Streets of Britain are less safe because Theresa May culled thousands of police

Theresa May rightly praises the police after the appalling recent terrorist attacks, both at the Manchester Arena and elsewhere, but we must remember that while she was Home Secretary, she cut police funding by £2.3 billion, so that there are 18,000 fewer police officers and 5,000 fewer community support officers.

How did that make us safer? It certainly freed up £3 billion a year to cut the income tax paid by millionaires. But it should never be forgotten, by the Tories or anyone else, that nothing is more important than public safety.

PHIL TATE Craiglockhart Road, Edinburgh

If the security forces identify a person who leaves the UK and is a “known” person and they then return from a known problem area why (short of trying to trace associates) are they letting this person walk free?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not far right, far from it, but from a purely logical point of view this is common sense. This is not immigration or religion. it’s about criminal activity. Let the good men and women of all creeds come together on this – wherever they are.

JOHN CUTLAND Montgomery Street, Edinburgh

The cry of ‘’We are not afraid’’ and the candle-lighting and vigils after the latest barbarism in Manchester are all meaningless. If you are not afraid you should be, after watching children and adults alike carried out of a city centre concert in body bags.

Are we going to accept meekly this endless carnage? Why was not this latest suicide bomber – and many, many others – not at least electronically tagged after returning from Libya and Syria? We have to put aside the liberal bleeding heart arguments against close surveillance and start putting not the rights of those who have gone to fight in the war zones of the Middle East, but our children and grandchildren, first.

The majority of Muslims are as concerned about the undoubted cancer in their communities as the rest of us. This is something that needs a hard line and must be tackled head-on.

ALEXANDER MCKAY New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh

I am appalled and outraged that the terrorist who killed and injured innocent children in Manchester was known to security services, and that there are numerous people known to them who are being watched.

The time for action is now, stop watching them and expel them from our country – or at the very least, inter them. The reason we are in this mess as a country is because of weak leadership too frightened of offending people and falling foul of the European Court of Human Rights, putting human rights above the security of this country.

What human blows themselves up at a pop concert full of children? Expel everyone on our watchlist and put an immediate ban on all immigration as a emergency security measure. It is time to stop watching and to start acting for the protection of British children. If Brussels start complaining about breaches of human rights, let them take the expelled in! GORDON KENNEDY Simpson Square, Perth

The world will rightfully unite in sympathy for the victims of the barbaric Manchester bombing, just as it did in shows of empathy after the atrocities in Brussels, Paris, Nice, Berlin and St Petersburg.

That said, we must not forget the sad but brutal fact that if our political leaders in London had not involved us in acts of savagery to replace governments in the likes of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, such retaliations would never have materialised.

As Byron penned in Childe Harold in 1818: “The thorns which I have reap’d are of the seeds I planted. They have torn me – and I bleed! I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.”

The made-in-london mantra concentrates on the rhetoric of human rights, but does not concern itself with the quality of human rights – for all human beings.

WILLIAM BURNS Pennywell Road, Edinburgh

Enough is enough. Surely the time has come to fine and close down any site that has bombmaking details. Surely the time has come to intern any who have stated links to terrorist sites or so-called states, because they have no place in our country. JAMES WATSON Randolph Crescent Dunbar, East Lothian