Interesting that the chair of the BP remuneration committee is a mechanical engineer and president of the Royal Academy of Engineering (Financial, 15 April). When I joined BP in the mid-1960s, a young graduate engineer earned about £1,000 a year, while the annual salary of the executive chairman, Eric Drake, was £50,000. I doubt that any BP engineer, recent graduate or not, now earns a 50th of Bob Dudley’s prospective remuneration of £14m, namely £280,000.
Charles Ian C Wishart
London
• “Everyone can join in” the Golden Rule Tax Disobedience (Letters, 19 April) – no we can’t. Those of us whose entire income is taxed via PAYE have no way to take this kind of action. The occupations of the listed signatories are instructive in this respect.
Pam Lunn
Kenilworth, Warwickshire
• Why was your reviewer of Tom Jones’s 1950s (Last night’s TV, 18 April) allowed to refer to “enthusiastic girls known in those parts as a slag heap”? This offensive piece of slang carries a double insult: to the women and to “those parts” where they were living. (Look up “slag” in the Oxford Dictionary.) What happened to “political correctness”? Or even just not printing language offensive to a person’s sex, culture or region? We expect better from the Guardian.
Howard Luke
Port Talbot
• Boris Johnson accuses President Obama of hypocrisy regarding integration of states (Opinion, 18 April). What does he think “United States” means other than a union of states? There are 50 of them; significantly more than the 28 in the EU.
Dr John Twidell
Horninghold, Leicestershire
• Jim Naughtie recalls “the students in Aberdeen in late 66 and 67 in tweed jackets, wearing brogues and ties. Two years later, they all had long hair (G2, 19 April)”. I was a student at Aberdeen University, 1966-70. I wore mini skirts and boots, but I did have long hair.
Janet Mearns
London
• I’m not sure quite where Patrick Barkham lives in Norfolk (It’s good to talk, even in Norfolk, 19 April) but I’ll guarantee that, even though I may not recognise him, he will definitely get a cheerful hallo from me if he comes walking through Old Buckenham.
Ron Brewer
Old Buckenham, Norfolk
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
