The fact that the people now running this country displayed bourgeois triumphalism and animal spirits (Back to the bright young things, 26 September) at Oxford in the 1980s is less important than the question of whether they have grown up into rounded human beings who are capable of really caring about those less privileged or more vulnerable than themselves. On the evidence of their assault on benefits, and their aloof attitude towards the European community’s efforts to find a coherent solution to the refugee crisis, I fear they have not changed at all.
Andrew Colley
Halstead, Essex
• As an artist with a studio close to the scene of the anti-gentrification protest in which Shoreditch’s cereal cafe was targeted (Report, 28 September) I was rather put in mind of the old Cockney rhyme: “Tenner a bowl for tuppenny rice / Extra quid for treacle / Property soars and money talks / Bang goes the easel / Luxury loft when I get home / Hipsters under the table / Artisan ale and silicon chips / Bang goes the easel / Up and down the City Road / Towering over the Eagle / Property soars and money talks / Bang goes the easel.” Or something like that. I may have misremembered some of the words.
John Keane
London
• I can’t resist joining in the Bandiera Rossa arguments (Open door, 28 September). At singsongs of the LSE socialist society in the early 1940s, the last line, “Evviva il comunismo e la libertà”, was followed by the call “Evviva Lenin et bas Mussolin’”. It was a Spanish civil war song of Italian origin.
Margaret Hopkins
Epping, Essex
• Would Honey Huan’s description of her “journey from red guard to avant-garde” ring any bells in Brighton (Doonesbury, 28 September)?
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire
• I knew it! Wales manage a great victory, but all your main headlines are about England (Sport, 28 September). You are just too Anglocentric. Remember that there are other nations that make up the UK, and they deserve better coverage than you usually give. Be fair!
Paul Tench
Cardiff
