Want a peerage? Bob’s your uncle | Brief letters

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil | Velveteen breeches | Guardian readersThe latest candidates for the peerage (Who else would be more useless as a peer? They’re in, said Boris, 3 August) are yet another manifestation of our government’s desire to return us to an earlier century. After the 1900 election, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the Marquess of Salisbury, formed a Conservative government – dubbed “the Hotel Cecil” by the Liberals – containing no fewer than six members of hi