Professor Brian Cox disdains the rejection of expertise (Opinion, 2 July). But he conflates rejection of expertise with rejection of the misuse of expertise. When experts fail to predict catastrophic events like the financial crisis, and when experts extract the costs of their mistakes from non-experts, like the austerity after the financial crisis, and when experts don’t seem to have the best interests of the electorate at the heart of their advice, then the rejection of their advice is rational, isn’t it? Perhaps even scientific?
Dr Jon Dickson
Sheffield
• An interesting report on how much of the nation’s tax London pays (7 July), but it would have been more useful if it had also mentioned what the expenditure on the capital was.
Martin Cooper
Bromley, Kent
• How many homes could be insulated; how many solar panels, heat pumps could £37bn buy (Alarm as Hinkley Point cost estimate rises , 7 July)?
Lorrie Marchington
High Peak, Derbyshire
• Andrea Leadsom really is living in the past if she thinks that foxes still prefer the countryside to the rich pickings of city life (Report, 8 July).
Geoff Reid
Bradford
• My then three-year old granddaughter, sitting on my lap listening to me reading a story – from an actual book – decided that she wanted to do something else and said “Pause it, grandpa” (My disc drive is full, Lucy Mangan, 8 July). I suppose I should be grateful that she didn’t say “Fast forward”...
Steven Burkeman
York
• The president of the organisation that has built a full-sized replica of Noah’s Ark is called Ken Ham (Report, 7 July). Does he by any chance have colleagues named Shem and Japheth?
Simon Bennett
Truro, Cornwall
• How long before we get a female commentator in a men’s match from Wimbledon?
Andreas Klatt
Long Compton, Warwickshire
