To threaten war as lightly as the US, Nato and the UK are doing is highly irresponsible

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Foreign secretary Liz Truss said the UK is not ruling out support for personal sanctions against president Vladimir Putin in the event of a Russian incursion into Ukraine (PA)

I refer to the excellent and well-balanced article by Mary Dejevsky (Germany has taken a cautious stance on Russia – and will be on the right side of history, 28 January). In hysterical times like ours it would serve us well to take a step back and evaluate the facts as best we can. To threaten war as lightly as America, Nato and the UK do is highly irresponsible and serves no purpose other than to escalate what should be resolved politically.

The geopolitical landscape has changed very dramatically since the dismantlement of the Soviet Union and the empowerment of China. America is no longer the world’s policeman, not to suggest that America’s foreign policies have always been very shortsighted and lack understanding of the world as it is, not as they wish to see it.

Obviously Russia feels threatened by Nato’s expansion to the east, vigorously pursued by the west since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. May I suggest not unreasonably so? Russia has a right to exist and to feel safe. No different to what the US, Nato and the UK demand for themselves.

Gunter Straub

London NW3

Breaking the Truss of taxpayers

It beggars belief that even this Tory government could think that spending £500k on a private jet to get Liz Truss to Australia so that other passengers couldn’t overhear what she had to say was a worthwhile investment of our money. Apart from anything else, who on earth imagines that Liz Truss could have anything to say that any other passenger might find even remotely interesting?

D Maughan Brown

York

Has Liz Truss heard of Zoom?

Anne Smillie

Address supplied

Lack of police funding

So the number of prosecutions for rape and other violent crimes is down from its pathetically low figure to one even lower. I assume the police have not got sufficient time and manpower to investigate properly. However, they will doubtless have months to investigate whether Covid regulations were broken at Downing Street, although there has not been the slightest doubt for weeks.

We are going to an era of massive cutbacks in public services. Those least able to cope will doubtless suffer the most. What chance of any cutbacks in royalty or parliament? Simple cutbacks in the immense privilege and pageantry would doubtless make multiple millions available. Will it happen? Of course not.

Chris Harrison

Herefordshire

Jobs – but at what cost?

Pre-lockdown, I was spending time walking around the coast and had an enlightening time walking through Lincolnshire and East Anglia. Fields and fields of cabbages and broccoli as far as the eye could see, and I could also see the isolated caravans and the people working in the cold harvesting these vegetables. A poor existence, often miles from anywhere.

Post-Brexit, I said, almost as a joke, that there would be nobody willing to do this work any longer as we would exclude those workers from Romania and similar Eastern European countries who would be willing to work hard for a short time to make some money to take home. So I imagined someone going to the Job Centre in England. A job would be available out there in the fields and if this was refused, so would any social help. And here we are…

Vivienne Cox

London W4

To the naughty step

I have been thinking about the journey we have made from our awareness of the art of “spin”, as practised by Alastair Campbell, through Kellyanne Conway’s public affirmation that there are “alternative facts”, to land up where we are now – seemingly with our very own version of the blatant truth-denier, Trump, as our prime minister.

And, just wondering why and how this behaviour, by Boris Johnson, and all who cravenly fall over themselves in the rush to defend him, became acceptable. As a mother, the comparison that springs to mind is that of naughty children, caught out doing what they know they shouldn’t, and coming up with the silliest of improbable excuses. Forgiveable only because they are children and we love them.

Is it a vain hope that we could all decide that we have had enough of these unreconstructed, and very spoilt toddlers, and actually find a caring and adult leader – perhaps more along the lines of Jacinda Ardern?

Pam Reilly

Alnwick

The pain of separation

Thank you so very much, Nadine White, for your article, Barrel Children: Windrush families and the emotional burden of migration (27 January). It is something which I fully concur with. Even though I was not of the Windrush generation – born in 1963 – my mum left me in Barbados at the age of two, later to be reunited at the age of 16 in London.

I have experienced all the feelings and emotions depicted in this article, even the leaving home and setting out on my own after two years in this country. Today, the relationship with my mum is still very distant. I have had to develop a mental toughness to cope with situations.

What this experience has given me is an everlasting love for my children and the fact that I will never “desert” them.

Laurence Jones

Address supplied

Humanist weddings

If your correspondent Kate Harrison wishes to get married in a humanist wedding might I suggest a trip north on the border or across the water to Northern Ireland or if warmer climes preferred then head south to the Channel Islands.

G Forward

Stirling

Social care funding

To promise extra funding for social care and then steal it away by delaying the health and social care levy would be a cruel betrayal of those 1.5 million who can’t get care. Government after government has promised to reform social care and none have delivered. We cannot allow the government to go so far down the line and then brutally take it away by delaying things once again. Social care needs this extra money and it cannot wait a moment longer.

Mike Padgham

Chair, Independent Care Group

Sizewell C

It has been announced that the government is keen to signal approval for the development of a new nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast. There is good sense in providing the UK with an additional, reliable and carbon-neutral power supply to supplement the energy created by solar and wind, especially at a time when a rapid decarbonising process is required to run concurrently with increasing demands made on the power grid.

What will be the ultimate fate of this huge investment, though? The east coast of the UK is still sinking; this is due to a phenomenon of glacial rebound. The sea level is rising. Only the rate of sea level rise is in doubt. At the end of its life, it takes 100 years to decommission a nuclear power station. Meanwhile other threats such as North Sea storm surges, which can be exacerbated by exceptional spring tides, will continue to provide a worrying threat.

Nigel Plevin

Somerset