The exploitation of agency workers (Agency workers ‘exploited and forgotten’, 5 December) has even spread to the Ministry of Justice which employs court interpreters through an agency. The MoJ can book me for a full day’s work but should the case be adjourned or cancelled when I show up, I will only be paid little more than an hour’s pay, putting the cost of cancellation or curtailment on me, the interpreter. What hope is there for agency workers’ conditions if even the MoJ colludes in this bad practice?
Name and address supplied
• Your obituary of the admirable anti-apartheid activist Walter Hain (5 December) is marred by the assertion the Liberal party was the only non-race-based political grouping in South Africa. Our sister party, the South African Communist party, has a powerful claim to be the political party that forged the strongest multi-racial unity.
Nick Wright
Communist party media office, London
• I don’t think your readers and columnists should be too hard on Zac Goldsmith. After all, he did keep his promise, thus becoming the first MP to keep a promise in the recorded history of parliamentary democracy.
Alan Sillitoe
London
• Adolf Hitler, Man of the Year, 1938, Time magazine (Nigel Farage shortlisted for Time magazine’s person of the year award, theguardian.com, 5 December).
Felix Bellaby
Hollingsclough, Staffordshire
• Did no one tell Peter Gelb, director of the Metropolitan Opera, that Texaco sponsored the broadcasts of the company’s matinees for more than 60 years (Banks and oil giants should keep out of temples of culture, shouldn’t they?, G2, 5 December)?
Ciarán O’Meara
London
• Two letters from Jill Wallis on the same day (6 December)! Look out, Flett, she’s gunning for you.
Bob Horn
Cranleigh, Surrey
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