UK Government Investments is still the majority shareholder (54.7%) in NatWest, so will it be basically taxpayers who’ll pay most of the £264m fine recently given to NatWest at Southwark crown court because the bank failed to spot that huge amounts of cash deposited in black bin liners might be a bit dodgy (Natwest fined £264m after taking deposits of laundered cash in bin bags, 13 December)?
Paul Tattam
Chinley, Derbyshire
Susanne MacGregor (Letters, 13 December) tells only part of the Sir Omicron story. Anthony Trollope’s high-society physician is surnamed Pie – a play on the two neighbouring letters of the Greek alphabet: omicron and pi. Was Trollope presciently signalling the next Covid variant?
Michael Dunne
Brighton, East Sussex
We puzzlers notice details, and I couldn’t help but notice that in your Wordsearch of 15 December, of all the 15 bands and artists from the 1980s, only one, the Pixies, included a member who was a woman.
Rachael Lukowska
Beckenham, London
I fear for Pedanticus’s blood pressure when he reads the headline “Son calls the shots as king lays low” in your print edition (16 December).
Sue Jenkins
Thame, Oxfordshire
As a friend once said to me: “Even an eider duck cannot lay down.”
Roger Bardell
Welwyn, Hertfordshire