I have every sympathy with Kévins of France who are fed up with their name being subject to mockery, having myself sustained six decades of rudeness (We need to talk about Kévin: French namesakes fight national mockery, 5 August). People think it’s acceptable to toss variations of my name at me, without stopping to consider that I didn’t choose my name and how rude they are being. My husband and I did, however, choose a distinctive name for our son: Amadeus. Fortunately, he loves it.
Sharman Finlay
Portrush, County Antrim
• Over the 20 years that I taught at Open University summer schools on the University of Sussex campus, I developed a kit to see me through a week in a hall of residence. Along with a Swiss Army knife and earplugs was a small bottle of malt vinegar with which to descale the shower head in the communal bathroom (Letters, 7 August).
Peter Barnes
Milton Keynes
• Rishi Sunak vows to end low-earning degrees in a shake-up of post-16 education (Report, 7 August). So how will we manage without teachers, nurses, social workers, legal aid barristers, charity workers and the rest? Bankers don’t produce anything, they just cream off the top of low-paid people’s efforts.
Martin Cooper
Bromley, London
• I don’t know how easy it was to book a rail ticket from Inverkeithing to Bangkok (Letters, 5 August), but the last time I tried to book a rail-and-sail ticket from Inverkeithing to the Isle of Man, the clerk in the ticket office declined to do so as it would take him “far too long”.
David Carter
Dunfermline, Fife
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