No one should be surprised if Boris Johnson were to announce a wish to legalise cannabis for recreational use.

Choosing to smoke would provide comfort to many in the event of a hard Brexit. Young voters might be seduced by an act of metropolitan liberalism. The outraged elderly who voted him in as leader comprise too small a group for him to worry about now.

And,anyway, the resulting tax revenue would go some way to meeting the NHS side-of-the-bus promise.

Steven Fogel

NW11

Dam shame

Boris Johnson has declared that the Toddbrook Reservoir dam will be repaired or rebuilt. All well and good as a gut reaction. But, apart from maintaining the perceived aesthetic of an artificial lake, we need to be debating why this and other similar reservoirs are still needed, given that their purpose is feeding local canals, the original function of which was superseded well over a century ago. This becomes even more imperative given climate change and greater storminess and the threat to human life.

Besides repair or rebuild, the question also to be asked at Whaley Bridge is: should the dam be removed and the valley restored?

Ian Reid

East Riding of Yorkshire

A hateful hybrid

As usual, the only concerns expressed over the animal-human hybrid experimentation in China centre on the potential for human suffering.

What about the hideous exploitation of the animals involved in these dreadful experiments? What about their suffering? Does anyone think these creatures want to sacrifice their lives for the good of their arch enemy, the human? As far as I’m concerned, the people involved in this research are monsters.

As the human race tries to devise more and more ways of avoiding death, the planet dies around them, as does all moral decency and empathy for other living creatures.

Penny Little

Oxfordshire

It’s not all about independence In Scotland we have grown used to the big issues of the day being reimagined through the perspective of one side or other of the Scottish independence debate. Brexit just happens to be the latest. David Curran (Letters, Friday) is concerned that the focus just now should be on the harm that Brexit could bring down on us all, and suggests that I should think more about the other parts of the UK, not just Scotland.

As it happens, I suspect I voted the same way as Mr Curran in the 2016 EU referendum. While that technically means I found myself on the winning side in keeping Scotland in the UK in 2014, but lost out in 2016 on the EU, my sense is that we all end up losers if we do not find a way to move on together, rather than thinking that repeating either exercise will do anything other than leave us ever more fractured.

For those who support breaking up the UK as a means to meet Scotland’s problems, Brexit now joins some of the greatest challenges of the modern age (like poverty, environmental issues, and nuclear disarmament) as being considered by them as only capable of being properly addressed by Scotland as an independent country. I do care deeply about Wales, Northern Ireland and England too, and would rather we face all these huge issues together. I believe our best hope continues to be in rediscovering the common ground that unites us rather than focusing on imagined or exaggerated differences.

Keith Howell

Scottish Borders

Farage exposed

As Nigel Farage sits grinning inanely taking the crumbs from the table of an openly racist president, it is apparent he no longer believes he needs his spun mask of vague bumptiousness and amusing boorishness to hide his odious extremism.

Looking on the bright side, this might be the catalyst which shows the way to the undecided on Brexit and opens the minds of those who were persuaded to vote Leave through falsehoods.

The racist nationalists who will crow and probably commit a few more disgusting and cowardly attacks on strangers based on skin colour, are not redeemable. But it is to be hoped that this latest declaration by the principal UK bigot, will force them further into a minority, as decent people see the growing disaster of Brexit, not simply through economic suicide, but with the fragmentation of society through ignorant intolerance.