Your Letters
17:07 UK time, Tuesday, 31 October 2006
Presumably, Lester Mak's car (Monday letters) doesn't need servicing, MOTing, taxing, insuring, repairing, never has new tyres, brakes, exhausts, windscreen wipers, screen wash or oil, doesn't depreciate and has never gone though a toll bridge or on a ferry; not to forget the 200 other things I have forgotten. My car manages over 40mpg and when I did a precise account came to well over 30p a mile to run.
Ian, Winchester
To Lester Mak - 40p per mile is the standard rate allowed by the Inland Revenue, up to a maximum of 10,000 miles a year, and 25p per mile thereafter. It's not just for petrol costs, but also wear and tear on the car. Incidentally, you get an extra 5p per mile if you have a passenger so maybe they should carpool?
RP, Cambridge
Regarding to your article about from work duties, just thought I'd point out an inaccuracy with your knowledge of this festival. Halloween is not the New Year festival for pagans, which was claimed in much 19th and early 20th Century literature. New Year for them is in in fact celebrated around the 25th of March, as many of my pagan friends tell me every year. What Halloween represents is the "end" of Summer, and the "beginning" of Winter.
Darren Skinner, Stoke-On-Trent
From : "Laura Watling, who is a psycho social science student in her third year." I'm sure that's not very PC.
Sasha, UK
I hope everyone else has relished the choice of - Ascot racecourse - as much as I have.
Helene Parry, South Wales expat to Brentford
Re this week's ..."This week, I've chosen the Italian surname Medici, as it is often the subject of pronunciation-related audience complaints." Isn't it just! Why didn't the Pronunciation Unit grab Bethany Hughes by the scruff of the neck when she made that Radio 4 documentary last year. Why is the Pronunciation Unit not required to audit every pre-recorded program before it is broadcast? Or is it?
James, Stockport
The "How to say" articles always remind me of that Monty Python sketch:
Interviewer: Good evening. I have with me in the studio tonight one of Britain's leading skin specialists - Raymond Luxury Yacht.
Raymond: That's not my name.
Interviewer: I'm sorry - Raymond Luxury Yach-t.
Raymond: No, no, no - it's spelt Raymond: Luxury Yach-t, but it's pronounced "Throatwobbler Mangrove".
John Henry, London, UK
Have we been flexi-conned. I always assumed the idea of combining two old words to form one new one, was a Monitor original, but today I cam across a press notice from DailyCandy boasting ideas for a new travel dictionary. They include "arm restle" - ongoing battle waged with the person sitting next to you on a plane or train over who gets the middle armrest; gabbin pressure - a sense of obligation to chat to the passenger next to you during a flight; and travelanche - the state of affairs when one little thing goes wrong and then everything snowballs towards disaster. Monitorrr!
Morgan Sexton, Ashby de la Zouch
Am I the only one to be fooled by the Mini Quiz today? Yesterday the ´óÏó´«Ã½ told me that the Lord Chancellor would say Human Rights are as British as beer, today the quiz tells they are as British as a bulldog. Is it fair to give us wrong information and then mock us by using it against us in the quiz?
TS, St Albans, Herts
MM: the quiz asks "Which British icon DIDN'T the Lord Chancellor compare human rights to?"
The 
