Don’t blame students for this mess

You were quite right to highlight the potential problems with students arriving back at university but nobody should be blaming them for this mess.

What did people think would happen if you stick hundreds of young people, most of them away from home for the first time, in a block of flats? Were they really expected to sit in at night and read an improving book? No one can be surprised at what has happened but I am surprised it was allowed to happen.

If all their classes are online why are they even there anyway, apart from sticking some money into university coffers?

Gillian Dutter, by email

Don’t mask feelings

I read your story about Highlander last week and it got A Kind of Magic by Queen stuck in my head. Later on, I was in the supermarket with my mask on and only realised I had been wandering about singing it out loud and humming the bits I didn’t know. The mask must have me think no one could hear me. Like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.

I told my friend and he says he was cursing someone who wasn’t wearing a mask in another shop but didn’t realise he was doing it out loud. Masks might help keep us safe but they might get us into bother as well.

Angela McIntyre, Aberdeen

BBC pay plea

In the light of recent revelations with regard to salaries paid to BBC presenters, I read that Fiona Bruce was quite surprised that, at the age of 52, she was still working. Well, why not let her “retire” with a substantial pension and employ a woman, half her age, and on less than half her salary, to replace her.

It is about time the government steps in and puts an end to salaries of such largesse. The BBC, once a worldwide respected organisation, has now descended in to a mediocre broadcaster paying obscene salaries to a coterie of nonentities.

John Reid, Keith

The High life

I was interested in the feature on Jonathan Melville’s excellent new book on the making of Highlander, having been an extra in the Glencoe scenes myself. We had been trained and paid to do a job after all, and it was one of the best experiences of my life.

While my memories of filming aren’t completely rose-tinted (I remember extras jeering at Christopher Lambert when he appeared on the set) they are mostly positive – the sheer excitement of being in a film, making friends, being trained to use a sword by the best stuntmen in the business, walking alongside James Cosmo one morning and, of course, seeing Christopher Lambert and Clancy Brown filming.

Ian Sutherland, by email

Camera obscura

On the story about freshening up for Zoom calls, do what I do and don’t turn your camera on!

M Ferguson, Bute