Your Letters
17:12 UK time, Monday, 3 September 2007
Re , firstly I want to say I was amazed I am at how staggeringly easy the questions are, and have always been, for the driving theory test. Secondly, adding more questions to this farce of an exam will not make better drivers out of us. As in Germany, it is high time we were forced to take practical tests on motorways, as this seems to be where the most appalling, yet easily avoided, driver errors seem to be made. Sorry, this letter is neither ironic nor comic, I just had to get this off my chest.
Martin, Bristol, UK
I am enjoying the random stat feature, but might I suggest you add some context to the statistics in future (a link will do)? Today's statistic is a case in point - how many of the mobile phone owners were NOT pet owners? Also, how many of the pet owners were also mobile phone owners and would be upset at losing both? Somewhere in there lies the real source of the 2% difference, although it's a lot less interesting than "Man's New Best Friend? The Mobile Phone!"
Louise Dade, Bedfordshire
I felt like quibbling about today's random stat, given the relative nature of the term "upset" in the two different cases, until it occurred to me to wonder whether more people do in fact insure their mobile than their pet. I suspect they probably do. Thanks - now I'm just going to be depressed for the rest of the day.
Susannah, Derby
So the new, tougher has begun. The article says: "Candidates need to correctly answer 43 out of 50 multiple-choice questions on the Highway Code, compared with the old standard of 30 out of 35 questions." So the pass mark is now 86% rather than 85.7%? Sounds much, much harder to me.
Ed, Clacton, UK
I know how much pedantry is frowned upon here, but I just couldn't let the statement "The chances of a woman having two sets of triplets naturally are one in 64 million" (10 Things) go unchallenged. Just because the chance of having one set is 1 in 8,000 doesn't mean that the chance of the second set is also 1 in 8,000: if a woman has already had 1 set then it is quite likely that she has an above-average chance of having triplets.
Adam, London, UK
I realise that square parentheses are used to denote text from a quote that has been changed for the sake of clarity, but I always find myself wondering what was originally said. "[T]en years...", was it "When years"? Hen years? Perhaps [Sev]en years and it's a very old quote..?
Duncan, Hove
MM note: The full sentence was "Still, ten years…"
I see Gordon Brown has caught the latest linguistic bug. In your article you quote him as saying the withdrawal was "pre-planned". What does pre-planned mean that planned doesn't? Will we soon hear people saying "already pre-planned in advanced"? It strikes me as a superfluous tautology.
Daniel Hayes, St Albans, UK
Sometimes you read an article and then wish you hadn't – this being a . "There was also a difference in the sort of kisses the two sexes preferred, with men liking wet, tongue kisses."
I was eating my lunch; I'm not hungry now.
Lucy Jones, Manchester
May we have the caption competition back soon please. OK there has to be an investigation into the serious issues that appear to have tarnished the competitions, but surely it does not take all this time to work out that restarting the caption competition is the correct thing to do. Unless the captions are being written by ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ staff or a contractor then we know as we enter that the winner will be a subjective choice by a nameless face. More captions competitions soon please.
Adrian Hetherington, Bristol
From the piece on to the detriment of our health. "Dr Basner said more work was now needed to measure what impact long working hours encroaching on sleep might be having on health." I love the irony.
Jake Perks, Shropshire, UK
Does this mean the Monitor censors letters (Re Ian C, Friday)? I am appauled (sic).
DJM, Scotland
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