Why have those advised to shield from Covid-19 been forgotten when it comes to the priority list for vaccination (How will a coronavirus vaccine be rolled out to the UK population?, 11 November)? The list is mainly based on age, not vulnerability. My healthy wife, aged 65, will have higher priority than me, aged (nearly) 64, even though I am extremely vulnerable because I am on immune-suppressing drugs.
Clive Mowforth,
Coleford, Gloucestershire
• Brigid Purcell (Letters, 12 November) is right that mangold derives from the German mangel, but the reference is to scarcity: this is a crop that thrives when other harvests fail. And the German “turnip winter” (steckrübenwinter) was three winters into the war in 1916-17, when the allied blockade was throttling supplies and even mangold-wurzels were rationed.
Jane Caplan
Emeritus fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford
• Dave Dickinson (Letters, 12 November) has spent too much time away from the north-east. Nobody from County Durham qualifies as a geordie. Geordies come from Tyneside.
Nigel Bulmer
Sunderland
• Why am I so shocked that the BBC is “celebrating” 40 years of Children in Need? Have we not had a single government determined to see that there is not a single child in need while billionaires have proliferated?
Ian Flintoff
Oxford
• I like reading Country diary as an antidote to the news, but Paul Evans’ joyous description of birds over Wenlock Edge (11 November) was wonderfully uplifting. Thank you.
Peta Benson
Holt, Norfolk
