Page 5 in your 29 November edition about ordinary people desperately shoving each other to get a cheap telly (They’re going to need a bigger boot … Black Friday brings shopping frenzy). Page 7 in the same edition about rich investors desperately buying and selling non-existent flats in a non-existent development . Difference? Black Friday comes once a year; obscene casino property speculation happens 24/7/365. Effects: Black Friday means shops lose a little revenue and people get a few bargains; obscene casino property speculation causes homelessness, rampant, greed-driven private rental rises, poverty and associated mental health problems; and incentivises tax avoidance, leading to further austerity measures by a government who couldn’t care less.
Max Fishel
London
• While police were called to Tesco in Manchester on Black Friday to deal with greedy, fighting shoppers, at our branch of that hugely profitable supermarket there was an equally depressing scene. As shoppers entered the emporium, they were buttonholed by assertive volunteers and urged to give donations to the local food bank. Lists thrust at those manoeuvring their trolleys through the door requested tins and packets of foods that might fill hungry stomachs but certainly would do nothing to enhance health. Both scenarios speak much of the nation we have become.
Margaret Kitchen
Ormskirk, Lancashire
• Striking juxtaposition on Saturday’s front page: “Christmas, a time for giving – and grabbing” and “Our appeal: Please help us take on mental illness”. Taking on increasingly widespread social madness would seem an even bigger ask than usual.
Howard Lane
London
