Homo sapiens is the world’s most productive trader, whatever that means, in an ecosystem teeming with life, writes Christine McNulty (Letters, 17 April). Then why is it that the number of wild animals in the world has declined by over 50% since 1970, and that the rate of extinction of species is now somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times the natural background rate? It seems to me that H sapiens is doing its best to destroy the “ecosystem that is teeming with life”, and that this is the consequence largely of free-market capitalism.
Roger Plenty
Stroud, Gloucestershire
• John Grace (Digested week, 15 April) thinks his dying wish to live long enough to see the last in the series of Line of Duty may be somewhat trivial, but is it? When I was a hospice nurse in the 1990s, whole families would gather eagerly around the bed to watch the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice. Several patients told me that they really hoped to survive another week, not in order to meet a new grandchild or watch a daughter get married, but so they wouldn’t miss out on Elizabeth Bennett getting her man.
Dr Irene Tuffrey-Wijne
Associate professor in intellectual disability and palliative care, Kingston University and St George’s, University of London
• I enjoyed Gaby Hinsliff’s column (There’s a formula for happiness, 15 April) but I don’t think the concept is a new one. I have lived happily for many years with a motto from Joseph Brotherton, who was Salford’s first MP after the Reform Act of 1832. While campaigning tirelessly for social justice and education, he expressed his recipe for personal happiness succinctly: “My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.”
Sharon Cooke
Worsley, Salford
• I do hope that those who in recent letters have referred to Banda systems and machines are paying proper regard to Messrs Block and Anderson whose names gave rise to the trade name. For many years in the 1950s I passed the Glasgow offices of the firm.
Bill Tulloch
Dunfermline, Fife
• Regarding the Yotam effect in supermarkets (Letters, 17 April), we had no trouble getting lamb, butter beans and tahini at Sainsbury’s in Walsall. Wonder how Roy Boffy (formerly of Walsall) got on in Sutton Coldfield?
Andrew Steed
Walsall, West Midlands
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