, surely the powers-that-be at Westminster Abbey should now end their cynical refusal to honour WS Gilbert with a place in Poets’ Corner, which is not only very obvious, but should have happened long ago.
Mike Leigh
London
• Why did Daniel Blake not ask his doctor for a sick note (Letters, 27 October)? That was all that was needed. As a GP I have written countless sick notes to support patients with their claims; it’s a routine and simple task. But then there would have been no story.
Dr Stephen Smith
Hove, East Sussex
• It’s disingenuous of Liam Stokes of the Countryside Alliance (Letters, 31 October) to use a reverse marginal costing argument to suggest grouse moor operators receive no public subsidy. Upland grazing could not exist without taxpayer funds, vital in preserving open country from reversion to natural reforestation.
Conrad Smith
Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear
• Is it just egotistical that Johnny Marr considers that the Smiths invented indie music (Weekend, 29 October)? Pete Shelley, Howard Devoto and other members of the Buzzcocks who packaged their first EP by hand six years before the Smiths came on the scene, or bands on small independent record labels before punk, may also have a view. It is like saying the Meantime brewery in Greenwich invented real ale in the 1990s.
David Pryke
London
• Never mind vending machines and shop keepers (Quids in! Treasury warns shopkeepers to get ready for 12-sided £1 coin, 31 October), what about the millions of supermarket trollies?
Martin Cooper
Bromley, Kent
• If we get the nightmare of President Trump, will the presidential jet be renamed Hair Force One?
Chris Baker
Minety, Wiltshire
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
