Homeshare can be a great solution for older people wanting to live in their own homes (Caring and sharing, Money, 7 January), when the sharers are well suited and the obligations on each side are willingly entered into. But the government's changes to welfare will force many more younger people into sharing whether they like it or not. When the meagre single-room rate of housing allowance is extended from 25 to cover all people up to age 35, sharing will be the only option for many. Let's hope many more community-based organisations like Crossroads survive the voluntary sector cuts for long enough to act as the housing dating service for all these forced sharers.
Sarah Mitchell
Camden Federation of Private Tenants
• Anyone who, like Ami Sedghi, feels vague about Margaret Thatcher's policies (Fiend or feminist, G2, 6 January), should read Owen Jones's book Chavs. He quotes Thatcher: "There really is no primary poverty left in this country … there may be poverty because they don't know how to budget, don't know how to spend their earnings, but now you are left with the really hard fundamental character-personality defect." This after deliberately destroying mining communities and plunging them into worklessness.
Nick Nuttgens
Sheffield, South Yorkshire
• Something else to thank Stephen Hawking for: his revelation that he didn't learn to read until he was eight (Report, 9 January). Like the vast majority of his contemporaries in the rest of Europe, he learned when he was ready, not at the force-fed rate that is still the norm in our own misguided education system.
Jenny Hartland
York
• Pity that the shortening of In praise of… (9 January) deprived you of the space to mention Pascal's "If I'd had more time I'd have written a shorter letter".
Brian Fitzgerald
London
• Honeybees seen in garden on tree heath flowers, 8 January.
Dave Taylor
Purbrook, Hampshire
• Red admiral seen 7 January in Chessington! Early? Late? Or lost?
Steve Denahy
Chessington, Surrey