Our government must stop treating human beings as political currency

This morning we hear that the courts have cleared the way for asylum seekers to be deported from the safety of the UK. Forced onto a plane and flown 4,000 miles to a country with a host of human rights issues, and apparently no UK scrutiny in place. Has our country, once perceived as a bastion of fairness and human rights, now sunk to the level of tinpot dictatorships and started to treat fellow human beings as mere political currency? Human beings who have suffered persecution, torture and imprisonment, and merely wish to live in peace and safety?

There has been plenty to feel depressed about in recent times, but this is the last straw. Is it that the government has become so desperate to garner votes that it has become blind to the inhumanity of this and many other of its policies? I am certain that many conservative members of parliament personally do not approve of much which has occurred recently, yet they continue to prop up, with their continuing record of voting with the government on these subjects, the disagreeable policies which we see every day.

As ever, they would no doubt want to point out the achievements of Her Majesty’s government and tell us that the UK is recovering well from the pandemic and that Brexit is reaping benefits. However the truth is that Britain, like every country in the world, is struggling with a global economic system which is causing more problems than it solves, and is studiously ignoring a steady slide into humanitarian disaster.

The policies of our government are largely distractions and headline-grabbing, vote-gathering exercises, promoted by ministers who are mostly self serving and incompetent.

Could I do better? Actually yes, I probably could.

Steve Edmondson

Cambridge

Inclusiveness is all very well (Eleanor Morgan: ‘Inclusive, gender-neutral language helps us all – it doesn’t take away ‘woman-ness’’, 10 June). However, why is it only women who are erased and not men in this supposedly inclusive trend? NHS web pages on prostate cancer refer consistently to men. Inclusiveness advocates would be better off ensuring their inclusiveness actually includes women (or at the least equally excludes men).

Peter Hardy

Cambridge

Have Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Mr Zelensky turned into the Pied Piper who will lead the whole of Europe into nuclear destruction?

Ukraine, Nato and the USA have paid no attention to Russia’s concerns about Nato’s expansion to the east and have shown total disdain for Putin’s red lines, clearly stated in Munich in 2007. And this has nothing to do with either defending Russia or Putin’s horrifying actions today. Putin’s state of health should be an irrelevance in this discussion. It’s a red herring.

The totally one-sided reporting of the war in Ukraine has created a false sense of soon-to-be-achieved victory, if only the west would supply more and more sophisticated, weapons. By supplying longer-range missiles to Ukraine, it will be inevitable to resist the temptation to aim such missiles at Russia. The consequences of such actions are too horrific to contemplate. Hiroshima springs to mind.

Eastern and southern Ukraine are now being pounded into the ground, city by city, town by town by old-fashioned heavy artillery. This is no different to Hitler believing in the “Endsieg”, the final victory against the rest of the world, while being holed up in his bunker in Berlin. Ukraine is finally admitting that it cannot continue for much longer with the losses sustained by continuous fighting. Cities are now looking like Berlin did in 1945, equally pounded into the ground by Russian artillery.

Even if there should, eventually, be a politically negotiated “peace”, the distrust and hatred between ethnic Ukrainians and Russians will last for generations to come. The former Yugoslavia is ample evidence of this. This alone suggests that Ukraine will break up into several breakaway, “independent” statelets, mostly focused on Russia. As it is, there had been a civil war in the Donbas since 2014. Whether or not Nato, or America, accepts what is evident is irrelevant here. Facts should override delusion.

By refusing to negotiate, Mr Zelensky will find that, soon, he has nothing left to defend but a wasteland with millions of his own people permanently displaced throughout Europe and no access to the Black Sea.

Fact should override delusion. Most people – politicians in particular – don’t see what’s right in front of them.

Gunter Straub

London

I read Nadine White’s report on celebrities urging airlines not to take refugees to Rwanda with complete agreement. This inhumane scheme has appalled so many people and is an iniquitous strategy in what should be a civilised and caring country.

The mendacious government hyperbole is that it will deter asylum seekers risking their lives trying to gain access to Britain by taking perilous channel crossings. But this is a smoke screen because desperate people will always go the extra sea mile to gain their freedom and a chance at a new life. So people smugglers will still carry on their invidious task of facilitating this and the fact there are no safe and legal routes appears not to cross Priti Patel and the Home Office’s mind.

We should not and cannot treat refugees from heinous war-torn areas in this manner and I applaud celebrities for placing their words where their consciences are. This is such a callous indictment on our government which erroneously thinks that its scheme has universal public support, because it plainly doesn’t.

Judith A. Daniels

Norfolk

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The harrowing picture of the Asian elephant bound with tight ropes into the most unnatural and painful position imaginable (used in Jane Dalton’s report, 11 June) should be enlarged and displayed at every point at which Jacob Rees-Mogg and Mark Spencer can be seen in public.

The refusal by these appalling individuals to engage in a debate about why they have blocked a promised law which would help protect these elephants – which are abused in this way to make them compliant with the dreadful life inflicted upon them in the tourist trade – is one stark demonstration of the moral bankruptcy of this dreadful government. How could any decent person vote for them?

The longer I live the more horrified I become by people ignoring the misery of animals, which is inflicted by our own species, while displaying deep sentimentality over our own species.

I may be in a minority as animal welfare is my primary concern when voting, but I beg people to show as much concern about the anguish of animals as they do the aspirations of people, and for political parties to stop treating animal suffering as low priority.

Penny Little

Oxfordshire

To make a fair comparison between the value and purpose of a monarchy or a president, we must make a further distinction between ceremonial and political roles. Our monarch is obviously ceremonial and the presidents of the USA, France and Russia clearly political; the very thought of president Boris should give us all sleepless nights.

However, a large number of republics have ceremonial presidents with no or very little political sway or influence; Germany and Ireland are just two. Then we could say the only advantage is they can be democratically chosen and for a limited time, and not there by right of birth in perpetuity. Maybe after our Queen’s demise, we should give more consideration to such an alternative to reflect better a modern society.

Peter Smith-Cullen

Norfolk