Nearly 600 homeless die on the streets (Report, 21 December). About the same number of MPs take two weeks’ leave to go back to their warm homes after a ridiculous PM’s questions; I cannot call it a debate. MPs must decide: Brexit circus – the most disastrous decision since the Iraq war – or education, housing and health. Two words sum it up: grow up.

Joan Langrognat

Harrow, Middlesex

• Your report (21 December) about the paedophile gang member Mathew Law is incomplete: you failed to tell us his religion.

Henrietta Cubitt

Cambridge

• After Jimmy Carter’s rapturous welcome in Newcastle in 1977 (Special relationship, 26 December), he showed his affection for the people of Newcastle and the north-east by making a return visit in 1987. Thankfully there is no likelihood of his current successor seeking to emulate these occasions.

Jeremy Beecham

Newcastle city councillor

• I thought the Mexicans were going to pay for the wall (US government shutdown goes ahead amid deadlock over Trump’s wall, theguardian.com, 22 December). It seems anyone over the age of, say, seven who still believes in Donald Trump is a bit marginal.

Gavin Lewis

London

• I suppose that Easter, derived by Bede from the Northumbrian Ēostre, the name of a goddess feasted on the vernal equinox, is no more pagan in origin than the celebration of mid-winter (Letters, 26 December).

Austen Lynch

Garstang, Lancashire

• And Macedonia is in Glenrothes, Fife (Letters, 26 December).

Harry Watson

Edinburgh