I watched Brett Kavanaugh's hearing with sorrow

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I was riveted and filled with grief while watching today’s hearing.

At an abnormally fraught Thanksgiving dinner just after the 2016 election, my young, gay, male cousin said to his mum and myself “Trump’s hand is too small to grab a whole pussy”.

Watching the Republican members of the judiciary committee hide behind a woman when Christine Blasey Ford testified about Donald Trump’s nominee was maddening. To my mind, those GOP senators are a bunch of priggish geldings.

John McCormack

Address supplied

Corbyn isn’t as radical as he thinks he is

At the recent Labour Party conference, Jeremy Corbyn talked of a future Labour government pursuing a policy of radical change. The trouble is, he has been in parliament for decades. He is part of the establishment. His concept of radical change is to tweak the dial away from the Tory setting.

Government in this country is broken. It does not work any longer. A general election now would deliver yet another weak and ineffective administration. We need effective, efficient management of the country for the benefit of all. Where are the radical Labour proposals for that? All we are offered is a move from nasty Tory policy to nebulous Labour policy. If Labour can add a radical shake-up of government to its more sensible “radical” changes, I will vote for them.

Bernard Cudd

Morpeth

Missing from Jeremy Corbyn’s speech at the Labour Party Conference was the impact of AI – artificial intelligence – on jobs and commerce, not only in the UK but worldwide.

The nationalisation of the rail network in the 21st century under a central body, would need a plan to integrate and run all the elements, big and small, of the existing and future rail network. This would embrace the rail lines and the land they stand on, their maintenance, signalling coordination, rolling stock, stations and customer levels and their requirements and staffing costs.

This degree of thinking, planning, and departmental cooperation in the past would require a large admin staff in key locations, and a large manual workforce throughout the network as well as plant costs which would severely impact on a future government budget. AI in the near future would be able to access and store information on a dedicated server, relating to every aspect of the whole operation; customer numbers per route, train timetables, train maintenance and operation, all set and operated via network algorithms which would factor in every detail of the whole operation on a daily, if not hourly, basis. All operated without human input, apart from an overseeing body in a single central location.

The notion of driverless trains, unmanned stations and robots being largely responsible for track and rolling stock maintenance would provide a failsafe service – but of course jobs would be lost, something Labour needs to address.

Mike Dodds

London W11

I made a point of watching as much of the Labour Party conference as I could tolerate. And I shall do the same with the Conservative Party conference. I used the word “tolerate” quite advisedly, because I’m wondering if there’s anyone out there who can explain something for me.

My question is this: why is it that all politicians lose any common sense once elected? And why do they assume we, the electorate, lose our ability to think once we’ve cast our votes? Thus, it was great to hear Labour promise all sorts of good – and needed – things, but skip over how they’ll pay for it all. And I bet the Tories will rally around Theresa May and her Chequers plans even though we, the electorate, can see quite easily why the EU would never have accepted them, and were well aware of the reasons why not long before the Salzburg summit.

I live in hope that one day the political classes will realise the electorate doesn’t lose its common sense after an election, and that maybe they shouldn’t either.

Steve Mumby

Bournemouth

As Labour voters all our lives, my wife and I were delighted when Laura Smith squeaked in with a tiny majority at the last general election. Unfortunately, her completely bonkers suggestion of a general strike to remove the Tory government has made us have a massive rethink. The real difficulty now lies in who to vote for in any upcoming election.

David Felton

Crewe

The missing parts of Trump’s UN address

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Donald Trump made no mention of climate change as he emphasised individual liberty and national sovereignty.

The principle of equal liberty calls on us to maximise our own freedom without interfering with that of others. Human-induced climate change is causing sea level rise by warming the oceans and melting land ice. Consider that 20 million Bangladeshis are farming on land that is within a metre of high tide. Their freedoms should be meaningful as well.

And how might President Trump’s view of climate change differ if he was the head of a small island nation whose survival is threatened by climate change, even though it has contributed very little to global carbon dioxide emissions? What about the sovereignty of Fiji and the Marshall Islands?

Although liberty is a fundamental right, the flipside of every right is a responsibility. Indian scientist Vandana Shiva points out the “separation of rights and responsibilities is the beginning of any destructive enterprise.”

America has a unique ability to lead and influence our world, and our nation should embrace that role with respect to climate action.

Terry Hansen

Wisconsin, US

Having a clown as the president of the most powerful nation on earth is a rare chance which will not happen again, probably, in our lifetimes.

Having a clown appear on stage behaving like a crazy old man who had just escaped a facility is something of extreme rarity.

You should cherish the moment and make sure you record it in your memory, as this will not likely happen again for many years to come. We ought to replay the footage to the next generation.

Abubakar Kasim

Toronto, Canada

The ‘I’m A Remainer’ song

I thought work was only true in fairytales​
Meant for someone else but not for me
Brexit was out to get me
That's the way it seemed
David and Theresa haunted all my dreams
And then I saw her face
Now I'm a Remainer​
Not a trace
Of doubt in my mind
I'm in Europe
and I'm a believer, I couldn't leave her if I tried

You get the idea.

Brian Anderson

Stroud

Pedantry begets pedantry

I enjoyed Robert Fisk’s article on the subversion of language greatly but had to laugh when, after referring to “nerbs”, he committed the heinous error, in my eyes, of using “practice” as a verb while mourning the demise of the semicolon!

Clair Ryan

Edinburgh