It’s back to school for the Tories | Brief letters

Improving the school system | Daily Mail use | Waxing lyrical | Dennis Waterman’s roles

You report that a schools bill will be introduced on Tuesday in parliament (Queen’s speech: what bills to expect, 9 May). The education secretary says the bill is designed to “create a school system that works for every child, parent and family”. Why, after 12 years of Conservative government, does such a system not already exist?
Simon Maddison
Hitchin, Hertfordshire

• Re the correspondence about the Daily Mail (Letters, 6 May), once while waiting to fly at Heathrow there was a trolley with free papers. The couple in front of me picked up a Daily Mail in great excitement. I intervened and said that I thought there would probably be plenty of toilet paper on the plane so they needn’t bother taking one. It wasn’t greeted positively.
Dr Michael Maier
London

• Songwriters Leiber and Stoller deserve a prize for Poison Ivy’s medical advice: “You’re gonna need an ocean of calamine lotion” (Letters, 8 May).
Ian Watson
Glasgow

• The Beatles’ Maxwell’s Silver Hammer contains a reference to pataphysical science and rhymes it with quizzical.
Janet Fraser
Twickenham, London

• Remiss of Mark Lawson not to have included Dennis Waterman’s role in the brilliant television dramatisation of Fay Weldon’s The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (Dennis Waterman: a streetwise natural in three great British TV series, 8 May).
David Feintuck
Lewes, East Sussex

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