Your Letters
15:56 UK time, Wednesday, 3 February 2010
I fail to see the point of changing a woman's name to protect her identity, but then .
Sarah, London
Well done for publishing the - I laughed scornfully at the man in question until I did the quiz and got 3. I am now feeling rather sheepish.
Sue, London
It's fairly obvious how the ID for quiche problem happened. There are two flavours of barcode used in stores, EAN-8 (7 digits+1 checksum digit) and EAN-13 (12 digits + 1 checksum). Tesco (and most of the others) use EAN-8 numbers for their own brand products so that's 10 possible combinations. Someone somewhere has to keep their databases up to date with the details of what product has which barcode and price. So we have an opportunity for data input error. For stuff like beers, wines and spirits, the barcode triggers a "check ID" notice on the till. Adult market magazines also have an ID check. The error is clearly due to one digit out of place, so the quiche got the ID check.
As with all things computerised it's garbage in, garbage out. Combine that with a PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair) from the till operator, and you get a silly news story.
Dougie Lawson, Basingstoke, UK
Re proof of age for quiche buying, I especially liked the one about the 40+ woman who was denied permission to purchase a bottle of wine because she could not produce proof of age, and then when her 22-year-old daughter showed her ID and tried to buy it, was denied, for fear she would give the wine to her mother.
Paula Newman
Alan (Tuesday letters), what they serve you may be *called* haggis but it isn't. Haggis is offal and offal is not permitted for human consumption by American law. Therefore "haggis" made in the US isn't actually haggis. Sorry!
Kimberley, Nottingham
Whilst Steve Harris is right in saying that "very" adds nothing to "unique" (Tuesday letters), I think that "almost exactly" is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. Has he never claimed to have "almost finished" anything?
Michael, Edinburgh, UK
With reference to your untimely fire drill (Paper Monitor), might I suggest it would make things a lot easier if WBQ were in every day (under its maiden name of LBQ), and Caption Competition made more frequent visits? It looks as if it's all too late for Punarama, who must have been burnt to death in a previous fire drill.
Rob Falconer, Llandough, Wales
Oh dear. ) Then NOBODY would be the Monitor (Friday letters), and everyone would be friends again. :)
P.S PLEASE? turn it in to a lil yellow person? I did my html stuff myself... Pwetty please?
Jaz, Bath
Monitor note: No.
What an appropriate name for someone .
Iani, Aberystwyth
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