Vince Cable (Progressive MPs must fight Corbyn’s hard line on the EU, 28 July) criticises the Labour leader for collaborating with the right, and references Ramsay MacDonald “propping up a Conservative-dominated government committed to austerity”. Remind me again what Vince Cable and Nick Clegg were doing between 2010 and 2015.
Gerry Wyld
Slough, Berkshire
• Re Trevor Harley’s comment about the logic of free trade “making everyone aspire to asparagus” (Letters, 29 July), during my last visit to the food bank, I was supplied with – among other things – a jar of grilled asparagus. Presumably abject poverty is no longer a barrier to compulsory middle-class aspiration? How gloriously “egalitarian”.
Martin Fradley
Worthing, West Sussex
• You refer to Sir Philip Hampton (BBC women let pay gap happen, 28 July) as “co-chair with Dame Helen Alexander of the Hampton-Alexander review” on how to get more senior women in business. As a start, perhaps we could call it the Alexander-Hampton review.
John Palmer
London
• Ian Jack’s delightful recollections of hot-metal subbing (The Beast is back…, 29 July) took me back to the 60s, when I was a humble hack in Birmingham toiling alongside the inimitable Dennis Barker, then the Guardian’s Midlands correspondent, whose disdain for subeditors was legendary. “Subs,” he would exclaim with venom, “lurk beneath the surface intent upon destroying greater craft!”
Roger Busby
Bridford, Devon
• OK. We get it. Podcasts are cool (Pod complex, G2, 28 July). Now please can we go back to having reviews of ordinary radio programmes?
Gina Langford-Allen
Canterbury
• The weasel as the UK’s smallest carnivore (Thomas Eaton’s Quiz, Weekend, 29 July)? I can think of several insects and spiders that come at rather more to the pound, not to mention plants such as the sundew (Country diary, 31 July).
Peter Criddle
Shrewsbury, Shropshire
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• The final letter above was amended on 31 July 2017 to add a cross-reference to the Country Diary that appeared in print but had been omitted from the online version.
