Ministers are being childish over the Skripal poisoning

I don’t know whether it is just me, but are there any others who are sick and tired of our mass media and senior politicians determining that the Russians are unequivocally guilty of everything under the sun?

For until there is definitive and unequivocal evidence, in our own courts no judge could pronounce someone guilty based on hearsay and “could be”.

The recent poisoning in Salisbury is a case in point: because he was a double agent, the Russians apparently must have done it – although there still is no indisputable evidence that proves this fact.

“Let’s wait”, is my thinking, for the indisputable evidence to be released. I believe Jeremy Corbyn is right here, unlike the likes of Boris Johnson and the Defence Secretary, together with 30 Labour MPs and Conservative MPs who seem to have a crystal ball.

Having travelled the world and entered many corridors of power, I am not a lover of any government, whoever they are – nor indeed do I trust them after what has happened in places like Iraq, Libya and Syria, where military intervention was often based on false information.

So let’s wait for conclusive evidence that cannot be challenged. Jeremy Corbyn appears to be the only one with a level head and intelligence at the moment – or do all these guilty condemners know so much that they know what will win the 2018 Grand National, and everything else besides? If so, I would like to know at least the name of the horse, please.

David Hill Huddersfield

This Russian situation is quite ridiculous. Theresa May must lack any sort of excitement in her life and is using this as a distraction from Brexit, casting herself as a completely unnecessary second-rate James Bond character.

Much as I’d like to support her, the fact is that she (and we) have no evidence this was done by the Russian government. This stuff could have come from anywhere. It is nonsense in this day and age to have the arrogance to pre-judge it by saying it could only have come from Russia. It goes against all common sense and intelligence.

In his apparent boredom, our so-called Foreign Secretary is seeking publicity as usual. He should stick to doing his job and do what’s in the national interest. In fact he should, in the inimitable words of his esteemed colleague a few days ago, “just go away” and “shut up”!

All our leaders are like children, and are letting us down. I will never vote in this country again and certainly never again Conservative. What a waste it all was.

Name and address supplied

“There has been no debate about Corbyn being a lifelong unilateralist and a previous vice-president of CND, and in the light of recent events, this should now take place,” writes Brina Boughton in the Letters page of 15 March.

No debate about Corbyn’s CND or unilaterist history? I wonder where your correspondent has spent the last three years.

Eddie Dougall Bury St Edmunds

In the midst of the furore surrounding Russia and the expulsion of British and Russian diplomats, we seem to have forgotten the besiegement of Eastern Ghouta as the Syrian civil war enters its seventh year.

The Arab Spring is a misnomer. It means for Syrians nothing but death, bloodshed, destruction, destitution, desolation and displacement, in what has been described as the worst humanitarian disaster in contemporary times.

Is this what Condi Rice promised on the eve of the Iraqi war: democracy reverberating throughout the Middle East?

Munjed Farid al Qutob London NW2

I am very, very angry with those dreadful Russians! It is now twice in the past two weeks that they have sent us their terrible weather. Ms May must tell them that she is very, very angry and if they do it again she will... she will... she will... she will ask Mr Corbyn to speak to them about it!

Tony Harris Stockton-on-Tees I will say one thing for the Russians: they send picturesque snow. Eve Parnell Dublin, Ireland

What makes a scandal a scandal?

You report (17 March) that Jacob Zuma is finally going to be tried on charges relating to “an arms deal in the 1990s”, and refer to that arms deal as a scandal.

It was, indeed, a scandal. But South Africa made sure the scandal was properly investigated and is now following through on its investigation.

Tony Blair’s intervention to call off the UK investigation into Britain’s involvement with Saudi Arabia in the corruption of that very same arms deal was, if anything, even more scandalous and should be noted in all UK media coverage of Zuma’s trial.

D Maughan Brown York How much longer can Trump stay after these sackings?

No no, President Trump, the sacking of the former head of the FBI is definitely not “a great day for democracy”, as you tweeted. Exactly the opposite is true, in my opinion.

Andrew McCabe’s sacking by Attorney General Jefferson Sessions, just two days before he was due to retire from the FBI, seemed vindictive to me, amounting to an egregious abuse of the power of your position as President of the United States.

You – President Trump – have no business telling the Justice Department what to do. That is interference with the law – blatantly attempting to undermine the law to your own advantage – another in a long line of these transgressions, starting with the firing of James Comey as head of the FBI last year because he refused to drop the inquiry into your business dealings with Russian oligarchs, and possibly the Russian President and dictator, Vladimir Putin himself – “this Russia thing”, as you.put it.

Why the special counsellor appointed in the wake of the Comey firing, Robert Meuller, has not yet charged you with obstruction of justice, I do not know. I hope he is not being confused by all the political noise that you are so successfully creating in the media, Mr Trump. Put simply, if there is no rule of law, there is no democracy.

Crucially, Andrew McCabe was the deputy director of the FBI when you sacked James Comey. Mr McCabe now says – a correct assertion in my opinion – that he was sacked in order to discredit him as a witness to the Comey sacking in any possible trial in which you could be charged with obstruction of justice.

It is true that McCabe has been found to be in breach of FBI protocols by an inspector general, who I heard commentators on MSNBC say yesterday has a reputation for independence.

They also said, however, that the McCabe case has been rushed through, the unseemly haste to sack him before his retirement suggesting political bias and retribution. The sacking just two days before his retirement means he could lose his pension after working at the FBI for 20 years.

This is what seems vindictive to me, plus the fact that President Trump has been tweeting for just this outcome, and it puts a murky light over the proceedings surrounding the sacking.

As Congresswoman Maxine Waters is constantly saying – this President needs to be impeached. For the sake of America’s democracy – President Trump must go! Genevieve Ford Aotearoa, New Zealand

Who will break the stranglehold of the NRA, if not our children?

In a seminal day of action against gun violence, the youth brigade has “declared war” against the “pro-gun, anti-life” NRA. More than a million students from over 3,000 schools in all 50 states walked out of classes protesting gun violence on Wednesday. Many overseas schools joined in solidarity.

The nationwide student walkouts occurred one month after 17 students and staff were slaughtered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Many schools walked out for 17 minutes – one minute for each person murdered in Parkland.

This will be followed by a “massive March For Our Lives” on 24 March in Washington, and solidarity marches are planned across the country.

President Trump, a $30m (£21.5m) NRA benefactor, dodged the gun issue by heaping blame on the mental health of the shooter, ignoring the patently obvious fact that the citizens of many other countries suffer mental health issues without the attendant loss of life.

Tackling mental problems will not solve the epidemic of gun violence. Arming teachers and training them to be sharpshooters is an insane idea. Professional shooters only connect with their target about 18 per cent of the time. In the mass confusion of a school shooting, that figure would likely be far lower.

There is little hope that the morally bankrupt Congress and the tweeter-in-chief will challenge the deeply entrenched power of the NRA. The youth brigade is our only hope.

Jagjit Singh Los Altos, California, US