• Alex Malcolm was the name of the five-year-old boy killed by his mother’s partner in 2016, not Alex Martin, as a comment piece said (What will it take to stop the rape and murder of women by men on probation?, 5 February, p39).
• An article (They kept 1,000 slaves. Now this family is paying up and saying sorry, 5 February, p3) gave a figure of “about £20m” as the equivalent today of £26,898 received in 1834. Methods of calculating relative value are complex and can result in very different figures, but the Bank of England’s inflation calculator says the equivalent sum would be about £2.7m. Also, Wallington Hall was remodelled by the Trevelyan family, but not built by them as the piece said.
• Britishvolt, which entered administration last month, planned to build a battery factory near Blyth, Northumberland, not “in Teesside”(In the global race to dominate green technology, Britain is still tying its shoelaces, 5 February, p35).
• The current production of Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera House uses the 1875 Vienna version, not the Paris version of 1861, as a review said (Profane and sacred, 5 February, New Review, p25).
• An article (‘Huge win’ for trade union as Durham University raises PhD students’ pay, 28 January 2023) was amended on 3 February 2023 to add a further response from Durham regarding a £15,000 annual payment previously made to law PhD students, which included the university’s rejection of the suggestion that this had effectively equated to “less than minimum wage”. Its explanation that the postgraduate payment does not remunerate research, but provides for a living stipend and teaching of up to 80 hours, was also reflected in the amendment.
• Other recently amended articles include:
Frank Field: ‘It’s a strange experience taking so long to die’
Sunak ‘risks full-scale trade war’ with Brussels by scrapping EU laws
NHS fines mothers for claiming free prescriptions while pregnant
Revealed: only 10 of Boris Johnson’s promised 40 new hospital projects have planning permission
Turkey’s two-faced ‘sultan’ is no friend of the west. It’s time to play hardball
‘Terrifying’ cuts are killing creativity in UK arts, warns multiple Oscar winner
Are bands dead? How solo stars took over the charts
• Write to the Readers’ Editor, the Observer, York Way, London N1 9GU, email observer.readers@observer.co.uk, tel 020 3353 4736
