I encourage the Guardian to drop the description “strongman” for despots like Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader who rules with fear, torture and murder (Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov ‘hospitalised with suspected Covid-19’, 21 May). It conflates strength and violence. And it denigrates other men. True strength is found in those who courageously oppose Kadyrov.
Tim Nichols
Hackney, London
• There are white pheasants (Letters, 24 May) in Northumberland too. This year we’ve had a pheasant pair in the garden, a white female and a more conventional brightly coloured male, known as Carrie and Boris. I’m told it’s considered bad form to shoot them, so maybe white pheasants will become more common.
Jane Wrigley
Wall, Northumberland
• Re tennis balls in tights (Letters, 24 May), in my day it was a stocking together with a rhyme: “PK chewing gum, penny, penny packet, first you eat it, then you crack it, then you stick it to your jacket.”
Lorna Ferguson
Perth, Scotland
• Jonathan Freedland says the public won’t tolerate “a government that is both useless and cruel” (The NHS surcharge debacle reveals a government both cruel and useless, 23 May). If only. How soon we forget that just six months ago English voters rewarded three continuous years of Brexit-inspired uselessness and cruelty with a stonking Tory majority.
Trevor Fenton
Dundee
• To Jonathan Freedland’s claim I’d respond “austerity and Cameron”.
Steven Julians
Romford, London
• Besides the staff goggles, protective screens and masks proposed by Wetherspoon’s (Report, 22 May), drinkers’ spacing may be helped by drinking yards of ale.
David Ehrlich
Birmingham
