Viscount Rothermere, owner of Associated Newspapers, to his chairman, Sir David English, on the prospect of AP supporting Labour at the next election I didn't do this, did I? Joe Haines, Harold Wilson's press supremo, in amazement after listening to ...

Roy Edwards Farnborough, Hampshire

This was made worse by the fact that, according to the Government's own figures, only 10 per cent of the children were thought to have no immunity to measles but all were vaccinated to make sure this 10 per cent were covered. In 1979 a Royal Commissi...

Utility clothes were certainly cheap: prices were fixed, tax-free and subsidised; manufacturers enjoyed economies of scale through limiting designs and long runs. But "of cheapest cut" suggests shoddiness - exactly the opposite of Utility. Utility cl...

Dr R A Fisken Bedale, North Yorkshire

Anyone who remembers the Labour Party in the pre-Kinnock years must remember the internal strife. There were powerful groups in the party, keen to publish their own agendas in publications such as Militant and Socialist Worker, and also to air these ...

n THERE DOES seem to be a lot of confusion about exactly where Labour stands on this matter of railway privatisation, doesn't there? Was that a pledge by Tony Blair to renationalise, or wasn't it? My friend John Humphrys found Mr Blair slightly elusi...

Public hostility to the tests is found across the political spectrum. The government, led by Paul Keating, and the opposition, led by John Howard, have been competing with each other to be the most outraged by Jacques Chirac's nuclear pretensions. Th...

K F Grimshaw Bridport, Dorset 2 October

As David Marquand, an SDP defector who has now returned to his spiritual home, observed in the New Statesman last week, there is no "new Labour" at all. It is really a very old Labour, which has been revived. Capitalism has once again become rampant,...

Each horror the kitten underwent was coupled with a whinge about what Picardie suffered; she sweated with frustration and anxiety; she needed a handful of Prozac; she burst into tears. She concluded that both she and the cat could do with some therap...

Last week most black Americans celebrated the acquittal of OJ Simpson. Not because of their love for Mr Simpson but because the verdict appeared to confirm a belief most white Americans reject: that the system is out to get blacks. The proof was prov...

My mother would say, "Some women say having a baby was the greatest experience in their lives - poor girls; it was probably the first and last experience they would ever have." Far from being thoroughly selfish and self-centred, women who take this s...

Sir: In his astonishingly lick-spittle assessment of the condition of American justice ("Star-spangled banner of justice," 5 October), Gary McDowell says it would be hard to think of another judicial system "where [sic] one would be likely to do bett...

Sir: Surely Mary Kenny doesn't believe the crimes of Catholic priests are something new? It is simply a matter of people being no longer afraid to bring them into the open, due to better education and a more just legal system. As to being a Catholic ...

If you aren't someone who can talk in general terms about scientific as well as non-scientific issues, you aren't civilised - Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College, London We cannot allow our party to be destroyed or dismantled sim...

Sir: I am disappointed that your columnist W. Stephen Gilbert feels Radio Times "has hurtled down-market" under my editorship ("Why are we all so star-struck", 23 September). Upper- and middle-class (ABC1) readership of my Radio Times has risen to 69...

Sir: May I add to the recent discussions on privatised utilities by telling the tale of British Telecom, which recently delivered a new directory at my home. It did this by leaving it on the doorstep, one which is 18 inches from the pavement. I was a...

Sir: First rule of journalism. Check your quotes. I was misquoted by Henry Porter in the Independent today ("When they publish, damn them," 6 October). This was taken from a quote in the Times, which has now acknowledged its error: If he is seriously...

Sir: Mary Kenny (Another View: "Calvary of Catholic Ireland," 4 October) is correct in her observation that, prior to the liberalism of Vatican- II, the Irish church enjoyed the unquestioned loyalty of her flock. That the average priest "generally ob...

Today I would be ashamed to go near the local reserve with anything so modest. Birdwatching has gone from small-scale hobby to multi-million pound industry in 20 years - and along the way it has managed to shed its image of being a nerdy pastime for ...

Sir: It is Michael Parkin (letters, 4 October) who has got it wrong concerning the correct attribution for "Bruno Hat", not the caption to David Ekserdjian's book review "The art of lying" (23 September). As my biography Brian Howard - Portrait of a ...

Sir: Contrary to what Sarah Helm's article suggests ("Secret EU deals over N-test let Paris off the hook," 5 October), there is no secret deal. Unsubstantiated earlier reports in the Danish press have already been formally denied by the European Comm...