Stephanie Lovett asks why “crippling private rent” is not being addressed by politicians (Letters, 28 November). The answer could lie in reports following the Grenfell Tower disaster which showed that 123 MPs – almost one in five – are private landlords. They include the chancellor of the exchequer, the foreign secretary, the shadow foreign secretary and the Speaker. Eighty-seven of them are Tories and 28 Labour.
Nigel Gann
Lichfield, Staffordshire
• I’ve tried dowsing (Letters, 28 November) and it didn’t work. But according to Seamus Heaney’s poem The Diviner you need to have the knack: “The bystanders would ask to have a try. / He handed them the rod without a word. / It lay dead in their grasp till nonchalantly / He gripped expectant wrists. The hazel stirred.”
Gareth Reeves
Durham
• With regard to comparing dowsing to quantum mechanics and the theory of gravity, QM works (eg lasers), the theory of gravity works (spacecraft). Science can’t explain “how” dowsing works because it doesn’t bloody work, as controlled experiments have repeatedly shown, anecdotal “evidence” notwithstanding.
Dr Len Fisher
Senior research fellow, school of physics, University of Bristol
• Am I the only person hoping that we are nearing the time when famous people who come out as LGBT no longer need to be reported as news (Six-time swimming champion and pundit Mark Foster reveals he is gay, 28 November)?
Jenny Page
Newton Poppleford, Devon
• It’s a lot easier to tell which is which in a block of photos if they’re numbered, as on pages 4 and 5 of Tuesday’s Sport section, rather than “clockwise from left”. Please can you do them like that all the time?
Richard Wood
Toddington, Bedfordshire
• Rodney Bewes’ obituary (23 November) failed to mention that, in his long and varied career, he had also played straight man to Basil Brush – Mr Rodney.
Wal Callaby
Whatfield, Suffolk
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