The obituary of David Storey (28 March) mentioned that he attended Wakefield’s Queen Elizabeth grammar school. A council house boy, he actually won a state scholarship to this fee-paying establishment which was (and still is), of course, strictly rugby union. I have a letter he sent a few years ago in which he recalled that when he signed professionally with Leeds rugby league club, in 1951, the deputy head of QUEGS wrote to him to say that he had let the school down. “I think rugby league in those days was seen as a species of prostitution,” Storey added. Such attitudes undoubtedly informed his outlook and writing. It is a pity they still persist in some quarters.

David Hinchliffe

(Former Wakefield MP), Holmfirth, West Yorkshire

• President Obama may well have set up rules of engagement that insisted on “near certainty” that there would be no civilian casualties (Up to 130 civilians dead in Mosul airstrikes, 23 March). However, what does this mean when in 2016 alone the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs across the world? In contrast to Obama’s public concern for civilians, the independent monitoring group Air Wars estimates that a minimum of 2,715 to 3,925 civilians are likely to have died in US-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria to 21 March 2017 – the vast majority under President Obama, not President Trump.

Ian Sinclair

London

• John Dinning’s remarks about the stupidity of Swedish policemen (Letters, 29 March) seem applicable to Danish ones as well. In the TV series Follow the Money, our two heroes enter the house of someone they know to be a contract killer and let him go to the bathroom to “collect his pills”. Of course, one of the policemen ends up shot and the killer escapes.

Michael Bulley

Chalon-sur-Saône, France

• Re Can CCTV stop office milk thieves? (G2, 28 March). In the staff room, another teacher was stealing my fig biscuits. While he was out the room, I warned the others as I replaced them with identical-looking dog biscuits. After he had eaten three I announced I had forgotten where I had put the dog biscuits. Never had any more trouble.

Vicki Morley

Penzance, Cornwall

• My family tease that my response to questions about alcohol intake is not x bottles per week but x weeks per bottle (Letters, 27 March). Sometimes gone off by the time I reach the bottom. No idea how the GP records that.



Hilary Grime



Oxford

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters