Sir: The decision of the public sector union Unison to oppose Tony Blair's rewrite of Clause IV has brought forth the predictable response from the Labour leadership's spin-doctors: the vote was "unrepresentative", there was no secret ballot, this is...

Sir: What on earth happened to your usually reliable reporter Andrew Marshall (Luxembourg Days, 18 April)? Was he hit by a sudden acute depression? Was his only suit ruined by the rain? Did he fall off the Ro'de Breck (the magnificent single-span bri...

Sir: David Orr reported in his article "Hopes grow for hostages held by Sierra Leone rebels" (18 April) that Action Aid had "pulled out" of Sierra Leone. While we are taking security precautions, Action Aid has not withdrawn from Sierra Leone and our...

The accused also has the right to information collected but not used by the prosecution. The importance of this was shown by the case of Judith Ward, convicted of the M62 coach bombing; the prosecution proceeded although the police had evidence of he...

Sir: The attempt by Andrew Marr in his column "Blair can dump unions, but not the poor" (20 April) to link the mobbing of David Blunkett at the National Union of Teachers conference with the decision of the Unison political forum to oppose the revise...

Sir: Professor Dummett's puzzlement (Letters, 14 April) drives me to request space to make clearer the points made, too briefly it seems, in my letter of 5 April. They are too important to be allowed to dissolve in the steam of a clash of personaliti...

Sir: I wonder if Andrew Marshall's claim that Luxembourg is the largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions per capita in the world is related to the now discredited story that the country had the highest consumption of alcohol per capita in the wor...

Sir: So you thought Ecu stood for European Currency Unit, did you? According to Cassell's French dictionary: "Ecu - crown (an obsolete French coin formerly worth three francs)". There are no flies on the French. Yours sincerely, MICHAEL GUMBRELL Ashd...

Sir: Your editorial "The bottom line on IVF babies" (18 April) makes some interesting suggestions regarding the funding of infertility treatment. The British Fertility Society, which comprises some 800 clinicians, scientists, nurses and counsellors, ...

Sir: The General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Peter Smith, justifies (letter, 17 April) his unwarranted attack on me (which led to John Monks, General Secretary of the TUC, joining in) by stating that my speech at his confe...

Sir: Margaret Hebblethwaite ("Today is the ultimate Remembrance Day", 15 April) argues that there can be no (Easter) festivity without mourning, and pleads for the secular world to respect Christians' grief and to spare them the "holiday noise and cl...

It is, therefore, unsurprising that Sir Paul Condon, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said yesterday that he will reconsider whether all his officers should be armed. To avoid tackling this question would be to devalue the life of PC Walters and...

As an eloquent defence of the Gospel of Life against what he calls "the culture of death", the encyclical fulfils a noble purpose. It is impossible to doubt the sincerity or the urgency of the task the Pope has set himself in combating by all possibl...

Sir: Andrew Higgins ("Yeltsin dilemma as Tajik-Afghan border war flares", 15 April) is surely right to ascribe much of the unpublicised conflict in Tajikistan to regional and clan differences (albeit partially misreporting them). Yet to go on to desc...

The story so far: Rupert Murdoch has bought the entire British rugby league set-up to turn the game into a television-only spectacle. Mike Haslet, captain of newly formed team Battlecliff, privately hates the takeover but publicly supports Murdoch's ...

Sir: "Pregnancy is not an illness. Therefore the treatment for IVF should not be treated as an illness on the NHS". This quotation from a senior Labour source (report, 18 April), in addition to alienating the infertile, should also offend the rest of...