The prime minister’s ecstatic welcome of the Royal Navy’s new £36bn aircraft carrier to Portsmouth (Report, 17 August) made me choke on my cornflakes. Can someone tell her that one ship, however colossally expensive, does not a navy make. Thanks to David Cameron, and a succession of defence cuts by his predecessors, the numbers of Royal Navy ships and their capabilities have been decimated. To suggest otherwise is blatant hypocrisy.

Commander Roger Paine RN (retired)

Hellingly, East Sussex

• Your report (Brexit: UK retirees rushing to settle in Europe, say financial advisers, 13 August) surprisingly makes no reference to the continuing decline in sterling. If the pound is heading towards parity with the euro, or even worse, early cashing in of pensions and buying a retirement home in the eurozone makes obvious sense.

Dr Simon Sweeney

York

• Suzanne Moore’s well-observed piece on the adverse impacts of tourism (G2, 17 July) put me in mind of my late mother, who often claimed that travel broadened the mind, while providing no evidence of the same.

Jane Moth

Snettisham, Norfolk

• With Big Ben out of action would it not now be opportune for the BBC to reflect the reality of the newly devolved government of these islands by using the bells of Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast cathedrals to introduce its news bulletins?

Gruffudd Roberts

Dyserth, Denbighshire

• What a wonderful idea of Kath Howard’s (Letters, 18 August) that could be extended to the mothers of boys who would prefer pink sparkly shoes!

Barbara Deering

Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire

• I don’t see why Jacob Rees-Mogg shouldn’t be, as Michael Pyke (Letters, 17 August) suggests, “a character invented by Evelyn Waugh”. After all, Evelyn Waugh was.

Andrew Connell

Cardiff

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