Sir: Regarding Hamish McRae's article, "Get radical: remodel public services" (7 July), there are four formulae used for public sector performance. One is that nothing can be improved, eg. "It will always take X man-minutes to issue a passport." This...

This last took rather a pounding last week from the Times and the Telegraph. Both papers scanned the NHS league tables and pronounced Hereford to be amongst the "worst" 10 (the Times) and amongst the trusts which had most deteriorated (the Telegraph)...

Sir: Fidel Castro has never "encouraged Bible burning" as your correspondent Phil Davison states (report, 5 July). Cuba is not now, nor has it ever been, an atheist state. Rather than imposing atheism, the revolution has allowed religions to flourish...

On the one hand, it has been offered to me very cheaply, and it certainly is a lively and intimate portrait of the greatest talking Englishman, with his crusty disposition and wonderfully varied prejudices. On the other hand - well, I suppose the onl...

This week marks the 10th anniversary of Live Aid and the cynics have been suggesting that it was, given the state of Africa now, pretty much a waste of time. It was not, of course. Hundreds of thousands of lives were saved. But more than that, Geldof...

One voice is conspicuously missing. British government sources yesterday, describing their own stance as "low profile", said it was entirely a matter for the French. Officially, Britain merely welcomes the French commitment to the comprehensive test ...

Sir: The team planning to exhume Jesse James's body in Montana (International; "DNA test on Jesse James to settle row", 8 July) had better be damn good diggers. The funny noise you can hear in the background is all those people who know that Jesse is...

Sir: Sir Paul Condon said (report, 8 July) that evidence shows that 80 per cent of muggings in London are carried out by young black males. He suggests that a forum between the police and the community should take place to discuss the problem before ...

Sir: A pity that your reporter who quoted (10 July) my views relating to BBC presenters' extra-contract earnings conveniently omitted half of the "story". I, and others in the House of Commons, are I think justifiably critical of the hypocrisy that a...

Delegates at the "First World Conference of People in Contact with Extraterrestrials", at Miranmar, Costa Rica, were disappointed that no aliens dropped in. They chanted "Aum" for 10 minutes and linked hands to form five concentric circles around thr...

Pithecophaga jefferyi, the Philippine eagle, which has replaced the maya, a type of sparrow, as the national bird of the Philippines. Supporters of the change argued that the maya is a pest that eats rice crops. Others questioned the wisdom of replac...

Sir: I am pleased that the reaction to Black Theatre Co-operative's production of Zumbi, currently on our stage, is explosive enough to make your news pages ("Play `intimidates white audiences' ", 7 July). By the end of this highly charged show, half...

Sir: The black British writer Shango Baku has written the play Zumbi, which includes an attack on the slave trade. It is as well to remember that Africans were implicated in the slave trade, too. The slave ship captains did not sail from Liverpool an...

Because there is always the possibility of an outrageous sequence of events, backgammon generates more hard-luck stories than any other game I know. If I had pounds 10 for every time someone has come up to me and said "You won't believe this, but..."...

The vouchers proposal is not an innovative idea, it has been knocking around for a long time. The reason the Labour Party rejected the idea is because we want to get on with ensuring enough places of high quality, in a variety of settings, to meet th...

Thus, when MPs made their first detailed proposals on how to implement the Nolan report, there was not much sign of contrition or commitment to swift reform. The committee did the minimum to prevent a public outcry. It accepted the need for a new cod...

Albanian proverbs are different from ordinary proverbs. Ordinary proverbs sound at first sight as if they are full of wisdom and insight, but generally turn out to be humdrum and banal, whereas Albanian proverbs, which sound a bit scatterbrained at f...

Sir: With regards to your leading article concerning the proposed industrial action by Aslef ("Strike and everyone loses", 5 July), I would like to clarify one or two points for the benefit of your readers. This action has been taken because drivers'...

Sir: Teresa Gorman and other Euro-sceptics want to know the name of "an independent nation without its own currency". Hasn't anyone noticed Luxembourg (in a currency union with Belgium) which, incidentally, ranks second in the world for GDP per head ...

Military power is the ultimate expression of the nation state. It comes even before the minting of currency. Nations were carved out or destroyed on the basis of their talent and will for violent self-assertion. In this century, global violence helpe...

Take the county of Essex, which stretches from the River Thames up towards Cambridge. Within its borders can be found such varied delights as the "on-the-sea" resorts of Clacton, Frinton and Southend, the Anglo-Saxon wooden church at Greensted and th...