Boris Johnson has made a career out of commenting on things he is ignorant of – why stop now?

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The PM attends a press conference in Delhi on Friday (AP)

The prime minister keeps saying when questioned about Partygate, that he won’t comment on things he knows nothing about. Unfortunately for the country he has made a career of doing just that.

Alan Hutchinson

Address supplied

There goes Boris Johnson again (“Sunak will keep job in reshuffle, says Johnson”, 22 April), once more showing the common touch that he apparently seems to think appeals to those who might vote for him and his party, throwing in the word “prosopographical” into his comments on the possibly forthcoming reshuffle. I certainly had to look it up and quickly came to the conclusion that he could have just stuck with “I’m saying no more about personnel”.

If he seeks to provide clarity, I expect he lost most people. If he’s just showing off that his classical education wasn’t entirely wasted, then I’m not sure why he bothered. What we need is a competent, honest and straightforward leader, not an evasive, misleading, spoilt show-off.

Sarah Wood

Scotland

A better way to charge for utilities

Following on from the discussions on fuel poverty, could this country not use the system that was in place in Belgium for water bills? We lived there at one time. Each household had an allocation of water which was paid at a low basic rate. The allowance was based on the number of people in the household. Then there were higher rates for consumption above that level. It could be applied to all the utilities.

You would not have the grossly unfair situation we have here for electricity where those with prepayment meters, who are invariably those with the lowest incomes, pay at a higher rate.

Helen Watson

Henley on Thames

Doctor check-ups

Jacob Rees-Mogg is rightly making spot checks on government offices to ensure more civil servants than claimed are not working from home.

It is also of vital importance to life and safety in our country for health secretary Sajid Javid to make similar spot checks on GP surgeries still providing the same limited automated services as during lockdown, to restore long overdue face-to face access to GPs especially for far too many long neglected most vulnerable pensioners without access to the internet.

Trevor Lyttleton MBE

London

Are the police being selective?

If the police are going to delay any further fines for breaking Covid rules within government circles until after the May elections, I wonder if they would be so kind as to delay charging me with any crime or offence I may have committed until after I had been able to attend a job interview?

It seems that the sector most likely to be advantaged by this decision would be the party in government and those most likely to be disadvantaged the parties in opposition. So now even the police are selectively applying the rules.

David Buckton

Cambridge

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The Church is right to speak out

I agree wholeheartedly with Cathy Newman (”Thank heavens for Welby, the Church has a duty to speak the truth to power”, 22 April) and of course it is entirely predictable that Boris Johnson and the government thinks this is an outrageous step too far.

Why? Because they instinctively know that their populist ideas will not find favour with the church, and naturally the Rwanda asylum scheme has fallen foul for this reason, because of its very dubious ethical and moral nature. I would be far more worried if the archbishop of Canterbury had extolled this pervasive course of action and welcome his input into this important debate.

Yes, there has always been clashes between the established church and government and this is completely right and proper. But when you have a populist government who want to rattle cages on an industrial scale, it should not be surprised when the church rattles back with disapprobation and dismay.

Judith A Daniels

Norfolk

Good sports

I am old enough to clearly remember when Argentine tennis players, Guillermo Vilas and Jose Luis Clerc, decided to stand up and be counted by withdrawing from Wimbledon in protest at their government’s illegal occupation of the Falkland Islands.

If only more professional sportspeople showed this level of moral integrity nowadays instead of being fixated only on the financial remuneration. Sadly, I could probably conjecture similarly across a range of careers including, without doubt, people known as politicians!

Robert Boston

Kent