Is it too simplistic a view to suggest using the fines imposed for missed targets to fund additional staff, thereby reducing the risk of missing targets in the first place (Hospitals hit by £600m in ‘shortsighted’ fines, 29 March)?
Tricia Pilkington
Rossendale, Lancashire
• A couple of years ago we were in Bowness on Windermere when a foreign couple and their child stopped to ask if we knew where the nearest McDonald’s was. After thinking about it, we realised what we’d never noticed before. There is no McDonald’s in the Lake District National Park, or KFC, or Starbucks – in fact “virtually no evidence of American culture” (Hypocrisy over Cuba’s human rights record, Letters, 23 March). Is it not time we did something about this pocket of communist subversion?
Iain Fenton
Lancaster
• Jonathan Watts (Rolling Stones make music history, 26 March) fails to mention the Manic Street Preachers’ truly ground-breaking concert in 2001. The omission is surprising, to say the least; the band was the first western rock group to play in Cuba. Incidentally, “biggest” or even “best” is not the same as “first”.
Ana Beard
London
• Peter Bradshaw (My week, 19 March) is exactly right on the subtexts in Brief Encounter. When I was interviewed on Today on the subject, John Humphrys asked me for a modern equivalent of Lean’s film. My reply – Brokeback Mountain – met with a harrumph that was a wonder to hear.
Philip Hoare
Southampton
• Peter Fellows asks, apropos BSE, whether the Tories are capable of learning from Thatcher’s mistakes (Letters, 30 March). Any mistakes in that era were made by Heath, Heseltine and Howe.
Fr Julian Dunn
Great Haseley, Oxfordshire
• Eighty-seven, and I can still remember as an 11-year-old boy the shock and devastation at learning that Richmal Crompton was a woman (Letters, 29 March).
David Buckingham
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
