Briefly: Letters

Does Anita Roddick only know women who "need to work" (9 February)? The phrase should refer to those mothers who have to work in order to live, not those who work in order to provide second incomes for cars, holidays, en-suites, nannies, and the perpetual drive to be better than the rest. Relative affluence is just as damaging to children's development as relative poverty.

Pauline Stilges

Letchworth, Hertfordshire

IF Ian Griffiths is looking for "anti-social behaviour on the part of neighbours-to-be" (Travel and Money, 9 February), he could start with the tidy-minded gardener. With a deafening arsenal of machinery, this type can persuade himself that any amount of disturbance to his neighbours is acceptable on the grounds that what he is doing is work. Cave grassus immaculus (beware the manicured lawn).

Angela Partington

Appleton, Oxfordshire

E.COLI infection has been attributed to improper cooking of infected meat ("E.coli home told to 'deep-clean' kitchens", 9 February). There used to be a presumption that rare meat, unpasteurised cheese, raw eggs and shellfish were safe. When will the sick be accused of not boiling their drinking water?

Alex Ungar, Wigton, Cumbria

MATT Carter, Labour candidate for the City of York? ("The cabinet of tomorrow?", Review, 9 February.) This will be news for Labour MP Hugh Bayley, who has been re-adopted for the constituency. Matt Carter is Labour candidate for the Vale of York.

Mark Waudby, Rawcliffe, York

IN "Five Days..." (9 February) I wrote of a pupil whose grant is less than his hall fees. The reason for this - omitted from the published version - is "the result of government prohibition of subsidy, not of greedy universities".

Earl Russell, House of Lords