Our Western arrogance has alienated much of the world

Our esteemed prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has announced that he will boost our defence budget by £75bn. Penny Mordaunt insists that the UK needs an “Iron Dome” defence system. This is all well and good, though my question here is where does this money come from?

As it stands, the UK does not have sufficient funds to support our NHS, pay reasonable living wages, support our school system, fix the crumbling housing system, address bankrupt councils, care for an ageing population, or fix any of the many other social problems we are faced with.

Not only that, our country is already deeply in debt. Our politicians seem to be clamouring for war. So do European political leaders, eager to follow and egged on by the USA. Sunak is presently in Europe to drum up support for more defence spending.

Yet none of this makes any sense. The population of the Russian Federation is some 145 million. The population of Europe is some 747 million. In conventional warfare, a 3:1 numerical superiority is considered desirable to gain an advantage.

Quite clearly, Russia does not have sufficient forces left to conduct a conventional land war against Europe. It may have done so when invading Ukraine. But in Ukraine, Russia has now lost a considerable part of its military force and weaponry. The future of warfare would have to revolve around drone attacks and tactical missiles. So is that what Sunak is preparing for?

More importantly, the question which should be urgently put to our politicians is why there is not a single voice advocating for dialogue in the pursuit of peace. A voice to find acceptable compromises and design a resolution.

After all, the time of Western superiority and dominance is slowly coming to an end, as much as this thought may be unpalatable. Our arrogance has alienated much of the rest of the world, and it is turning away from us – see America’s failures in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.

The only true winner in all of this has been the militaryindustrial complex. And it seems that soon, our politicians will be sitting in well-stocked bunkers while the rest of us cower under our kitchen tables.

Gunter Straub London

The UK is becoming a pariah state

What has our country come to when the UN has to urge our government to reconsider a policy that anyone with an ounce of humanity knows is utterly shameful? The Rwanda bill is something we could expect to come from some of the worst totalitarian states, but the UK?

Let’s consider the negatives of this policy. It won’t work to deter desperate people looking to take the dangerous Channel crossing, it will further dissuade any decent voters from voting Conservative, and it takes the UK one step closer to being considered a pariah state by democratic countries worldwide.

David Felton Crewe

The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum & Immigration) Bill is, in my opinion, designed to be ineffective. It will give the government an excuse to hold a referendum on the UK’s withdrawal from the ECHR. This has long been an aspiration of the far right, and Brexit already paved the way.

Will the people who voted to leave the EU also vote to exit the ECHR? Quite possibly, but it would be wise to consider that each and every UK citizen would also lose their human rights and we know how governments love to exercise their powers.

David Silcock Mansfield

Wrong leader for the wrong time

Aside from Hamas, the problem with the Gaza situation is not the Israeli people but their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He is both extreme and a political opportunist. He is only in power because of his affiliations with other right-wing parties in Israel.

His double failure, in terms of intelligence and security on 7 October, was an outcome of his internal machinations in trying to remove the independence of Israel’s judicial system. He thus “inherited” the present disaster, while being perhaps the least appropriate person to deal with it. It is hard to remove a leader during an existential crisis but perhaps it is time for the Israeli people to demand such a change.

Dr Ewan McLeish Marlow, Buckinghamshire

Looted artefacts must return home

Although the English language continues to evolve and change, “stolen” still means stolen. Four Aboriginal spears that were stolen by British representative Captain Cook in 1770 have finally been returned to Australia after about 250 years.

How long will it take for all of the “stolen” material in British museums, to be returned to their owners or descendants? Some of this material is human remains that should be buried where they came from with appropriate respect.

We now have the technology to capture the image of anything in 2D and 3D, so let’s move museums to virtual content rather than the physical objects that were robbed.

Dennis Fitzgerald Melbourne

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