Alexa, do you recall the ID card debate?

Photograph: Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters

Ed Pilkington’s reference to a “21st-century Dickensian dystopia” (The worldwide tech revolution digitising welfare systems and punishing the most vulnerable, 15 October) is spot-on. How prescient was Dickens’s depiction of the nightmare Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit. It’s hard to believe that common sense is so completely absent among those tasked with running the country and evolving systems, but sadly it’s all too clear.
Dr Brigid Purcell
Norwich

• The alarming levels of actual and potential incursions into our privacy detailed in your article (Is it time to turn Alexa off for good?, G2, 9 October) prompted me to remember with something akin to nostalgia the days when there was feverish debate on the merits or otherwise of issuing identity cards in the UK.
Bill White
Leeds

• Ugo Monye (15 October) calls on rugby “to be more ambitious” and invites us to take a wider viewpoint when he asks: “How about Japan joining the Six Nations?” Greta Thunberg, taking an even wider view, may think it’s not such a good idea.
Ralph Firth
Warkworth, Northumberland

• If John Fullard (Letters, 14 October) visited Norfolk Park in Sheffield now, he would find that the ugly blocks of flats have indeed been replaced by eco-friendly low-rise housing, served by our hi-tech Supertram system.
Simon Geller
Sheffield

• Thanks to Hilary Carlen (Letters, 12 October) for arguing so succinctly that determination to succeed in sport is not sufficient on its own. No one can be a “winner” without many being labelled a failure.
Rosemary Rogers
Boston Spa, West Yorkshire

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition