The US and Venezuela | Bluebell invaders | Mugwumps in Burroughs | Strong and stable | Grandparent names

It’s easy not to worry if you’re not in Caracas

From the safe distance of an Oxford college it probably does seem highly improbable that the US would invade Venezuela (Letters, 1 May). But if you live in a struggling oil-rich country, knowing your continent has suffered US political and military intervention throughout most people’s lifetimes, and then look across to the US role in the devastation of oil-rich areas of the Middle East, it is harder to sleep at night.

Mark Lewinski

Swaffham Prior, Cambridgeshire

• Malcolm Deas is absolutely right in decrying the notion of an American intervention in Venezuela as nonsense. Why on earth would the US risk the reputational damage of a military intervention when its ends can equally well be achieved by giving covert aid and comfort to the Venezuelan opposition, as in many a previous case?

Douglas Graham

Hamilton, South Lanarkshire

• I enjoyed the photograph of spring flowers in Nottinghamshire (Weather view, 3 May), but what a shame they were Spanish bluebells and not our endangered native ones.

Dr Douglas Campbell

Dibden Purlieu, Hampshire

• Why the coy decision to suppress the real meaning of Boris Johnson’s name-calling? Mugwumps are notorious reptilian drug dealers in William Burroughs’s The Naked Lunch.

Dr Kenneth Spencer

Hull

• If Theresa May is so in favour of stable government why is she so shy about setting out her stall?

John Christie

Barford St Michael, Oxfordshire

• What, exactly, distinguishes a strong and stable government from one that is rigid and inert?

Martin London

Henllan, Denbighshire

• What do we call our grandchildren’s other grandparents (Letters, passim)? The Rivals.

Janet Briffett

London

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