Charles Hunt wants to send the proposed statue of St Helena to Colchester (Letters, August 17). What can the people of Colchester have done to make him so vindictive?

Anyhow, Colchester already has a statue. In the 19th century, some Colchester worthies went to Italy to buy a statue of St Helena, but they found nobody there had heard of her, so they brought back a general-purpose statue of a saint, which now stands high above the High Street on the face of the Moot Hall. Unlike the monstrosity proposed for York, it is inconspicuous and inoffensive.

Ernest Rudd,

South Parade,

York.

...The witty comments which have appeared in the letters page recently will have delighted all readers, (myself included), who share the writers' views on the proposed statue of St Helena.

Could any member of this invisible club come up with a suitable acronym with which to entitle it? YAPSH (York Against the Proposed Statue of Helena) might do as an expletive, but lacks the punch which an existing word, (eg from the vocabulary of the arts), would pack.

On the day when, (let us hope), the design is withdrawn, members of the club could gather in St Helen's Square and use the winning title as a toast to celebrate the triumph of satire over civic bungling.

Mary Machen,

St John's Crescent,

York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.