In a crowded field, the award for this year's snobbiest, most elitist Guardian letter may have already been won.

From a Guardian reader in Lancashire, on the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson:

I have no interest whatsoever in this bloke who tells an overpaid bunch of oiks how to kick a ball about. What if somebody really significant in the creative arts retired? Say Seamus Heaney declared he was retiring from poetry – would we get a supplement about that?

'Oiks'. Charming.

BREAKING NEWS FOR TABLOID HATERS: Your Newspapers Are Rubbish As Well.

Let's begin by differentiating 'readers' from 'Readers'. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Guardian Reader, even though I used to read the Guardian (every day for over a decade). Nor am I a Daily Mail Reader, even on the rare occasions when I happen to read the Daily Mail. Of all the things I get up to of a day or a week, where I get my news from is one of the most irrelevant in defining who I am. You might call me a reader of The Times, as that is my current daily download, but I am not a Times Reader. Especially as, in our digital-leisure age, it's one of dozens, if not hundreds, of information and entertainment outlets covering my screen hour after hour.

For others, it is different. When one Guardian Reader wrote of raising her daughter as another Guardian Reader, in the same way others enforce a religious upbringing, it was with tongue lightly caressing the inside of her cheek, rather than firmly emplaced so. To a certain breed of self-righteous pomposity-monger, their choice of newspaper is a badge of honour, worn to demand respect from those whom they deem to be less wise in their selections. Take this, from the Guardian's letters page in 2011:

Unlike readers of the Tory-owned press, we take the Guardian for opinions with which we can agree or disagree and make up our own minds based on facts provided elsewhere...

In 31 words, he manages to sum-up those who self-describe as Readers of certain newspapers: defining yourself against others whom you regard as the ignorant masses, just not as clever or ethical as you because of what they read. Such attitudes prevail on social media where even the mildest questioning of some ideas or campaigns gets you accused of being a mere conduit through which Rupert Murdoch or Paul Dacre channel their every nefarious desire.

Or look at these two quotes from the writer of a blog which charts the hypocrisies, exaggerations and lies of the tabloid press in general, and the Daily Mail in particular:

"Freedom in this sense is merely the freedom for anyone to set up their own press as an outlet for their own biased and perhaps blinkered view of the world".

"There are elements of our society that are fearful,vulnerable and simply not intelligent enough to know when they are being lied to".

(My emphases).

In highlighting such illiberal and elitist views, I am not seeking to defend the Fleet Street titles being attacked. I also have no respect for them nor any truck with their politics or views. But here's an exclusive especially for the Readers of supposedly more high-minded sources: your papers are rubbish as well. They also lie, exaggerate, print slanted copy, and promote their owners' and editors' biases. Sure, they may do it over matters of greater importance than their Murdochian, Northcliffe and Desmondite counterparts. But that arguably makes it even worse. 

If you think the press is too influential in our lives and want to make it less so, then fine. Lead the way. Stop treating The Guardian and The Independent and New Statesman as if they were the first three books of a Third Testament. You want people to pay less attention to the likes of Richard Littlejohn and Melanie Phillips? Great. Then set an example. Stop taking every word the likes of Polly Toynbee and John Pilger write as some sort of infallible truth.

And in the meantime, stop referring to yourselves as "unlike readers of the Tory-owned press". Because you are not unlike them at all.

Some help for a Guardian reader.

As the Three Little Piggies advertising campaign has recently confirmed, the Guardian has pretty much all but given up on print, journalism and news, and is moving to pixels, crowdsourcing and opinion. It's a business model that will basically see it become a mirror image of the Daily Mail for the Pretend Left.

But are those to whom the Guardian now looks for its content up to the job?

I was intrigued by the "lifting of the lid" on Castro's lavish lifestyle and "luxury yachts ... and a secret Swiss bank account" (Report, 19 March). As a web search told us nothing, we await the Guardian's definitive evidence of the truth of this story.

Dr Alan Lafferty, London

That lavish lifestyle. 

Those Swiss bank accounts (and the rest of the Castros' fortunes). 

OK. The yacht stuff seems to have only a KGB-linked Soviet journo to corroborate it.

But still, under "Open Journalism", it's no longer up to the Guardian to find "definitive evidence", is it? It's up to people like Dr Lafferty, isn't it? And people like Dr Lafferty would never let their prejudices get in the way of good research, would they?

Welsh Communist thinks he's a 19th century African.

This is Rick Newnham. He is Secretary of the Welsh Communist Party.

Rick Newnham. Not a 19th century African

He's a very confused chap. In Friday's Guardian, he claimed that Wales and the Welsh people face a threat comparable to that imposed on an entire continent by the "Scramble for Africa":

"proposals...showing the same imperial sensitivity as those who carved up Africa in the late 19th century...Lugard, Kipling and Baden-Powell would be delighted."

Now, I've been to Wales quite recently and I am ashamed to say that I failed to detect the onset of any policies that might result in massive depopulation, conflictual territorial division, and aggressive exploitation of natural resources.

That's because Mr Newnham is talking about proposals from the Boundary Commission for Wales to reduce the number of Westminster Parliamentary seats from 40 to 30, as part of a UK-wide reduction from 650 to 600.

Now maybe losing 25% of your seats, when the overall loss is about 8%, could be seen as disproportionate.  But 30 seats for Wales will mean about 48,000 people per MP. In England, the Boundary Commission's proposed reduction to 502 seats will mean a ratio of 98,000:1. Let us not forget, too, that the Welsh also have a 60 seat Assembly for Wales (to which they voted even more powers, last year).

And just by-the-by, tax raised in Wales in 2007-08 was £19bn. Public expenditure in Wales in 2007-08 was £25bn. Now where did that extra £6bn come from, comrade? 

Anyway, isn't representative democracy a bit bourgeois and historically obsolete? Aren't you worried that your defence of it against supposed dangers might lead to (how did Marx put it?) "parliamentary cretinism"?

While you're making your mind up, if you feel the need to comment on devolution matters and the like in the meantime, please, before opening your mouth, ask yourself: "lack of perspective, much?". 

The ruling class may oppress them...

...but to really hate the masses, that takes a Guardian reader:

Unlike readers of the Tory-owned press, we take the Guardian for opinions with which we can agree or disagree and make up our own minds based on facts provided elsewhere in the newspaper or other media.

I still find myself rendered speechless by such snobbery, despite it being commonplace amongst the Pretend Left.

It's tough being a Guardian reader

From yesterday's Guardian letters page and the file marked "First World Problems": 

I put my cashmere elbow in the pot of hummus on the arm of my seat while watching the relay of Rodelinda from the Met last Saturday. There is reason why cinema food is traditionally dry – like popcorn and crisps (Should a cinema be a restaurant too?, G2, 6 December).

I hope some of those so-called anti-poverty campaigners have a whip-round for the dry-cleaning bill.

Questions from the Guardian's letter page to which we know the answer.

"Andrew Keogh (Letters, 28 March) contends that horses don't know when it's their birthday. How does he know they don't?"

Because. They're. Fucking. Horses.

No it isn't.

From today's Guardian letters:

Interesting that 29 April was also the date on which Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun (Royal wedding, 25 November).

But it's nice to see Godwin's Law fulfilling its potential for memetic evolution.

Lessons From The Guardian Letters Page Module #1 - how the real problem with the world is that there just aren't enough anti-bourgeois, anarchistic, surrealist, cultural anti-war movements anymore.

The Guardian letters page, etymologists of the future will conclude, was what the phrase "beyond parody" was invented to describe.

On 8 September, it published this: 

I'm horrified that Martin Kelner (Screen Break, Sport, 6 September), in quoting the theme song from Bonanza, omitted "da da" before the final "dum". He should leave this kind of thing to us music lovers.

A little arch, perhaps, but amusing and admirably brief. This isn't what I'm talking about.

But this, today's response to it, is:

We shouldn't lose sleep over a dropped "da da" from Bonanza (Letters, 8 September), but focus instead on the absence of Dada in our modern world. This creative movement was founded in 1915 to highlight the horrors and pointlessness of the first world war. Sadly, the movement lost its way during the 1920s. Would "A Journey" have chosen a different path, and how many thousands of lives would have been saved, had Dada still been alive in 2003?

At least it, too, is brief.

Or am I missing the point? Perhaps it is parody. And I'm the one being a po-faced, joyless, obsessive, pretentious, tortuous, tedious, ahistorical, esoteric waste of pixels.

Wouldn't be the first time.