Since when has a public protest on the streets of London been a private event (Can’t pay, won’t pay: row over demo charges, 20 February)? Trying to charge demonstrators for the policing of their demonstrations is yet another attempt to privatise public services, to which we must be strongly opposed. We intend to join the Climate Change March on 7 March, whether or not the police attend, and we hope many others will do too.
Sonia Markham and Ernest Rodker
London
• Crispin Odey’s predictions for the global economy (Nils Pratley, 21 February) end with a question: “But why was The Wizard of Oz written in the 1930s?” While the film came out in 1939, making use of the new Technicolor process, the novel it was based upon was written by L Frank Baum in 1900. There was for a while a popular theory that the novel was an elaborate allegory on US monetary policy in the wake of the panic of 1893.
Dr Bruce E Baker
Lecturer in American history, Newcastle University
• I cannot be the only person who abhors the use of the term “suicide bomber” for children – the latest you report being only seven years old (Report, 23 January) – who are coerced by their despicable handlers into acting in a way they don’t understand. This is not suicide, it is murder.
John Franklin
London
• If, as your correspondent George D Lewis claims in a letter (23 February), we need nuclear weapons, who does not, and why?
David Rainbird
Wallasey, Wirral
• What’s with these Wiltshire puns sneaking on to the letters page (21 February)? Some sort of Trowbridge Horse plot?
Jonathan Clayden
Stockport
• One doesn’t wish to lower the tone by correcting Peter Gibson (Letters, 23 February), but Burma actually means Be Undressed, Ready, My Angel. Not that I’ve ever had reason to use it.
Terence Hall
Manchester
