While considering that it may take Laurence Robertson MP almost a month to earn the £5,166 he received in hospitality (Bookies woo MPs amid fears over problem gambling, 2 January), readers might like to consider that an employee of a high street bookmaker would need to work for about four months to earn the same amount. Like many retail workers, they receive no extra pay for working unsocial hours and bank holidays.
Peter Logan
Glossop, Derbyshire
• Re plurals (Letters, 30 December), when grumbling about her specs in her 80s, my late mother-in-law would say: “The right len is fine: it is the left len that is the problem.”
David Roberts
Exeter
• After reading Harriet Sherwood’s article in Saturday’s Guardian on the desperate shortage of priests in the Roman Catholic church, I put on my thinking cap to see if I could come up with an answer. And then it struck me. Why not offer the job to women as well as to men, like all other employers do?
Geoff Clifton
Solihull, West Midlands
• So local rides will be “dramatically cheaper” as a result of driverless cars (Opinion, 2 January)? In your dreams.
Jan Wiczkowski
Manchester
• On Tuesday morning, with the temperature well below zero centigrade, our postman was wearing shorts. Could this be an austerity-driven cloth-cutting exercise?
Pete Dorey
Bath, Somerset
• Compared with the sound and fury of social media, the Guardian’s letters columns are a superb example of reasoned and moderated debate and discussion. Surely there is a case for devoting more space to readers’ letters in 2017. In the age of Trump they will be more needed than ever.
Keith Flett
London
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
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