The Lib Dems, Labour and Greens together polled more votes the Witney byelection than the Conservatives (Report, theguardian.com, 21 October), but the Tories won the seat. Does the word “cooperate” not appear in the UK edition of the A-Z of strategies for opposition parties in a first-past-the-post system?
Paul Tattam
Chinley, Derbyshire
• I don’t share Roger Mullis’s experience (Letters, 20 October). Far from greeting me with a “smile of genuine gratitude”, my local Oxfam bookshop was frankly irritated and very reluctant to take two years’ worth of National Geographic magazines (in excellent condition).
Patrick Russell
London
• I have never understood why independence for central banks is considered so important (Top Tories accused of foisting blame on Carney for impact of austerity, 19 October). We had a disastrous boom and bust syndrome in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Bank of England was under political control and another one in 2007 when it was independent.
David Redshaw
Gravesend, Kent
• I was surprised by Tory MP David Davies’s sudden interest in the dental care of the few young refugees who are at last being allowed to enter the UK from Calais (Report, 19 October). While I’m sure that some of them would not be averse to a free dental checkup, he should be careful not to be seen to be promoting compulsory dentistry. Human rights legislation could well class this as cruel and unusual punishment.
John Eoin Douglas
Edinburgh
• I don’t care if Sir Philip Green keeps his knighthood (Report, 21 October) as long as all his ex-employees get their pensions. Keep up the pressure on him to reimburse those who lost out: if the trade-off is that he keeps his title, so be it. The damage to his reputation and that of predatory capitalism is done.
Lorrie Marchington
Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire
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