Readers praise face-to-face contact and challenge everyday energy costs

Letters: conversation, energy bills and everyday irritations

Readers have responded to recent Guardian coverage with observations on human contact, household energy costs, language and a touch of sporting irony.

In-person contact and wellbeing

Writing from Eastbourne, Judith Furner said neuroscientist Ben Rein had highlighted differences in people’s cognitive responses to in-person and online interaction. Furner wrote that face-to-face meetings and conversations produce a “dramatic increase” in serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine compared with online exchanges, and said the point had encouraged her to speak to people at bus stops.

A call to rethink standing charges

Judith Pearson, of Sheffield, argued that energy standing charges should be reduced or set on a sliding scale according to consumption. She said her monthly standing charges can amount to half or more of the cost of the energy she uses.

Signs, greetings and an ironic twist

Paul Gelling added “Large drive-in car park” at a Vale of Evesham farm shop to a collection of tautological phrases. Megan Parry objected to hospitality workers’ widespread use of “guys”, while 91-year-old Beverley Charles Rowe said he disliked being addressed as “young man”, recalling that when he really was young he was often called “old man”.

Martin Datta, writing from Lincoln, supplied the page’s “irony corner”: air pollution impairing Formula One motor racing in Singapore.