You say that young Russians are “often referred to as ‘Generation P’ for having lived only under Putin’s presidency” (‘He couldn’t wait to join’: thousands of young Russians die in Ukraine war, 29 May). However, the phrase was coined in the title of a Russian novel published in 1999 – a year before Vladimir Putin first became president. Its author, Victor Pelevin, says the P referred to Pizdets, sometimes translated as the generation who were “screwed”.
Paul Moss
London
• On a recent trip to the Musée d’Orsay (Letters, 3 June), I was so fed up with people standing in front of paintings taking selfies that I started photobombing. There must be people over the world wondering: who is that mad old woman with hair like an explosion in a mattress factory?
Lillian Adams
Hereford
• Mel Stride, the Tory minister, says: “We can comfortably raise £6bn from clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion” (Report, 28 May). Really? Which party has closed the vast majority of HMRC’s local tax offices and reduced staff numbers so that customer service levels are at an all-time low?
Ian Arnott (ex-HMRC)
Peterborough
• Contrary to Zoe Williams’ theory (Opinion, 3 June), getting fit has not made me more rightwing. But then I listen to the Guardian’s Politics Weekly UK podcast in the gym.
Peter Kershaw
Radlett, Hertfordshire
• If parliament had 650 Mhairi Black MPs (Goodbye to all that, 3 June), the country wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in. Any chance of cloning her before she leaves?
Mark Brett
Cobham, Surrey
• Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
