Words we should staff the barricades against | Brief letters

As someone working in human resources who has spent years encouraging colleagues to use the word “staffing” rather than “manning”, I find it ironic that in reviewing the TV series Furious, which is “powered [by] female rage” (27 July), Lucy Mangan wrote that its lead character Alice Black “is manning the FBI tip line”.
Kathy Ashton
York

Mark Lawson states that Jimmy Cricket’s “retained native accent allowed him to rhyme ‘faffing’ with ‘laughing’” (No smut, no swearing, wrong-feet wellies and a silly hat: the gentle comedy world of Jimmy Cricket, 4 August). As most of the UK’s English speakers would say, these words do rhyme. It is only some from southern England and a few other areas who pronounce laughing incorrectly.
Gordon Glassford
Corby, Northamptonshire

As Kemi Badenoch still supports Joshua Bonehill-Paine because he has been deradicalised (Kemi Badenoch gives former neo-Nazi advisory role after he withdraws as Tory candidate, 5 August), perhaps she’ll now campaign to allow Shamima Begum to return to the UK.
Mary Hutty
Bath

“Vertical drinking” is not the problem (Council wants pubs in London’s Soho and West End to ban standing, 6 August). It is the inability to remain vertical while drinking that is where the trouble begins.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire

I will only accept a safety driver in a self-driving taxi if it is Ann Droid (Leicester Square, please guv’: Self-driving taxis cleared for London streets ‘later this summer’, 5 August).
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife