Having just spent nine months in Bonn as part of my languages degree, I never experienced the faultless German rail network described by Helen Pidd (G2, 26 August). The majority of trains were delayed, nationwide strikes occurred, and Deutsche Bahn only provides Wi-Fi on the expensive inter-city services. While I would welcome the renationalisation of Britain’s railways, we would do well not to constantly hold up Germany as the example of efficiency.
Eve Edmunds
Twickenham, Middlesex
• Tom Sutcliffe is right (My vision of the future: no more ‘vision thing’, 24 August). This nebulous term should be expunged from our vocabulary. I remember being appalled when I heard a former BBC director general saying about an absent colleague: “I don’t think he has a positive vision.” All he meant was: “He doesn’t agree with me.” I later cheered up when I read what the German ex-chancellor Helmut Schmidt had said: “People who have a vision ought to go and see a doctor.”
Harry Schneider
London
• Alex Salmond has accused the BBC of bias against the SNP and of “dancing to a tune written by Whitehall and Westminster” (Report, 25 August). Is this the same Alex Salmond who, only a few years ago, promised the SNP conference that he would make England “dance to a Scottish tune”?
Tony Fletcher
Neath, Glamorgan
• John Ayto’s dictionary of the subject (Letters, 26 August) says :“Yes, there is rhyming slang for rhyming slang. Australian English offers ‘old Jack Lang’, an unidentified personage, perhaps the hero of a long-forgotten anecdote famous for his prodigious use of rhymes.”
Tony Augarde
Author, Wordplay
