Student loans | Antarctic iceberg | Photographic memory | Dog-ends | Don’t be a tosser
Neil Gammack (Letters, 11 July) asks what a graduate earning £21,001, with a debt of £50,000 a year, would have to pay every month to offset the interest on the loan. He thought it would be a huge sum, I suppose, and was angry that the Guardian refers to the student loan as a “so-called debt”. Repayments are not based on the size of the loan but on the graduate’s salary. You pay 9% of the difference between your salary and £21,000 – in this case £1 per year. One twelfth of 9% of this would be paid per month, ie less than a penny!
Trevor Randall
Bryants Bottom, Buckinghamshire
• While your report (13 July) about a “giant iceberg twice the size of Luxembourg” breaking off an Antarctic ice shelf is alarming, on a lighter note it is good to see that the Luxembourg is now a recognised unit of size along with the Wales, the Belgium, the football pitch and the double-decker bus. This may be related to Gilles Müller’s recent success at Wimbledon, though I am not sure how.
Henry Wickens
Waldbillig, Luxembourg
