Jellycats

Defence agreement Sir: If (a big ‘if’, I know) our politicians really would like to address the parlous state of the UK’s defences (‘Indefensible’, 21 February) but refrain from the necessary tax increases and/or spending cuts out of fear their unpopularity would open the door to their opponents, they should consider adopting a device the Danes have used to great effect for many decades. ‘Political agreements’, which I came across when advising the Danish finance ministry in the 1990s, are legally binding, long-term contracts between political parties to support and implement specified courses of action, regardless of who is in power, and requiring all parties’ sign-off to amend. Perhaps Labour,

On the fourth floor of Selfridges, in London, is the children’s toy department. Most of the vast space is given over to soft toys – mounds of synthetic fur, thousands of little beady eyes – and when I visited last Saturday afternoon the customers were almost all adults. I spent two hours there, standing by a tower of little Paddington bears, watching the shoppers in the queue for the till, and it was eye-opening. Almost no one was buying for a child. I saw two Chinese women with white toy lambs, a 17-year-old boy with a dragon, what looked like drug dealers queuing for Pokémon cards, and a genuinely troubling