Maybe we should ban suits
Letters to the editor
The first batch of “letters to the editor,” sent out two long years ago, went down a storm. It’s time for some more. Enjoy.
Dear Sir/Madam,
After buying a tin of ‘Alphabetti Spaghetti’ in my local supermarket I was horrified to find that by arranging the letters on the side of my young daughter’s plate, not only was I able to spell the word ‘fuck’, but also ‘shit’ and ‘wank’ as well. It’s coming to something when supermarkets openly peddle filth like this to young children.
Mrs J. Blackford
Eversham
Letter to Viz
1995
To the Editor,
No woman in a burqa (or a hijab or a burkini) has ever done me any harm. But I was sacked (without explanation) by a man in a suit. Men in suits mis-sold me pensions and endowments, costing me thousands of pounds. A man in a suit led us on a disastrous and illegal war. Men in suits led the banks and crashed the world economy. Other men in suits then increased the misery to millions through austerity. If we are to start telling people what to wear, maybe we should ban suits.
Henry Stewart
London
Letter to the Guardian
2016
Sir
Last weekend, the drive up to London was improved by listening to a Sherlock Holmes audiobook on the car’s CD player. I was amused by my inability to follow the plot as closely as I would have liked, and put this down to middle age. It was only when I arrived at my destination that I realised the CD player was on “shuffle” mode.
Phil Merivale
Keyhaven, Hampshire
Letter to the Telegraph
2013
Sir,
Further to your article on the benefit of taking the stairs (“A simple step to live longer – avoid taking the lift”, Apr 27), as a fit 67-year-old I always choose the stairs and espouse the benefits to all who are prepared to listen. A sneaking part of me wonders, though, whether a careful analysis might reveal that the extra lifetime hours gained would turn out to have been spent climbing stairs.
Martyn Leadley,
Dorset
Letter to the Telegraph
2024
To the editor,
It should be acknowledged that before Rishi Sunak took charge, the country was standing at a cliff edge.
Since then we have taken a great step forward.
Terry O’Hara
Maghull
Letter to the Guardian
2024
Please publish this short letter on International Women’s Day. Anything to stop my husband, Toby, getting another one in.
Irene Wood
Peterborough
Letter to the Guardian
2021
To the editor:
Please print this letter so that when my patients Google me they will see that their psychiatrist and psychoanalyst has been published in The New York Times.
Bruce J. Levin,
Plymouth Meeting, Pa.
Letter to The New York Times
2015
To the editor,
Why is it that I have to face a gauntlet of excitable young people imploring me to “Save The Tiger” every time I walk along Northumberland Street?
I find their continual badgering irksome, and painful.
Do they not understand the damage these creatures can inflict upon a human being?
If they had, as I did, witnessed a tiger drench their six-year-old cousin with a torrent of steaming, acrid urine at Knaresborough Zoo in 1971, then maybe they'd turn their attentions to pandas.
Mr Drayton,
Heaton,
Newcastle
Letter to the Newcastle Journal
2012
Sir,
I am getting increasingly annoyed at the barrage of articles about teenagers, and the adults who keep trying to explain our behaviour.
I am 16 and a straight-A student, like most of my friends. We are not as irrational and immature as adults seem to think. We’ve grown up with financial crises and accept that most of us will be unemployed. We no longer flinch at bloody images of war because we’ve grown up seeing the chaos in the Middle East and elsewhere. Most of us are cynical and pessimistic because of the environment we’ve grown up in — which should be explanation enough for our apparent insolence and disrespect, without “experts” having to write articles about it.
Has no one ever seen that we are angry at the world we live in? Angry that we will have to clean up your mess, while you hold us in contempt, analysing our responses as though we were another species?
I would like adults to treat us not as strange creatures from another world but as human beings with intelligent thought — a little different from yours, perhaps, but intelligent thought nonetheless.
Stop teaching adults how to behave around us, and instead teach them to respect us.
Jenni Herd
Kilmarnock, E Ayrshire
Letter to The Times
2014
I can only afford to spend time researching and writing the Letters of Note newsletter (and knocking up pictures of offensive soup) because of its readers’ generosity. If you’re able, these are the ways you can support this project…
Forward this newsletter to others
Thank you.
Beautiful soup 😂 & lots of laughs from these - thank you! X
At the very least we should ban neckties. Anything that cuts off circulation between heart and brain can only have disastrous effects on the decision-making process.