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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Letters

If only more MPs had done humdrum jobs

Tim Cowen is fed up of people mocking Gavin Williamson’s earlier job as a fireplace salesman. Photograph: Maggie Sully/Alamy

Gavin Williamson has many faults as a politician, for which he is rightly criticised. I do wish, however, that his former job as a fireplace salesman could stop being used as a term of ridicule (The politics sketch, 8 November). If more of us who do ordinary, humdrum jobs came into politics, it might make for a more balanced and representative political class. These jobs are not something to be mocked.
Tim Cowen
Whitstable, Kent

• You risked perplexing your readers when reporting that a former senior civil servant claimed that “Gavin Williamson told them to ‘cut your throat’” (7 November). May I propose that the Guardian lead the way in rejecting plural pronouns for gender-neutral purposes. For he, she and they, I suggest “zhee”. For him, her and them, may we have “thim”?
Alan Fairs
Bewdley, Worcestershire

• Re Adrian Chiles’s article (I don’t quite know how, but the supermarket is taking me for a mug. I’m cutting up my loyalty card, 3 November), loyalty cards frequently generate money-off vouchers. If you are fortunate enough not to need them for yourself, I suggest you use them to buy items for your local food bank. The supermarket gets the sales, the food bank gets the goods, and it costs you nothing.
Tom Atkinson
Winchester

• Regarding the 20mph residential speed limit to be introduced in Wales (Report, 7 November), being a resident in the pilot zone in north Cardiff, I have had increasing fun enforcing the speed limit on vehicles queueing behind me desperate to break it.
John Dinning
Cardiff

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