91Èȱ¬

Fake £1 coins are old news to me. I worked in bingo halls for five years, and you'd come across them almost every day in giving out change. It's just because they're a relatively low-level problem compared to fake £20 notes that it hasn't been noticed before. Check your change, people, and refuse to accept anything but a genuine £1 coin (I've had a Spanish 100 peseta coin and a coin from Swaziland in my change).
Edmund O'Connor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Steve's right (Thursday's letters). Although a large amount of forged tokens is inflationary, it's only so to the extent that normal tokens aren't withdrawn to stabilise it: effectively, it costs nearly the face value to produce and destroy, it's real worth is in its repeated use in circulation. If the forger saves the government that production expense, then it's actually deflationary, as long as it's generally accepted. Monetary devaluation of coinage is a long-outdated concept - nowadays the problem's almost the opposite, when the scrap value of the metal to the Chinese exceeds the face value, then the said coins start disappearing as they are melted down...
Fred, Rotherham

A completely erroneous headline on that is quite misleading. The final line even says language wasn't a barrier because no-one could have saved the baby.
Dan, London

I'm excited about TV's toughest quiz, next year. Or The Potassium Factor, as I and my friends used to call it, K being the symbol for potassium, not krypton.
Bob Peters, Leeds, UK

We've not had an all-noun-headline letter for a bit. How about ?
David Richerby, Leeds, UK

In the spirit of journalese-watch, I must point out the word "denialism" in - anyway I can forget I ever saw that?
Catherine, Leicester

I presume I'm not the first to point out to Paper Monitor that most Lennon/McCartney song were written by either John or Paul and not really joint compositions.
KP, Shepton Mallet

Re Caption Competition. Having just "Googled" R Dawkins, please could you elevate SeanieSmith to first place? He/she/it deserves a (slightly) larger amount of kudos in my humble opinion.
Nick Eaton, City of London

DS from Croydon makes a good point about David Blaine's latest stunt. I'm curious to why anyone would have thought it would be an interesting thing to watch. Of all the stunts I have heard of him doing, not one of them has ever sounded like it was going to be a spectacle. He may have incredible endurance, but watching someone doing essentially nothing for a period of time while in an unusual situation (block of ice, up a pole, in a plastic box, in a giant goldfish bowl etc) is not dissimilar to watching paint dry in an unusual situation. The only reason the stunt he did in London was interesting was because of the people who went there to bait him.
PS, Newcastle, England

Mark from Portsmouth (Thursday's letters), what a clever way of disobeying the stern instruction "do not enter your captions via the Letters form".
Ed, Leeds, UK

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