IT is not unusual to find amusement in foot-in-mouth utterances from politicians. The learned Lord Offord is the latest contender ("Millionaire Tory peer suggests sacked civil servants can find work in farming", The Herald, May 16). He has just unwittingly confirmed that the cost of Brexit (employing more civil servants) was unacceptably high (and unacknowledged).

He is also ignorant of the identity of the real mastermind behind the apparently-high cost of employing civil servants. The Iron Lady, now standing in besplattered dignity in Grantham ("Thatcher statue greeted with eggs and boos", The Herald, May 16), was so sceptical of the merits of her civil servant advisers that she recruited business outsiders at City-level salaries to occupy top posts. Needless to say such inflated salaries, in comparison with existing salaries, had to be offered across the board to serving officers in equivalent posts with appropriate adjustments for lower ranks.

To give a concrete example from my own experience, when I left the Service before the Thatcher administration I moved to a more lucrative job. I was asked by the head of service I had left what public office I would require to come back at an equivalent salary. I replied, accurately at the time, Prime Minister. After the Thatcher extravagance my equivalent salary on retirement was to a UK civil servant of Under Secretary level.

The corollary of increasing salaries in the Civil Service is increasing pension levels. The compulsorily redundant bureaucrats will not only have relatively generous pension assets but could claim compensation for compulsory redundancy. The financial benefits of this latest example of putting mouth in motion before putting brain in gear are likely to be negligible, so do not expect any attack on the cost of living crisis in the near future.

Lorimer Mackenzie, Duror, Argyll.

* I WONDER how many of the people who are protesting about Margaret Thatcher’s statue are living in the houses which she allowed councils to sell off at a massive discount, most of which have now been sold for a profit?

This has exacerbated the shortage of affordable housing today, as councils were not allowed to use the money raised to build replacements.

Gordon W Smith, Paisley.

ANGLERS MUST SHARE SUNDAY BLAME

AS a once-keen rod and line angler myself I was interested to read the views of Andrew Douglas-Home on the “mystery of the Sunday salmon ban” (The Herald, May 17). His arguments against the ban seem to make absolute sense, especially in regard to the working man (or woman) losing one of their precious days off to the Sunday ban.

He then, however, went on to destroy his own argument with the tally of fish plundered from the river.

Thursday, 14 salmon caught. Friday, 20 more salmon. Saturday, 23. On Monday another 26. All this by a very small group of anglers on one small section of river. Thank goodness that fishing on Sunday was banned as taking fish in those numbers is and was unsustainable. I presume that all the fish were killed as that would have been usual in 1983. Catch and release was not commonplace until much later.

Rod and line anglers blame everyone but themselves for the demise of our migratory fish and I am sure that many other factors have had more impact than that of the angler, but taking fish in the numbers described above is completely unjustified. Sadly it is now illegal to take a single migratory fish from many of our once-prolific rivers.

David Clark, Tarbolton.

DANGEROUS DOGS ACT IS NOT WORKING

I NOTICED in the latest case (one of far too many) of a young vulnerable child being killed by a large dangerous dog ("Boy, 3, mauled to death by dog is named", The Herald, May 18), the police are at pains to point out that the animal was put down "humanely". The owner of the dog (this time, Rochdale, Greater Manchester) was arrested under The Dangerous Dogs Act.

Two things are clear. 1, No one seems to focus on the fact that the children aren't killed "humanely". They die in pain and terror. 2, The Dangerous Dogs Act (as I've tried to explain to my local police and councillors and council) is supposed to prevent deaths and serious injury by actively working against the ownership of dangerous dogs – not helping the police make an easy arrest after yet another child has been torn apart.

Amanda Baker, Edinburgh.

BACKING FOR THE TRUANTS

THE BBC and STV have given tacit approval to truancy by interviewing school-age Scottish children in Seville. What other events will they similarly categorise?

D Macintyre, Greenock.

THE HAIRDRYER TREATMENT

I AM so glad that I did not jettison my vague interest in things scientific and have many books on many subjects scientific. I read Professor Murray Pittock's Agenda article ("Into a new era with an extended reality", The Herald, May 17) and, more or less perplexed, went to talk to trees in the wood, which might be on the borderline of science, surely.

A while ago I came across a definition of metaphysics (subject, object and the nature of reality) which, simplified, is to think of a kitchen table when you are not there. The problem to be solved today was to think of the hairdryer when I was not there. The dryer was not there, in reality, either as it had ceased to work a while ago. Using what seemed to me could possibly be "extended reality (XR)" as I sat on a log in the wood, I wondered how to create a new hair dryer. Bingo. Drape a towel over the hand-basin in the bathroom, put an old breadboard on top of it, put a fan-heater on top of that, plug in and switch on. It worked so well that I will keep my metaphysical version, dreamt up in the wood. I will leave XR and any new "thinking perception" to the real scientists.

Incidentally, that old breadboard lives under my bit of the sofa as it provides a feeling of solidarity in an otherwise weird world.

Thelma Edwards, Kelso.

A BIND AT THE BOOKSHOP

YOUR caption for the picture of Borders Books in Glasgow ("Life’s simple pleasures", The Herald, May 18) suggested that customers could enjoy a coffee with some newly-purchased books. My experience of Borders' coffee shop was that people took large bundles of books in, flicked through them and left them for the staff to put back on the shelf, likewise the magazine section where the stock got very dog-eared by "customers" using it as a library rather than buying.

Perhaps this partly explains why Borders closed.

Stuart Neville, Clydebank.