Letters: I am so angry and ashamed at what our country has become

It makes me so angry and so ashamed of what our country has become. We dress up wicked decisions in virtuous terms, and tell lies about being humanitarian, wanting to offer "generous sanctuary" acting to stop the "vile people smugglers" – by doing this?

It's a "world first", declares Priti Patel – boy, ain't that a record to be proud of? What if her family had been treated that way? She could have been contributing to Rwanda's economic prosperity now.

Of course people-smuggling is vile and needs to be stopped. Surely going after the smugglers, prosecuting and punishing them is a more humane way forward?

Lizanne MacKenzie, Dumfries.

* FOLLOWING the PM's plan to relocate illegal migrants to Rwanda I checked the World Population Review to see what its Corruption Index was. Corruption is defined as "the abuse of public power for private profit". The lower the number the more corrupt the country is deemed to be. At the bottom is Somalia at 12, and at the top are Denmark and New Zealand at 88. The UK comes in at 77 while Rwanda is at 54. This compares favourably with the other African countries and is ahead of Italy on 53. Ukraine scores 33, China 32, and Russia 30.

William Loneskie, Lauder.

THESE DEEDS ARE NOT IN MY NAME

ALL my life I have believed in “do as you would be done by". Respect the office even if you cannot respect the person who holds the position. No one is your superior or better, they may have greater knowledge, experience and skills than you and these should be appreciated and valued, but that does not make that person above you.

I believe in the concepts of law and justice, that a civilised society requires boundaries but also respects differences and celebrates choice and freedom.

Today when I woke up I realised that I now live in a country where my beliefs have ceased to be meaningful. What a damning legacy we will leave for our children.

The bullying tactics of war, the lies and culpability of leaders and the lack of humane hospitality towards those less fortunate than ourselves by those who have the power to provide succour, bewilders and depresses me. Their deeds are certainly not done in my name, although it does feel that my signature is constantly forged.

JAC McNally, Munlochy.

* SANITY at last. Migrants crossing the Channel will be sent for processing in Rwanda. In 2021 28,526 people landed on our shores after travelling through Europe. They should have claimed "safe haven" in the first safe country. If they had been in fear of their lives then they would have done so but the UK, the land flowing with milk and honey and free housing and benefits, was the attraction.

There are more than 300,000 people in the UK without a permanent home so the migrant charities which are stridently complaining should be forcefully told that charity begins at home.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow.

JUDGE PM ON THE BIG DECISIONS

IN Boris Johnson we have a Prime Minister who gets most of the big decisions right, but stumbles over relatively little decisions which he gets wrong. In the media he is castigated for so-called Partygate. This is about leaving parties, and penalties at the level of fines; it bears no comparison to the original Watergate, which involved a President using the power of the state to organise a criminal conspiracy to steal from a locked office, solely in order to get compromising information on his political rivals.

As Iain Macwhirter notes ("We will not help Ukraine if we dump its greatest ally now", The Herald, April 13), we seem to have lost all sense of proportion. The PM is taking big decisions and providing leadership at the level that the job requires. It takes courage to stand up to Putin and provide vital missiles for defence of Ukraine when other western leaders hesitate. It takes foresight to invest public money and resources for development of an untried novel vaccine that has proved crucial in the fight against Covid. It takes political judgment to back his Chancellor in borrowing to support people's salaries on an unprecedented scale during Covid. The PM should be judged on decisions at this level, not on Partygate, especially when the media is in full cry and desperate for a scalp. One wonders too if the media would be quite so keen to put an end to the career of a celebrity footballer and key player, all because they were guilty of attending a party during Covid?

In Churchill's memoirs, he writes a very interesting sentence about the position of becoming PM, particularly in 1940. "The loyalties which centre upon number one are enormous. If he trips he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes they must be covered up. If he is no good he must be pole-axed, but this last extreme process cannot be carried out every day..." We would be wise to follow this advice.

Peter Gray, Aberdeen.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

SINCE the start of the pandemic the police in England and Wales have handed out fines for breaching socialising regulations in the order of 150,000 times. That some of those were as a result of parties in Downing Street or Whitehall is no surprise considering the high regard with which many of those involved hold themselves and the fact that the media and most of the public treat them as celebrities rather than employees who should be doing the job we pay them to do. The thing that irks me most is the assumption that they could get away with breaking the law and lying to try to justify the unjustifiable. In all walks of life there are incompetent arrogant numpties and I’m sure politics is no different, but if we cannot believe what they tell us then democracy is dead.

The fact that our Prime Minister is a self-confessed serial liar who deliberately uses the technique to confuse the opposition, that he has been sacked from previous posts for lying and can be accused from the floor of the chamber of lying yet nothing happens, is simply not acceptable. Nobody seems to wonder how many other times he has deliberately fed the country lies such as the one he had on the Brexit bus. If he can do it, others can and will follow his example.

It should not be a matter of the country waiting until a significant number of his fellow Conservative MPs decide it is in their own best interests to subject Boris Johnson to a vote of no confidence. All MPs of every party who think he is a liar should boycott and picket Westminster until he and any other MP who has wittingly broken the Covid regulations resigns as a constituency MP and stands for re-election in a by-election.

Enough is enough. If we cannot trust Westminster to tell us the truth about everything then we don’t live in a democracy.

David J Crawford, Glasgow.

INSPIRATION FOR OFFENDERS

HAVING listened to Cabinet ministers and others justifying the so-called Right Honourable Prime Minister refusing to resign over lying to Parliament and breaking the law, offenders everywhere will be pleased to follow their justification for his actions, when confronted by the police for offences.

We have had he did not mean to break the law, so should not be punished; he was entitled to do so because he had been working hard and was entitled to a break, and accusations are all "fluff" in any case. Then we have Douglas Ross's there’s a war on, so leave him alone, and from assorted Conservative lackeys, it happened a long time ago, and we should move on.

Any day now, expect the greatest reason for allowing him to flaunt the law and treat the public with contempt: he is the man who delivered Brexit.

Even Yes, Prime Minister would have regarded the above "explanations" as too far-fetched to to be in the programme.

T J Dowds, Cumbernauld.

* OH well. At least the Boris Johnson party scandal has made it much easier for us all as we struggle to come to terms with what to do in the event of any more rules and restrictions imposed upon us during this or any future pandemic. Simply ignore every one of them. Sorted.

Dave Henderson, Glasgow.

Read more: Are we heading for a future where lying is normal and nobody cares?