If Mr Adcock (How I spend it, 2 February) took a student loan of £18,000 and has repaid it at £150 a month for nine years but still owes £10,000, he has paid £16,200 and is still not halfway there. Was he – and the thousands of others who have taken such loans (many still in their teens) – informed of, and do they understand, the usurious compound interest that they will be paying for decades?
Sue Roff
Cellardyke, Fife
• The rook in question is a crow (corvidae) (Letters picture, 26 January, et al), as are ravens, jackdaws, jays, magpies and choughs. But it was not a Crow, a name conventionally reserved for the carrion and/or hooded of that ilk. The Crow is also a crow. Now can we please get back to Brexit.
Michael Haggie
Hexham, Northumberland
• This catchy rhyme is the easiest way to remember the advice about distinguishing rooks from crows (Letters, 2 February): For those of us who really know, a single rook’s a certain crow. But rows of crows, despite their looks, are rooks.
Judith Abbs
London
• What, no Wodehouse (Bite-sized: leading authors recommend 50 great short stories, 2 February)! I recommend Lord Emsworth and The Girlfriend (not as racy as it sounds), Ukridge’s Accident Syndicate or virtually any Mr Mulliner story.
Bill Bradbury
Bolton, Greater Manchester
• Speak for yourself, Ken Vines (Letters, 2 February). You may not follow a recipe exactly, but haven’t you looked with dread at one of those “bring and share” community dos in a village hall where somebody airily boasts of having “added this and that” to a recipe , and your tastebuds confirm this disastrous deviation?
Janet Mansfield
Aspatria, Cumbria
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition
