What hypocrisy for the human resources director of Morrisons to justify closing its final salary pension schemes to existing members (Report, 31 January) by pointing to the discrepancy between them and newer recruits on a less favourable pension scheme. It was Morrisons itself which created the discrepancy. As usual, HR is simply a mouthpiece for management, which wishes to exploit the lack of employee power in order to tilt the balance in favour of directors’ bonuses and shareholders’ dividends.
Christopher Clayton
Chester
• Stephen Fry’s incisive remarks about God (If God exists, he is mean and stupid, says Fry, 2 February) reminded me of the late Jill Tweedie’s comments that knowing there was no God had helped her accept life’s injustices. She was unable to accept the possibility that a loving powerful God could exist who had afflicted his creation with all the miseries of human existence.
Mabel Taylor
Knutsford, Cheshire
• I’m sure that many readers of Jane Austen’s novels will have pointed out that baseball was played in England by about 1800 (Letters, 2 February). As a child, Catherine Morland, heroine of Northanger Abbey, is said to “prefer … baseball to ... books”.
Florence Rayner
Sheffield
• Whereas the “more fastidious French” may well refer to a cul-de-sac as a rue sans issue, those less pedantic will call it an impasse (Letters, 2 February).
Ian Joyce
Milton Keynes
• We’ve had daffodils in our Oxfordshire garden since the new year (Letters, 29 January). They are called January Gold .
Sally Coles
Church Enstone, Oxfordshire
• Must be a first: three footballers, two called Jill and Faye, in your birthdays list for 2 February.
John Bailey
St Albans, Hertfordshire
