Readers' letters - September 4

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson offering £9m to Libya to counter terrorism and mass migration is quite a surprise when, not long ago, the then Prime Minister David Cameron couldn’t bomb Colonel Gaddafi into oblivion fast enough, estimated at £300m.

Far from celebrating democracy, as David Cameron boasted of in a photo shoot, Libya is now gripped by civil war as rival factions, from the former three areas making up the country, fight over its oil, wealth and so on.

It is now like Iraq after Tony Blair’s similar intervention.

In other words, hell on earth.

Whatever Colonel Gaddafi did or did not do right, Libya was an orderly society with no problem of hundreds of thousands of migrants setting sail across the Mediterranean.

Why we allow our political leaders to repeatedly go on such ego trips, spending millions of pounds, with serious repercussions here – as in Manchester and London – causing an even greater human cost is a complete mystery.

Why aren’t such reckless actions ever punished as the war crimes they are?

D S Boyes

Address supplied

Eradicate deaths on the roads

With eight deaths in the M1 crash being reported as the worst motorway crash in 25 years, it’s surely time for road deaths to be seen as senseless and avoidable.

The concept, Vision Zero, is a multi-national road traffic safety project that aims to achieve a highway system with no fatalities or serious injuries involving road traffic.

It was started in Sweden and approved by their Parliament in October 1997.

The first UK person to be killed by a motor vehicle was pedestrian Bridget Driscoll in 1896, to which the coroner said he hoped “such a thing would never happen again.”

Given that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents estimate that 560,000 people have since been killed on UK roads, it surely begs the question as to why we still have road deaths?

With the 20th Century giving us unbelievable discoveries and technology, for example, DNA and the Large Hadron Collider, one question has to be: Why aren’t speed limiters being used to control speed, air pollution and CO2 emissions?

If just one person had been killed in the Grenfell Tower tragedy, it would have been one too many.

Last year, motor vehicles killed over 100 cyclists and as many pedestrians, and left thousands of people – the bereaved, witnesses, the police and NHS staff – severely traumatised.

We use every technological aid to fight cancer, fires and wars. Accordingly, we should use every technological aid to protect us from motor vehicles.

Or should I say killer drivers?

Allan Ramsay

Radcliffe

Symbols are important

It would seem from reports that not much progress is being made in Brexit talks.

However, the Government could make it clear that Brexit is happening by taking down, where possible, EU flags etc.

I know some will argue we have to wait until we actually leave. However, there are precedents. For example, not everybody waits until Twelfth Night to take Christmas decorations down.

Symbols are important, again the Government could show they mean business by designing and showing us what the new British passport will look like post-2019.

G Cook

via email