The many parallels between an ailing Tory government and Top Gear

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Parallels can be drawn between the Top Gear of old and the Tory party: both have a May and a Hammond, and the third member of the presentation team is a politically incorrect schoolboy who everyone says is “intelligent” despite outward appearances. I wonder if the Tory party will end up like Top Gear – a shadow of its former self, never to recover its “glory days” after its overindulged presenter acted true to form, went too far and caused the instant demise of a bastion of British life?

Jane Holbrook
Cromer

Crash landing

So I’m in this aeroplane and we’ve been flying for a while now, quite comfortably, but someone in the cabin, who was obviously fond of a few pints, started piping up about switching the engines off and how we’d save money if we stopped piping fuel into them. Well, we had a vote and just over half of the passengers chose switching the engines off.

We’re rushing towards the ground now at quite a pace and a few of the passengers who voted engines-off seem to be having a change of mind, but the original voices are complaining that we haven’t actually landed yet and that we need to believe. Meanwhile, everything has gone quiet from the flight deck because the crew have decided that this is the optimum time to change pilot and are squabbling over who gets to wear the peaked cap when we hit the ground.

Julian Self
Wolverton

In-flight drinking has gone too far

There are weekly reports of bad behaviour on airlines by unruly passengers. In most cases alcohol is involved, and the situation is unlikely to get any better until there are some controls imposed.

Why airports serve alcohol at all hours is beyond comprehension. I travel frequently, and have often seen groups of travellers – almost exclusively British – drinking excessively early in the morning, and it quickly becomes unpleasant for others, as noise rises, and social restraint diminishes.

Apart from the downright antisociality of such situations, which does our already diminishing reputation in the world no good, the cost of disruption is significant. Licensing hours must be imposed, the drinking of personal duty free alcohol on flights must be banned and, not least for the sake of aviation security, a breathalyser system should be employed and those over a fair limit should be refused access to the plane.

Those who cause disruption through excessive drinking should be made to pay compensation to affected passengers, and for the entire cost of any scheduling disruption or diversion, or face prison.

Matt Minshall​
King’s Lynn

Sturgeon’s cynical use of Johnson to push indyref2

So a new poll shows a slim majority would back Scottish independence, should Boris Johnson become prime minister.

He doesn’t float my boat either – but what this poll primarily shows is how successful Nicola Sturgeon’s ceaseless ad hominem anti-Johnson rhetoric is. Of course, were a second independence referendum ever to take place, undoubtedly the majority of us would realise you don’t end a 300-plus years political, economic, cultural and social union just because you don’t fancy the prime minister du jour.

I don’t care much for Nicola Sturgeon but that doesn’t mean I think Holyrood should be shut and devolution dismantled. And, in any case, indyref2 is such a long way off, at the rate the UK gets through prime ministers, Mr Johnson would be long gone by then.

Martin Redfern
Edinburgh

Brexit isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Boris Johnson states that he will negotiate the free trade agreement during the “implementation period” after we leave the EU with no deal – apparently totally oblivious to the fact that there is no implementation period if we crash out without a deal.

Jeremy Hunt is quite happy that a factory in Kidderminster will close with the loss of 350 jobs with a no-deal Brexit – and probably hundreds of similar factories similarly affected throughout the UK – as “we are a democratic country and that is the price of democracy”.

I am certain that those voting in the 2016 Referendum did not vote on this basis. Leaders without a clue about the impact of their actions. Factories closing in their thousands as new tariffs are introduced.

Now that we are all aware of what Brexit really means, it is time that we are all allowed to vote again.

David J Williams
Colwyn Bay

The Home Office is in need of radical reform

How much more evidence do we need? It seems that almost daily we hear of yet more inhumane behaviour sanctioned by the Home Office, particularly as it relates to immigration policy and policy implementation.

Twenty years ago the Macpherson Report found that institutional racism was endemic to the Metropolitan Police. In 2006 the then home secretary John Reid, no bleeding-heart liberal, found the immigration directorate “not fit for purpose”. It is about time that the Home Office, once one of the great offices of state, was either subjected to root and branch reform to scour out May’s legacy of a “hostile environment” or replaced by a department where human rights and human dignity trumps the small-minded, racist, little-Englander assumptions and actions currently on display. Any political party advocating such a policy would get my vote.

Robin J Bulow
Deal