Sunak is losing his marbles over the wrong things

I suspect that Rishi Sunak cares no more deeply than most of the other 70 million citizens of the UK about the location of the infamous and dubiously acquired Elgin marbles.

Most of them have rather more pressing concerns they might wish for the government to take more interest in. For example, their inability to afford heating for the homes they can’t afford to rent or buy, whilst feeding their kids if they survive their collapsing classrooms.

Not that the PM has any worries about these matters of course.

What he is concerned about is signaling to the xenophobic right wing of his own party how tough he can be when dealing with foreigners, no matter how reasonable their cases might be. An approach that reduces what little of our standing remains to the rest of the world and continues to bring us disdain and disadvantageous trade deals to offset the good ones we had before Brexit!

Mike Margetts

Kilsby, Northamptonshire

In today’s edition of The Independent Sean O’Grady suggests there is too much national pride in the Elgin marbles to consider returning them.

I doubt whether 99 per cent of the population would care one way or the other, especially when so many face another winter trying to afford food and energy or waiting for an NHS appointment.

There seems to me to be no valid argument for keeping what is probably looted art.

Perhaps it would be the “thin edge of the wedge” but maybe a great deal of material should “go home”.

Dr Anthony Ingleton

Sheffield

Assuming that beyond the fog (not just in the Channel) the UK government recognises that we actually need immigrants with skills, I wonder if any thought has been given to the answer of housing those seeking asylum in places other than Rwanda.

Spending millions per day on the latter project has been a waste of money and continuing with it would be absolute nonsense. I wonder if doubling, or even tripling, the number of vetting staff for a short period might result in a quicker turnaround for repatriation, and a gradual reduction in the numbers.

Even if we were to permanently increase the numbers of border control staff, surely the cost would be less than the current ludicrous sums we are spending.

Michael Polkinghorne

Tunbridge Wells

Whilst the Tories demonise the disabled for the state of the economy, Barclays announced plans to axe 900 staff despite raking in profits of £1.9bn in the last quarter.

These banking institutions lack even a shred of decency in my opinion. This callous act highlights once again the greed that is the bane of the world.

None of the big banks deserve our custom. The fact that politicians have done so little to intervene shows how uncaring and morally bankrupt they are as well.

Richard Whiteside

Halifax

Whilst wishing to applaud Virgin Atlantic for powering a test flight across the Atlantic with “cooking oil”, I can’t help noticing that there are around 34 million other flights each year that are filling our atmosphere with deadly gases.

The populations of the most advanced nations are addicted to international air travel. We think we deserve it.

Sadly, flying is a bit like meat-eating in that we know it is not the right thing to do and we know there are alternatives but we will keep finding excuses until we come face to face with evidence of its damage.

And that day is fast approaching.

Warwick Haycock

St Albans

The recent apologies for the collapse of Wilko, attributed to many factors but not the reported £9m dividends paid, are a reminder of the disgraceful legislation that removed the ring-fencing of company pensions. Introduced at a time of a growing economy when it was thought that companies had a right to use this money which was in effect doing nothing, is it not time to reverse this legislation and stop the plundering of employees’ pension savings?

Geoff Forward

Stirling