The Rwanda plan is nothing more than an expensive gimmick

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Rishi Sunak has failed on Brexit, failed on immigration, and now he is failing on basic accountability (Getty)

So, instead of cracking down on the criminal gangs running the small boats from Calais, yet another £15m of taxpayers’ money is to be sent to Rwanda.

Thus bringing the total spent on Rishi Sunak’s failed gimmick to £155.

All for a scheme to try and combat a civil war within his own stricken Conservative Party.

This is nothing short of a blatant attempt to replace the truth of a dying government with desperate right-wing propaganda fairytales.

Rishi Sunak has failed on Brexit, failed on immigration, and now he is failing on basic accountability.

Geoffrey Brooking

Hampshire

Thatcher’s ‘change’ was not for the better

When Sir Keir Starmer cites Margaret Thatcher and Sir Tony Blair as bringing about meaningful change, does he understand that much of it wasn’t for the better?

Does he mean, in Thatcher’s case, destroying industries and entire communities? In Blair’s case, does he mean saddling students with tuition fees?

Or does he mean, in both cases, increasing wealth inequality, maintaining entrenched poverty and increasing the North/South divide? I’d say they frittered at the edges of meaningful change and neglected the real need for any transformative meaningful change.

Richard Whiteside

Halifax

Pensioners like me are sick of being left behind

I am one of the many “older” people who only have a “big button” 2G mobile phone. My phone cannot connect to the internet, I cannot receive the government’s emergency alarm message and, with no apps, cannot participate in this new “pay by phone only” society.

I no longer shop locally because the car park does not take cash, payment is only via an app. My nearest bank is miles away and wants me to use an app.

My new “smart” TV wants me to use an app to connect it to the internet, so it can “allow” me to view TV programmes – it does not even have a TV aerial socket. Don’t even mention the loss of telephone landlines!

These are just a few of the gripes us OAPs are having to live with these days.

Alan Rivers

Address supplied

Sunak can still win the Elgin Marbles row

On balance, Sunak was right to reject the populist posturing of the newly elected Greek prime minister – that’s just not how things get done in this world. He should bide his time, sidle up to the responsible government minister and offer a large “donation” to party funds in exchange for written authorisation to visit the British Museum with a furniture van late at night.

With museum staff genetically predisposed to “looking the other way”, it might take two years for anyone to realise anything was amiss. Meanwhile, there is a new attraction at the Acropolis Museum.

And that is, more or less, how we got into this marble mess in the first place.

David Smith

Taunton