Further weakness from the west in dealing with Putin is not an option

Vladimir Putin’s naked aggression cannot be allowed to continue unanswered. A peaceful, democratic people has been brutalised without provocation by a tyrant.

I don’t know what the answer to this is, but for the obvious ones of condemnation and exploiting his weaknesses in order to bring him to heel. Further weakness on our part is not an option.

How you show strength when there are thousands of nuclear missiles on opposing sides, I don’t know. But if we don’t, how are we to believe this stops here? Putin should recall that regime change and occupation may be expensive to the aggressor in many ways.

My heart goes out to the Ukrainians.

Ian Henderson

Norwich, Norfolk

As from today, anyone who tries to justify the invasion by Putin’s military thugs is an advocate for evil, tyranny and the destruction of democracy.

No argument about what America or Britain have done in the past. As free people, we were allowed to object and protest, and eventually our voices carried weight. Governments lost elections, politicians saw their careers ended. That will not happen in Putin’s Russia or Lukashenko’s Belarus – the latter now, not just an open prison, but merely a province in Putin’s Moscow-controlled new “empire” – it, too, ceased to be a sovereign country as of today.

Smoke and mirrors about Nato expansion (now fully justified by Putin’s brutal actions), or about “poor victim, humiliated Russia” – Putin has finally made his intentions crystal clear. He wants a new Russian empire – Ukraine first, Poland, the Baltic States, maybe even Finland next.

If you still apologise for him, praise him (as Trump and Farage have done in the past), or support him, then you are out of step with the millions of ordinary decent people, not just in Ukraine, but across Europe, and hopefully the world. It’s your choice: do you back evil or freedom?

Garth Groombridge

Southampton

Who would envy the youth of today? In the 1960s, Harold Wilson proudly announced increased access to further and higher education by the introduction of the Open University, affectionately known as the OU.

With the announcement of simultaneously lowering the earnings threshold and extending the repayment period for student loans for degree courses, will this system for reimbursing the taxpayer (without acknowledging the untold benefits, economic and otherwise to the nation), be infamously be referred to as the IOU system?

Nigel Plevin

Somerset

Hardly a day goes past without this Tory government providing yet another pointer to the hollowness and hypocrisy of its claim to be committed to levelling up.

They are now proposing to tie the availability of student loans to A-level results. Anyone who has ever taught in a university knows that final school-leaving results are not necessarily an accurate predictor of success, either at or after university.

Able and intelligent disadvantaged students who have suffered through mediocre school education will often do better at university than less intelligent students who have had the advantage of elite schools and private tutors.

Any government genuinely interested in levelling up would be encouraging higher education institutions to find better ways of assessing prospective students’ academic potential, rather than fetishising A-level results and making student loans conditional on those results.

Professor D Maughan Brown

York

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With war exploding in Europe, prices going through the roof and the existence of the planet at stake, Mr double-barrelled-but-not-yet-knighted Rees-Mogg has come to the conclusion that the only tangible Brexit benefit he can think of is to return to the “freedom” of imperial units.

And because there’s nothing else worth spending time or money on at the moment, the government that entrusted him with his ridiculous job is going to devote both to an assessment of the economic impact of such a move. I could save them the effort: don’t do it.

Katharine Powell

Cheshire

Andrew Woodcock’s article poses, in my view, a major problem for Boris Johnson should he consider a vengeful reshuffle, or any type of reshuffle, in the future. Who is up to the job?

Surely he has used all his “A team” candidates already. With the last crew he has achieved few, if any, benefits for Britain with Brexit still not “done”, thousands unnecessarily dying due to Covid-19, trade abroad diminishing and his alleged flouting of British laws.

We seem to be caught in a Groundhog Day circle without the humour. Boris is exposed as a liar, his MPs rush to vouch for him, and nothing happens to prevent further deceitful episodes. But again he transgresses and the circle continues.

Because lying, prevarication and obfuscation is so endemic within the Tory party, it seems odds-on that the new incumbent will have the same traits as his predecessor.

Additionally, it appears that Tory MPs are still peddling ideas that Brexit is done, crime in Britain is falling, it’s safe not to self-isolate and that we are in some sort of boom time. None of which is true.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke