While Alastair Campbell is enjoying his newfound state of happiness (How I got happy and stayed grumpy, 7 January), I hope he will find time to spare a thought for the family of David Kelly, an honourable and brilliant scientist, so hounded and humiliated for exposing the "sexed-up" weapons report on the Iraqi threat to our national security, which ultimately led to parliament's support for the Iraq war. He might also care to reflect upon the thousands of Iraqi men, women and children who have known untold suffering, tragedy and unhappiness as a result of the war; in comparison, his own unhappy episodes pale into insignificance.
Sally Dillon
Stroud, Gloucestershire
David Cameron clearly has some work to do on his father-in-law (Report, 12 January). I suspect Lord Astor is one of those Englishmen who finds anything north of Watford distasteful (until perhaps he reaches the grouse moors of Scotland?). HS2 may well be a great waste of public money, but his attitudes to northern MPs who dissent from the orthodoxy rather resemble those of the cavalry towards Mancunians who dared to demand parliamentary reform at the Peterloo massacre.
Anna Ford
London
While agreeing, as usual, with my good friend and colleague Larry Elliott over the stance of economic policy both here and in the eurozone (Merkel holds whip hand in orgy of masochism, 9 January), I seem to recall that Denis Healey coined the term "punk monetarism", not "sado-monetarism". The phrase "sado-monetarism" was coined in the Observer during the early 1980s by… Yours Truly,
William Keegan
Senior economics commentator, the Observer
Good to see the Boundary Commission's proposals for Welsh constituency changes showing the same imperial sensitivity as those who carved up Africa in the late 19th century (Proposal for Wales to lose 25% of its MPs, 11 January). Lugard, Kipling and Baden-Powell would be delighted.
Rick Newnham
Secretary, Welsh Communists