After reading the letters (26 December) about Alan Rusbridger’s successor as editor-in-chief of the Guardian and allowing us to have a say, I think the point has been missed. We all want the Guardian to flourish, in which case the most important electorate would be potential new readers, not loyal ones. I believe the employees of the paper are probably most in touch and able to advise the Scott Trust, otherwise a hardcore of non-representative readers would steer the paper into a cul de sac, in the way our political parties are now detached from the wider electorate.
Martin Cooper
Bromley, Kent
• Perhaps your new year resolution might be to temper your language. The topsplash headline “Labour faces Scotland bloodbath” (27 December) is sordidly attention-grabbing and inappropriate – and not becoming of any serious newspaper. “Resounding defeat” would be more appropriate. Sometimes there really are bloodbaths: what language would you use then?
Dr Susan Treagus
Manchester
• My grandfather was a Liverpool corporation gas lamplighter throughout the austerity of the 1920s and 30s. Along with his sunset and sunrise duties, he was required to go out around midnight to turn lamps down or off to save gas, before going out again to turn them up before dawn to light the streets for those on their way to work. Plus ça change (Letters, 27 December)?
Gerard Morgan
London
• Robert Nowell is incorrect to claim that if there is a need to cull foxes, hunting is the way to do it (Letters, 27 December). During foot and mouth disease in 2000-01, hunting completely stopped for 10 months and researchers found there was actually a slight decline in the fox population (Nature, Vol. 419, 5/9/02, p34).
Christopher Clayton
Chester, Cheshire
• I was overjoyed to see that 36 – over a third – of the 100 bestselling books of 2014 were children’s books (24 December), including eight of the Top 10. Does this mean that children’s books will now be given the weekly review slots in the Guardian and Observer which they so richly deserve?
Teresa Heapy @theapy
Oxford
• Despite the snowy scenes not so far away, winter’s not in Somerset; picked raspberries today.
Theresa Graham
Clevedon, Somerset
