Five years ago I stood in the cold and rain to witness the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Among the speakers was the then prime minister Gordon Brown. Our current prime minister seems to have been absent on Sunday (Jonathan Freedland, 10 November). Was he invited? If not, where were the “Merkel snubs Cameron” headlines? Or did he decline? If so, where were the “Cameron snubs Merkel” headlines? He had plenty of time to get to Berlin after performing his duties at the Cenotaph, so where was he?
Simon Gamble
Poole, Dorset
• The CBI wants the government to raise the threshold at which people pay national insurance to £10,500 and also provide more free childcare and extended maternity pay to help low-income workers (Report, 10 November). Presumably companies will pay their fare share of taxes to prevent an increase in the deficit that this would cause.
Bill Macinnes
Worthing
• Michele Hanson (G2, 11 November) does not mention the most frustrating thing of all about computer manuals. When it breaks down, where is the manual? In the computer itself, where you cannot get at it because the computer has broken. Oh, I know – print it when you first buy the thing, but who does?
Derek Hyde
London
• The solution to Michele Hanson’s problem with indecipherable manuals is to go to YouTube, where practically everything ever is demonstrated by someone somewhere – although more often than not an American in an interior so fascinating and distracting that one forgets the reason for watching.
Peter Knipe
London
• Seen on the back of a biker’s leather jacket at the Ace Café reunion (Letters, 11 November): “If you can read this, the Missus has fallen off.”
David Gerrard
Hove, East Sussex
• On a T-shirt in North Dakota: “North Dakota – just north of South Dakota.”
Arthur Lloyd
Aberdour, Fife
