There’s something in the air. It’s not Balls, it’s Jeremy Corbyn | Letters

I had two strange experiences on Saturday night. Having lived in London for 40 years, but no longer a resident, I walked the few miles from Victoria station to the Albert Hall. Strolling through the familiar streets of Belgravia and Knightsbridge I realised there was something odd. The place was empty. Very few cars driving by, very few cars parked at the kerbside, almost no one walking the pavements. Virtually a ghost town – and on a beautiful warm early evening. The obvious deduction was that no one lives in these posh parts any more.

Later the same evening, around midnight, I stood on the platform of Worthing railway station waiting for the train from Brighton to take me home. As it pulled into the station I heard a roaring sound from inside, as if the carriages were full of joyful football fans. The doors slid open and hundreds of young people spilled on to the platform, heading home after their night out. The roaring continued and it soon became clear that the noise was a collective chanting of “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!”

I gazed in wonder at all these happy young people. Happy, I thought, because suddenly there is hope in their lives. I sat on the train and thought of Glastonbury, with words from an old Thunderclap Newman song in my head: “There’s something in the air.” I smelt it on Saturday night and it smelled wonderful.
Bill Geddes
Worthing, West Sussex

• Watching the hordes waiting to greet JC at Glastonbury, I was reminded of Monty Python’s Life of Brian when the crowd gathers outside his house just before Terry Jones delivers that immortal line: “He’s not the messiah…” Guardian readers know the rest.
Petar Bavelja
Sheffield

• Your Glastonbury 2017 G2 special (26 June) has eight photos of Ed Balls on the cover, three pages of text by him, and five more photos inside. Only on page 12 is there one photo of the undisputed political hit of the festival, and a shot of an “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” T-shirt. Perhaps there is more than one reason why few people were sporting “I heart Balls” T-shirts?
Sally Parrott
Cranleigh, Surrey

• I’m disgusted with your collusion in turning Ed Balls into a “national treasure”. His brutal, ignorant and self-serving mishandling of events following the death of Peter Donnelly in Haringey led to individual careers and lives being blighted, a social work department and a whole profession publicly trashed and, as a result, less care and support available to children and families in need.
Lynne Scrimshaw
(Retired Haringey social worker), London

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