Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Coffee is polluting but sewage is OK? | Brief letters

<strong>Letters: </strong>Grounds for complaint | Everton stadium | Jo Aldred | Shaheen restaurant | Elitist theatre

Coffee is polluting but sewage is OK? | Brief letters

Some days, I wonder what sort of country we live in. A London woman is threatened with a £150 fine for pouring some coffee dregs down a drain, with the suggestion that this amounted to polluting the waterways (Report, 22 October), yet water companies regularly dump countless millions of gallons of raw sewage with impunity.Ralph JonesRochester, Kent • Reading John Harris’s heart-rending piece on the housing shortage in Liverpool (Opinion, 19 October), I couldn’t help but wonder what might have been achieved if the £800m spent on Everton Football Club’s new stadium had instead been put into providing decent homes. Society has some bizarre priorities.Margaret FarnworthLiverpool • Another Stourbridge Shuttle stalwart (Letters, 16 October) deserves a mention – my mother-in-law, Jo Aldred, its celebrated 5 millionth passenger. It has been rumoured that she is the true source of George the station cat’s wisdom. Gerard HastingsCéret, France • Great urban-based diary on Bradford, pigeons and peregrines (Country diary, 18 October). There used to be a Pakistani restaurant in Bradford in the 1970s called the Shaheen (peregrine). Coincidence?John RobertsDursley, Gloucestershire • My friend Chris Woods used to say that theatre was posh people shouting at you (Letters, 21 October). He should surely have said that it was posh people shouting at posh people?Keith GrahamBristol • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.