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You take too narrow a view of hedgerows (“…8,000 miles vanish each year”, 27 October). Removal results from development and new roads as well asfarm management. Fish is for equal-opportunity acupuncture.”
What to do? A little less self-consciousness and a little more enjoyment, perhaps. Otherwise, Voltaire’s remark that the English take their pleasures sadly will remain true for a while yet.Tony BulgerParis, France. Admittedly The Good Food Guide is pedestrian, but its middlebrow tone is preferable to the drivel of A A Gill, whose contributions include: “Fish smiles Fish is holistic …

Rather than appreciate the pleasure of eating, the British consider food as a lifestyle choice. Until this approach changes, we will have to endure “food critics” who write about the decor, clientele and ambiance of a restaurant, instead of the food. The feudlet over The Good Food Guide is typical of attitudes to food in the UK (“Prawn cocktail and spag bol? Lovely, dear!”, 3 November). This not only applies to feminised careers such as teaching or nursing, but to “women’s” jobs in “male” industries. Commercial law pays more than family law, for example.This gap has been widened by the growth of merit- and bonus-based pay. In its excellent report for the Equal Opportunities Commission the Institute of Manpower Studies details how women’s skills are denigrated and how, when discretionary bonuses enter the equation, women are judged much less favourably than men.There is no objective market in wages, just relentless economic sexism.Josie EdwardsLondon N10. The responsibility levels are the same or greater: the pay and conditions worse.
Second, subjective judgements about value mean that women’s jobs are considered worth less than men’s.

Women earn less than men for the following reasons: formerly male jobs now done by women, such as building society manager and factory supervisor, have been downgraded. In your piece on growing wage inequality, you list the best ways to get rich (“How fat cats rock the boat”, Review, 3 November) You left out the most important one – be a man. Dunblane suffered a tragedy of horrific proportions. And yet we read of “Major and Blair in Dunblane feud” (3 November). Who cares who rode in which car? Does it matter if one wreath was bigger? If one wife attended and the other did not? Someone should have a word with the party leaders about responsibility, maturity and a sense of proportion

Clive W Porter
Maidstone, Kent. Government should promote and support lifestyles and institutions that are beneficial to society as a whole, without isolating or condemning those that do not conform. This requires sensitive handling, but if a consensus cannot be reached then the opponents of prescriptive government will be throwing the baby of social cohesion out with the bathwater of social constraint.
J R NashRusholme, Manchester.