Why does Barbara MacArthur (Letters, 19 May) feel she has to explain anything to these “charities” which these days operate more like rapacious multinationals than the benevolent bodies they claim to be? Immediately put down the phone, delete the email without opening it and put the unopened post in the recycling; or my now preferred tactic – return to sender. The charities to which I regularly donate know that my donations will cease if I receive any glossy magazines or updates on their activities (otherwise known as requests for more money), which I regard as an improper use of my money.
Susan Cooper
Sheerness, Kent
• Does the Guardian, or perhaps the Bank of England, know something we don’t? The mock-ups imagining what the next £20 note might look like, published in the print edition (Public asked to pick art figure for banknote, 20 May), portray the contenders on the face of the note, in the place traditionally occupied by the Queen, rather than on the back, where (for example) Adam Smith now appears. Will we be a republic by 2020, when the notes are due to enter circulation? If so, will this be in the Queen’s speech? It wasn’t in the manifesto.
Paul Gelling
Chepstow, Monmouthshire
• The baker refused to ice a cake with the slogan “Support Gay Marriage” (Christian bakers lose ‘gay cake’ court case, 20 May). He did not refuse to serve the customer because he was gay. Discrimination would be, for instance, refusing to serve a traveller in a public house, which is not a matter of conscience. In the past, the law has acknowledged that people’s consciences lead them to different places. If a law is used against the individual conscience, we must, regardless of our own opinions, always ask whether that use is compatible with a free society.
Mary Jackson
Gilston, Hertfordshire
• The wonderful Cantre’r Gwaelod by Gillian Clarke (A poem a day, 19 May) moved me greatly, as have many of the poems chosen by Carol Ann Duffy and printed each day in the Guardian. Will they all be published in a booklet? I would happily buy such a booklet, even more so if some of the profits went to the Guardian’s Keep it in the Ground campaign.
John Marzillier
Oxford
• If the storms of February 2014 uncovered the lost lands of Cardigan Bay, it wasn’t for the first time. On holiday at Borth in the 1960s, my cousins and I would walk up the beach to the petrified forest year after year. It was also regular part of my mother’s childhood visits in the 1930s.
Victoria Owens
Bristol
