No winners in the Tory leadership debate | Brief letters

Truss v Sunak | Channelling Thatcher | Women and exercise | Defibrillators are welcome | Ode to Sydney McLaughlin

Re the Tory leadership debate on Monday night (Report, 25 July), Simon and Garfunkel got it right: “Laugh about it, shout about it / When you’ve got to choose / Every way you look at this, you lose.”
Rob Horne
Coventry

• The Tory TV debate was a great example of cognitive dissonance. Yes, we are Thatcherites – a wonderful woman. Yes, we want levelling up, which will mean much to “red wall” constituencies. But didn’t Thatcher’s economic policies wreck industry and employment in red wall areas?
Peter Brooker
West Wickham, London

• Your article (Almost half of British women do no vigorous exercise, survey finds, 25 July) appears to ignore the considerable exercise and energy that housework and gardening entail. I don’t think I need to go to a gym or running or swimming, since keeping the house and garden in shape provides me with plenty of “vigorous exercise”. Perhaps the two-thirds of men who manage to exercise have spare energy, since studies seem to show that women still do the bulk of the chores.
Kate Enright
Weymouth, Dorset

• Re defibrillators (Letters, 24 July), many schools and colleges hire out space to external groups in the evenings. I’m sure their mainly adult participants welcome the availability of defibrillators. Certainly the cardiac support group that I’m involved with does.
Graham Imber
St Albans, Hertfordshire

• Jonathan Liew’s portrait of the hurdler Sydney McLaughlin (The Sydney Project: how elite athletics traps McLaughlin but also sets her free, 26 July) is the single most affecting and poignant piece of sports writing I have ever read.
David Mackness
Ipswich, Suffolk

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