Many Tory voters and sympathisers will have shown “goodwill to all men” over Christmas by donating to charities and food banks. Would it be too much to ask them to search their hearts and consciences and acknowledge some of their responsibility for the suffering directly and deliberately caused by the callous policies of the government they keep in power?

Brenda Edwards

Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria

• I must take issue with Nell Frizzell (Mary had a baby. So did I. Neither of us needed wise men, 23 December). Joseph would have fetched the local midwife. She would have been with Mary and helped her. We are not told much about women in the Gospels but I am sure this would have happened. I like to think that the wise men’s gifts would have been Mary’s pension.

Liz Warrington

Retired midwife, Chester

• Peter Walker’s article quotes suggestions that voter ID trials could disenfranchise older voters (26 December). Would the photo card for bus passes not count as ID? Millions of pensioners like me already carry these.

Patricia Townend

Tonbridge

• John Hunter (Letters, 26 December) is not alone in his memories of the Children’s Hour production of John Masefield’s Box of Delights. I too was glued to the radio, relishing every minute of an extraordinarily rich production with voices, music, bells and atmosphere all combining to make the best kind of in-head magic.

Cherry Lavell

Polegate, East Sussex

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