This beautiful ceanothus graces our neighbours’ garden in Battledean Road, writes Tim Sayer, Battledean Road, Highbury.

It sheds some of its profusion of blooms, magically carpeting the pavement. It’s quite large and we discuss a pruning session each year, but then decide not to.

Last week I read about 308 Holloway Road, writes Mrs E Neighbour, Williamson Street, Islington.

That brought back a lot of memories for me because I was their first packer when they sent the models all over the world. It was about 1949.

I remember Mr Henry Nicholls pulling up each morning in his open top red MG. I worked at the top of 308 for about 18 months until they opened a packing place in Hornsey Road, N7, and I moved around there.

They were happy days. I had my 21st birthday on the top floor of 308. It has got me wondering what has happened to all the other staff he had. Thank you again for bringing back happy memories.

On May 5 and 6, 2017, the Business Design Centre in Islington hosted an exhibition which was very offensive to Greek Cypriots, writes Andy Kyprios, full address supplied.

It was termed the “north Cyprus festival”.

A festival is a happy event of celebration as if all is well in north Cyprus. Nothing could be further from the truth for the Greeks expelled from their homes there. Wanton, deliberate, almost total physical and cultural destruction and obliteration of Greek history, systematically by Turkish occupying forces, hardly warrants the term “festival” to celebrate. The exhibition promoted the illegal sale of stolen Greek-owned lands, which has been condemned by the UN, EU, ECHR and ECJ. This is rather a festival of apartheid in occupied northern Cyprus which is a pseudo-state recognised by none but its occupier Turkey.

We would like Londoners to be aware of this injustice.

The Turkish occupiers even rewrite history for their imported illegal colonists – that Cyprus was always Turkish – and deny the historic realities of 4,500 years of Greek culture and inhabitation, Ottoman Turks having invaded in 1571. Talk about fake news!

Barnard Park: It’s an improvement

In response to concerns about the loss of the Barnard Park pitch (p8), Alice ter Meulen, Islington, full address supplied, writes:

Please note that the old, badly degraded gravel pitch in Barnard Park will be replaced by an astroturf seven-a-side with night lighting, as well as various free green areas for training and playing in the renovated park.

The council’s decision to approve the Barnard Park redevelopment was a betrayal of ordinary people who use the park in favour of those who will enjoy a rise in the value of their houses from its publicly funded gentrification, writes Michael Coffey, Islington Green Party.

I attended the meeting, and my kids use the football pitch. Hearing access to the smaller football pitch “is a detail we will agree later” told me the council really doesn’t “get” Barnard Park. Free access has to be a fundamental, non-negotiable part of the redevelopment. Instead, the suspicion from this craven decision is that the promised bijou plastic pitch will be oversubscribed and access eventually rationed by paid use. Labour have certainly learned Thatcher’s lesson – make the people pay for what they already own, and use public money to benefit the elite.

Because Sport England oppose the plan, the decision will now go to the secretary of state. Whoever that may turn out to be, I hope they see through this appalling betrayal of true democracy.

President Trump is having great difficulty getting his policies into law, writes Max Nottingham, formerly of Finsbury Park.

If Jeremy Corbyn were prime minister he would have even greater difficulty getting his policies into law.

When it comes to the crunch, there are more powerful forces in democracies than the voters.

That said, carry on voting. I do!