Sending Ian Botham to Australia is a disaster waiting to happen

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The cricket legend and peer is one of a series of UK trade envoy appointments (House of Lords/PA)

I find it inexplicable that Liz Truss, or presumably anyone in the Department for International Trade, did not realise the implications of sending Lord Botham to Australia as trade envoy. As soon as the ex-cricketer leaves the airport every news reporter, freelancer and wannabe reporter will be watching him closely, especially at night, waiting for some indiscretion big enough to adorn the front page. When it happens, this country and this government will once again be a laughing stock, and we won’t even be able to hide behind the “unintended consequences” law.

Robert Boston

Kingshill, Kent

Afghanistan crisis

If the UK government actually wanted to get as many vulnerable Afghans to safety, it would not be requiring them to undergo asylum application processes, and often rejections, even for interpreters who worked with UK forces.

Get Afghans who are at risk on planes. Get them to safety. Asylum application processes can be dealt with later. And there are lots of countries willing to take Afghan refugees. This applies not just to interpreters, but also their relatives, anyone who worked for the previous Afghan government, western governments, western funded charities, or criticised the Taliban.

Putting every person through an application process when there are maybe only days left is transparent time-wasting, which minimises the number of people whose lives can be saved, in order to pander to domestic political prejudices.

Duncan McFarlane

Braidwood

John Rentoul (‘What Tony Blair and other MPs said about Afghanistan in 2001’, 23 August) quotes Charles Kennedy as saying in 2001: “Is the aim to remove the Taliban regime from power? What analysis has been made of the possible political and humanitarian consequences if they are driven out of power and, ultimately, what shape or form of regime are we striving to see established in Afghanistan?”

It is a pity that parliament is so combative rather than collaborative. Tony Blair did not answer this question then or this week and we are left with the conclusion that he was motivated by regime change because he wanted to impose his values.

Jon Hawksley

London

I heard on the news of a Taliban spokesman using the term “fake news” to dismiss legitimate questions about ongoing conflicts and door-to-door searches for government supporters. Whether or not he did use the term is not relevant; what it demonstrates is that we are well into the post-truth era. Donald Trump must be proud but for me it’s another step down the slippery slope of lack of trust in our institutions. It will lead to the demise of the western democracies.

Standards have nosedived since Trump first used “fake news” to dismiss criticism; we hoped Biden was going to be more open but his statements around the lead up to the current crisis in Afghanistan do not augur well for the future and he needs to be challenged up front or we’ll be left with similar attitudes to truth as Trump but without the mantra. And if the Taliban is following the same track then what next?

Is there a way back to truth and accountability? We could well start by looking at our culture where it is bad form to call someone a liar and this is reflected in the rules of the House of Commons. Barefaced liars have always used this to their advantage. It’s time to take this advantage from them, lose our inhibitions and challenge these people upfront to justify their lies. Parliament could help by changing the rules provided the challenger can back up their claim with evidence.

John Simpson

Ross on Wye

Anti-vaxxers

Anti-vaxxers’ concerns to protect their right to freedom should be respected, but only to the extent that they don’t endanger the lives of others. Challenging though this may be, we all have to accept that dire circumstances alter cases and impose on us all the duty to temper our personal long-cherished habits and ideals for the public good.

In this spirit we accepted draconian restrictions during the Second World War, including strictly enforced blackouts of our houses, to avoid people being killed during the Blitz. In the same spirit we have to accept the rigours of the climate crisis and the pandemic and to place the protection of others before our own understandable but utopian desires for a total freedom that represents the greatest form of intolerance whereby a small minority can threaten the lives and wellbeing of the majority.

Trevor Lyttleton

London NW11