Kelvin MacKenzie loses his job over “racial slurs” (Report, 10 May). Are we to infer that the nasty abuse of Ross Barkley would have been fine had his grandparents all been indigenous English or European? Is there no need to care about respecting other people and their feelings, so long as no racial or sexual orientation or religious elements lurk somewhere?

Peter Cave

London

• I regularly have sparrows on the balcony of my seventh-floor Barbican flat (Patrick Barkham, Notebook, 9 May). They are from the colony which has lived in Fortune Street Park for several years. The sparrows don’t get on with the goldfinches which inhabit the estate’s wildlife garden. Alas all these birds and small mammals are prey to the resident peregrines. Who needs to live in Norfolk?

Joanna Rodgers

London

• The new management-speak use of “reach out” to mean “contact” is certainly worth a wry shrug (Peter Bradshaw, Notebook, 11 May ) but much worse, surely, is the use of “have a conversation with” to mean “talk to, but in a slightly menacing way”.

Barbara Brewis

Newcastle upon Tyne

• In her letter (11 May), Ruth Carty suggests that Richard III was the last king to die in battle on English soil. Has she perhaps forgotten James IV of Scotland, who was killed 28 years later at the battle of Flodden in 1513?

Simon McIntyre

Sevenoaks, Kent

• My neighbour’s granddaughter called him Grandpa Moan Moan and her well-endowed aunt was Auntie Boobies (Letters, passim).

Jane Lawson

London

• Spotted at the bar in the Lincolnshire Poacher, Nottingham, a 35mm film canister being used as container for loose change. “My last,” said the owner, sadly.

Pete Lavender

Nottingham

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