The European parliament should invite Ukraine to join the EU

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Zelensky should not come to an agreement with Russia (AP)

Zelensky should not come to an agreement with Russia. The European parliament should invite them into the EU by passing a resolution, as the rest of the world is just watching a country being destroyed.

Save humanity: civilian lives are at stake and kids’ hospitals are the targets. Meanwhile, so-called powers are playing diplomatic games and are just mincing words and issuing statements that are of no help.

The European Union must pass a resolution to include Ukraine into the union, thus saving civilian lives.

Kiran (surname withheld)

Dubai

Old Mother Riley

When I was a child in the 1950s, my father, a political cynic and avid filmgoer, would tell me about one of the scenes in a (then) popular Old Mother Riley film. Old Mother Riley, as played by Arthur Lucan, was portrayed as a humble – though somewhat garrulous – woman often employed to do menial tasks.

In the particular scene described by my father, the board of a large corporation had to take steps to economise. They started with a wage-cutting exercise. Of course, the company directors decided they were too important to have their wages cut, middle management were too important to have their wages cut and so on down the line. They decided that their financial problems could be solved at a stroke – by cutting the wages of the impecunious charwoman, Old Mother Riley.

Oh dear, Rishi Sunak seems to have adopted the Old Mother Riley style of economics!

Tina Stockman

Aberdeen

Climate hypocrisy

The world is deeply concerned about the effects of climate change. Some low-lying nations now live in fear of drowning. Governments put out endless, not to suggest often useless, information on how to reduce our individual carbon footprint to, at best, slow down the inevitable catastrophe of rising sea levels, flooding and droughts. Would the most impactful, if not sensible, option we have as a species not be to simply stop the endless and needless wars we engage in?

Once we’d have the sense to no longer fight each other, we could reduce our military and with that the huge carbon footprint produced by endless “war manoeuvres” and training, whether on land, in the air or at sea. Not to mention the carbon footprint of endless missile testing. I well understand that our military industrial complex may not see any sense in this. After all, their purpose in life is to create and to fight wars. It pays for their privileges and often excellent standard of living.

Gunter Straub

Address supplied

What is different about Ukraine?

It is hard to believe that the west will indeed put any Russians on trial for war crimes. Every such act so far in Ukraine has already been carried out by Russian forces in Syria, where even chemical weapons have been used, but we have done nothing. What is different about Ukraine?

Geoff Forward

Stirling

It’s hardly surprising

Of course it’s shocking that the CEO of P&O Ferries cheerfully admits to breaking the law in the sacking of 800 employees. But in a country where the prime minister has scant respect for law or truth, it’s hardly surprising, is it?

Susan Alexander South Gloucestershire

The Cambridges did their homework

Of course the Cambridges do their homework before any trip. They would have been advised and been well aware of what they were flying into in Jamaica.

Planning for the Queen’s platinum jubilee will have started well over a year ago, and Kate and William would have been only one of many royals, government officials and other bodies to have a say. Nobody anticipated a war back then, or the horrendous rise in the cost of living, and everybody thought we would be well shot of Covid by now.

The decision to go or not to go would not have been up to the Cambridges alone, and for all we know they might well have queried the wisdom of it. To cancel the trip at the last minute would have probably wasted more money than the cost of it in the first place, and not just to taxpayers in this country. And they obviously managed to make a lot of people happy by their visit, even in Jamaica.

Gillian Cook

Market Harborough, Leicestershire