From Sir Sigmund Sternberg Sir: I agree fully with Nicholas Faith (Letters, 19 September) regarding the accounts of Holocaust victims in Swedish banks. From The Ven John E. Burgess Sir: If stockbrokers have a legal duty to give best advice, as appears to be the case with banks, how do they rank Railtrack after the Eurotunnel investors debacle? There are similar commercial and political uncertainties, and one imagines that a legal defence might be hard to mount. Yours sincerely,John BurgessArchdeacon of BathDiocese of Bath and WellsBristol18 September. Has he left something out? By my lights, but not his, he could have added the reason that the book reaches out to the English poets and has incisive and novel entries on their lines about philosophy, unrandomly chosen. He makes some strong points elsewhere in what he says.Yours sincerely,Ted HonderichLondon, NW3. As for Michael Dummett's entries, of which he cannot find a single one, he could look up Gentzen, or Logical Harmony, or Natural Deduction, or Normalisation or Tarot.I'm a little worried that he says the book is "the most far-reaching and the most authoritative single-volume reference work on philosophy yet published".

In his report of the entry on Craig's Theorem, he leaves out exactly the lines that make the lines he quotes intelligible, and also leaves out the enlightening last bit of a line he does quote. He makes a little meal of our having forgotten to put in one philosopher, John McTaggart, thereby leaving out the fact that we didn't forget McTaggart is in the book, right there under "McTaggart". From Professor Ted Honderich Sir: Ray Monk, having got into the habit of skating over things in his biography of Wittgenstein, now leaves things out in his review of The Oxford Companion to Philosophy ("In pursuit of truth", 16 September). Well, hallelujah! Is it still your considered opinion that this did not apply to any of the previous bids?Politicians are occasionally held to account for their past words by newspapers. It is not a bad idea for newspapers to be reminded of what they were saying a week or a fortnight ago.

So which bids do you now think should have been referred to the MMC on the grounds that "the consumer could come out badly"?Yours sincerely,Brian WilsonMP for Cunninghame North(Lab)House of CommonsLondon, SW1The writer is Opposition spokesman on Trade and Industry.. The repeated line has been that there is no case for interfering in the share dealings of private sector companies, whose businesses happen to be water or electricity.Now the Independent has discovered that, in the cases of the proposed PowerGen takeover of Midlands Electricity and North West Water's attempt to acquire Norweb, "the consumer could come out badly". As U-turns go, this one would put any politician to shame, but is no less welcome for that. For months now, the Independent - through your unsigned Business Comment column - has put itself on the extreme libertarian right of press and politics by insisting with religious zeal that none of the utility bids should be referred to the MMC.Those of us who have argued differently and consistently have been castigated for our "knee-jerk" responses. From Mr Brian Wilson, MP Sir: Three highly ironic cheers for your leading article "Use your power to refer, Mr Lang" (19 September).