On Sunday, I completed a census form on paper. On Monday, I posted the form early in the morning. On Tuesday, I was amazed to be confronted on my doorstep by a young woman, presumably a paid employee of the Office for National Statistics, enquiring whether I had completed my census form. On Wednesday, I am musing upon this premature and costly use of human resources.
Yvonne Klein Burnett
Banstead, Surrey
• A minute’s silent tribute to 126,284 dead (Britain pauses to remember Covid dead on lockdown anniversary, 23 March). Were we to observe a minute’s silence for each individual, the silence would stretch to around three months. Were New Zealand to commemorate their dead in the same way, the silence would last less than half an hour.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire
• Since study is going to be included in the excuses to travel abroad (Covid travel rules will include ‘Stanley Johnson loophole’ for second homes, 23 March), I presume I am allowed to lie on a Spanish beach, learning the lingo from my Spanish phrase book. If I bring back a nasty variant, that’s too bad.
Elaine Steane
Oxford
• Is a tsar the best person to advise on modernising a monarchy (Royal family consider diversity tsar under modernisation plans, 21 March)? When the last one, Nicholas II, tried it, the consequences didn’t work out at all well for his family.
Michael Peel
London
• Charlie Williams was a BAME comedian (and footballer) who hosted The Golden Shot for six months in 1973-74, which was certainly a major TV quiz show (Letters, 23 March).
Steve Vanstone
Wolverhampton
