Your Letters

16:02 UK time, Monday, 1 December 2008

Now that the VAT rate has been reduced, will pound shops become 98p shops?
Adam, London, UK

Re On patrol with the traffic police: The new breathalyser "...also records the driver's age, gender, ethnicity and precise location and reading of the test." All that from a sample of someone's breath? Crikey, that's impressive. Tell me again why we need ID cards?
Alex Knibb, Bristol, UK

Re The letter I just sent you about the fab new breathalysers, I've just found out why we still need ID cards, it was cunningly hidden in the next sentence: "The data will not include the driver's name or any personal information that could identify them."
Rats.
Alex Knibb, etc

Venice has been put on flood alert? What next? Will town planners in Pisa issue a report to say they think the towns tower might be leaning a bit?
Christian Cook, Epsom, UK

I have been wracking my, admittedly miniscule, brain, and for the life of me I can't work out how an "underwater dam" would work. Can anybody help?
Michaela, Runcorn, UK

How many people, I wonder, read this because they hoped Paul McCartney might be involved?
Carol, Portugal

Henry Mears, organiser of the lambasted Lapland New Forest, asks "What is not here that we haven't advertised?" Is this double negative a slip of the tongue or fiendish doublespeak?
Alice, London, UK
Monitor note: Either way, commendable deployment of alliteration, Alice.

A kinder spin on The Killers outsell Guns N' Roses would have been "Guns N' Roses sell almost as many copies as trendy young person's band." It feels a bit like you're putting the boot in to a pensioner for only winning the silver medal.
Adam, London, UK

I never realised how happy I would be to read the words "umbrellas for fairies" in a BBC News report.
Maisy, Milton Keynes

Owls takeover dead, says Walker - favourite headline of the year from our very own Beeb.
Peter Travers, Weymouth

I have just spent upwards of five minutes rearranging the panels on my BBC.co.uk homepage so that all the columns line up at the bottom. I could have been working. Thanks a lot. (PS Could you perhaps send an email round all the bloggers explaining that it would be helpful to me if they would please not make posts with titles that go onto two lines on the homepage? Thanks.)
Paul T, Manchester, UK