Following the resounding Labour vote that Polly Toynbee predicts will see off a hard Brexit, what are the chances of UK citizens in Northern Ireland being able to vote for the party that’s going to save them from a hard border (The roadblock hard Brexiteers can’t drive around: Ireland, 12 February)? More than 2,000 members and supporters of the Labour party here are increasingly frustrated by Labour’s refusal to stand candidates here.
Dugald McCullough
Newcastle, Co Down
• The Japanese ambassador’s warning about the impact of Brexit on Japan’s carmakers in the UK, especially in the north-east and the Midlands, is timely and alarming (Report, 9 February). But what does it say for British industry that this hugely important sector of the UK’s manufacturing is no longer UK-owned in the first place?
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords
• Despite being an undergraduate at Cambridge (1960-63), I have never heard of the Ladies Bathing Place on the Cam (Letters, 13 February). But when I moved to Oxford in 1969 I discovered that there had been one known as Dames’ Delight. A male bathing place, known as Parson’s Pleasure, was still in use and punts had to decant young ladies who walked around it before rejoining the punt.
Elizabeth Walker
King’s Lynn, Norfolk
• Anyone who thinks they are eating plant food if they eat Quorn – or any other fungus or mushroom product – needs to think again (G2, 13 February). Fungi are not plants or vegetables: they are a separate kingdom of life, and are generally believed to be more closely related to animals than plants.
Brigid Campbell
Basingstoke, Hampshire
• When a student in Liverpool in 1966, I got the pill from a communist doctor, no questions asked (Letters, 14 February). I have often wondered if this was part of the trench warfare against the Roman Catholics.
Mary Bolton
London
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