Mirror subeditors rise and fall to the blob challenge

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/oct/17/mirror-subeditors-rise-and-fall-to-the-blob-challenge

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The CBI’s systematic scaremongering (Labour’s plan for state ownership of utilities to cost £196bn – CBI, 14 October) neglects the potential financial benefits of nationalisation. Public ownership of the railways could ensure that income is concentrated on improving services instead of being creamed off by private shareholders.Francis PrideauxLondon

• Could someone set out the process by which those of us who vote by post will hang on to our right to suffrage (Conservatives accused of suppressing voters’ rights with photo ID plans, 14 October)?Steve TeasdaleHalifax, West Yorkshire

• When I was training for the priesthood, the vice-principal of our theological college regaled us with a story of his student days there. Apparently the German wife of a staff member had a very precise knowledge and use of the English language. He was somewhat surprised after breakfast one day to find a note in his pigeon hole inviting him to “afternoon tea”. She declared that she was so looking forward to meeting him again for intercourse (Letters, 14 October).Rev Canon Robert McLeanWylam, Northumberland

• I always thought it was a free Telegraph with a bottle of water, not vice versa (Telegraph scraps free water as profits plunge, 16 October).Billy MorrisonAyr

• Downing a large “blob” at each of the five Yates’s Wine Lodges (Letters, 17 October) within a circular sprint of Manchester’s once-great Withy Grove printing centre was a necessary initiation for newly engaged subeditors at the Daily Mirror in the 1970s. I made it, rubber-legged, back to my desk inside the designated hour; many didn’t.David BanksDaily Mirror editor, 1992-94

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