To Stuart Heritage’s excellent list of words to describe our tech dystopia (18 August), can I add “iRate”? This is when you make an online purchase and, even before you’ve had time to remove the packaging, receive an email asking “How was it for you?”, followed by another a few days later if you fail to review every detail of the transaction, and then another, and another, until you’re left wanting to throw your purchase and/or your laptop across the room.
Elli Woollard
London
• Rather than criminalising parents who take their children on holiday during term time because it’s much cheaper (‘Cheap travel is not a defence’: the parents facing court for school absences in England, 15 August), why not address the blatant profiteering by travel firms charging inflated prices during school holidays?
Max Fishel
Bromley, London
• Re kissing in the back row in the cinema (Letters, 16 August), my local cinema in the 60s, the Elysian in Cheadle Hulme, had double seats at the end of every row – and usherettes with very bright torches!
Trish Cockayne
Lymm, Cheshire
• A friend who used to live in Barking (Barking mad? How people in England’s ‘least friendly’ borough feel about the ranking, 19 August) once referred to a mutual acquaintance as “a bit East Ham”. I had to ask him what he meant. “One stop short of Barking,” he replied.
Dr Glyn Thompson
Leeds
• Richard Tice’s answer to climate change is “Let them drink English sparkling wine” (Letters, 18 August). Is this what we might call champagne populism?
Martin Shipway
Parly, France
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