Letters: Briefly

Your report "Warning: traffic jam ahead at Heathrow" (Business, 24 November) states that the demand for take-off and landing slots at Heathrow greatly exceeds supply and that supply is virtually inelastic. Can someone explain why market forces are not allowed to apply and the price of slots allowed to rise until demand shrinks to equate with supply?

This might encourage traffic to switch to under-used Stansted and the increased revenue could be passed on to the cash-starved local authorities which suffer the inconvenience or worse of having the airport as a neighbour.

Dennis J Turner

Reigate, Surrey

If, as Leo Abse states ("New Labour, old headbanger: castaway Tony lets his hair down", 24 November), Tony Blair is trying to ward off any identification with "androgynous, drug-taking characters", why did he select a track by Free for inclusion in his Desert Island Discs? Paul Kossof, tragically, died as a result of drug abuse, something which neither Bowie or the Stones have managed. This hardly suggests "sanitisation".

Andrew Henderson,

Epsom, Surrey

Gary Glitter's new single, a revamp of "House of the Rising Sun", is not "his first ever cover version", (Real Life, 24 November).

"Papa Oom Mow Mow", a No 38 hit in November l975, had earlier been a chart entry for the Sharonettes the previous May. Their recording of this Rivington song reached No. 26.

Tim Mickleburgh

Grimsby, Humberside

Steve Crawshaw's "precise-minded colleague" (Flat Earth, 24 November) wasn't precise-minded enough to include Northern Ireland alongside the Falklands, Diego Garcia and Pitcairn Island as pieces of soil still blessed by the sun of the British Empire.

Raymond Deane

Dublin, Ireland