Convert offices into flats, not nightclubs

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/14/convert-offices-into-flats-not-nightclubs

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Towers of Babel | Art criticism | Trusting a man with a beard | Beards at the border | Cows in the heat

Your article (Turn empty London office blocks into ‘late-night party zones’, report suggests, 13 July) misses the real opportunity to promote using those ghastly, unsightly Towers of Babel for something useful: housing. Forget partying, think existing. Let’s redeem the disasters of the past and give people somewhere to live.Janet TomlinsonAndover, Hampshire

Jonathan Jones says: “This is where celebrity artists get it wrong: they think art is fun but art is suffering and madness” (Ed Sheeran’s Pollock homage has energy but no feeling or truth, 9 July). Is he not confusing “art” with “art criticism”?John WarburtonEdinburgh

The correspondence on beards (Letters, 13 July) reminds me of when I was in the civil service and, at a meeting, one of our managers warned us: “Never trust a man with a beard.” This was in full hearing of one of the other managers who was bearded.Ian ArnottWerrington, Peterborough

A beard is not always a good travelling companion. In the 1970s, my husband was stopped at the Czechoslovakian border because he had a beard but his passport did not. The border guards made him shave it off before they would let him in.Christine CrawshawLondon

Somerset cows bunch nose to tail so that one cow’s tail is another’s fan and fly swat (Panting, gular fluttering and sploots: how Britain’s animals try to keep cool, 11 July).Prof Terry GiffordWookey, Somerset

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