Now that a way has been found to calculate the asset value of a tree (Put a price on trees and halt this chainsaw massacre, 12 September), maybe we should do the same for people. A residential child care worker earns £23,114 on average, a banker over £50,000. But what is their actual asset value? Are we really worth what we earn? And, if not, who are the net givers to the community, and who the net takers? I have my suspicions, but we need to know.
Tim Shelton-Jones
Brighton, East Sussex
• The article on people who should be commemorated by a statue (Put them on a plinth, G2, 13 September) triggered recollection of an exchange in Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo. When a character proposes “unhappy the land that breeds no hero”, the response is “no, unhappy land that is in need of heroes”.
Michael Hudson
Lincoln
• Like many other children bestowed with potentially challenging first names (Letters, 12 September), young Sixtus Rees-Mogg will, I’m pretty confident, bear the brunt of the witticisms rather than his father.
Ian Grieve
“Gordon Bennett”, Staffs and Worcester canal
• So the latest thing in New York is nipple pasties (In-house hipsters and the return of Helmut Lang, 13 September). And you thought Ottolenghi’s ingredients were difficult to source?
Mike Hine
Kingston upon Thames
• Your correspondents’ opinions on the relative merits of Steely Dan’s albums (Letters 9, 11 and 13 September) leave me wondering if I understand the things that pass for knowledge.
Ian Watson
Glasgow
• Re your picture caption saying Boris Johnson is to travel to the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla (Report, 13 September). Lord, haven’t they suffered enough already?
David Hughes
Bromley, Kent
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