Maybe I come from a different time, but I was always taught if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything – a lesson that seems to have been forgotten or ignored by most politicians and especially President Trump.

President Trump has described El Salvador and Haiti in most unpleasant terms that indicate a limited vocabulary. Both countries have suffered from major weather events and need support rather than condemnation.

Many individuals, and now countries, are suffering from the consequences of bullying – a potentially destructive outcome. We, the world in general, should look for the positive and solutions to problems.

Leaders should lead from the front – they should provide the best examples. I am not certain that this is so common now.

Dennis Fitzgerald

Melbourne, Australia

Today’s plastic will have decomposed by the time this Government makes any environmental changes

Since July 2016 it has been illegal in France for shops to distribute single-use plastic bags. At vegetable counters and green-grocers, biodegradable or paper bags are provided. At the checkouts the only options are to bring your own bags or buy a sturdy, reusable bag.

I am mystified as to why Theresa May thinks it will take 25 years to introduce such a law. Perhaps she was lobbied by the food wholesaler I saw on television before the referendum who was voting Leave because the EU Environmental Agency required him to audit his packaging.

Brenda Beary

London NW3

It’s not plastic-free aisles we need, it’s plastic-free supermarkets.

Patrick Cosgrove

Shropshire

The EU is not the enemy, despite what Farage says

Has Farage had a Damascene moment? Has he begun, however dimly, to suspect that Brexit is not all that he hoped it might be?

Losing a second referendum would enable him and the coterie of other strange creatures in the Leave ranks to evade responsibility for all the damage that the first referendum has already caused and allow them to return to their normal “whingeing and whining and moaning” about the EU – their strongest suit by far.

The even larger question now is: will the Remain camp be able to optimise the UK’s return to sanity and the bosom of a radically reformed EU? There are voices within and outside the EU that are calling for reform, but can a course be set that will enable the emergence of a post-neoliberal European Republic?

The common enemy is not the EU, it is neoliberalism. A brilliant, civilised, progressive future beckons – but can the people and their leaders kill Grendel? Or is it too late?

Steve Ford

Haydon Bridge

The NHS was never anything like it is now when I worked there

I watch the news every day in absolute despair. Just how bad does the crisis of the NHS have to get before May and her flock of ostriches actually do something about it? Many doctors, nurses, providers, patients, are telling her how dire things are, people are dying in corridors and all we get is that we are better prepared than ever for a winter crisis. No, we are not. We have a winter crisis every year and now we have an all year round crisis too. What will they blame the next crisis on when it comes later in the year?

I am 66 years old and government has known for a very long time how the population would be ageing. Every year we have a different type of flu and every year people fall over in the snow. All we get is excuses. I worked in the NHS for 17 years and it was never anything like it is now. People loved their jobs, felt as if they could make a difference, went home feeling as if they had done a good job. How can they feel that way now?

Every day is stress and a struggle to get through and no one is listening. These people do not need to hear how wonderful they are, they need help and they will all have a tipping point. It is only because they care so much that they are still on the front line going above and beyond every single day.

May needs to listen to what everyone is telling her and admit that the NHS is in crisis and act accordingly. Hunt (the best example of the lunatic in charge of the asylum) needs to listen and acknowledge that the British public wants an NHS that is free at the point of use, that we do not want a privatised health service, that the NHS needs money – lots of it – and needs people overseeing it who actually care about it, unlike Hunt, who wants to see a private health system. But whatever they do, they need to do it now, not tomorrow, not next week, but now before more people die in a corridor without their dignity.

Please, for once in your life, listen to the general public and do something that isn’t to make the Tory Party look good. Do it because you care, do it to show us all that you have a heart and do it because it needs to be done before the whole system collapses in on itself.

Sheila McAvoy

Coventry

Thank goodness the circus show has been cancelled

So, puffed-up pompous popinjay Boris Johnson (how well the epithet fits in the mirror) criticises those who are determined to put a “special relationship” at risk for being less than enthusiastic about a Trumpetty-Trump circus visit.

Hopefully, despite recent voting vagaries on both sides of the pond, the peoples of both nations may continue to have some special relationship and shared values. However, if it is in Johnson’s job description to hold hands and cosy up to another puffed-up braggart popinjay, there are many who would place greater value on the crucial relationship we should have with this planet and our fellow beings upon it, rather than with one temporarily powerful figure seemingly bent on ignorant disruption and destruction.

How’s his “Chinese hoax” looking to Californians right now I wonder, with minds more focused on disastrous invasions of mother nature than on “bad guys” sweeping across the borderline.