Ban the bully? Not like this

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The government should not be looking at banning individual breeds, but banning all dangerous dogs (Getty Images)

Yet another fatally flawed knee-jerk reaction policy from the Tories.

XL bullies will be banned, but only after an 18-month “amnesty period” – long enough for any unscrupulous breeders to cross-breed its successor breed, with slightly different “characteristics” that will exempt it from the ban, and possibly make it even more vicious, just as the XL bully is more vicious than its pit bull progenitors.

The government should not be looking at banning individual breeds, but banning all dangerous dogs, with police and RSPCA inspectors being given the right and duty to decide if a dog is dangerous. Alternatively, why not a permitted breed list, with only known safe breeds on it, and provision for crossbreeds to undergo assessment to be certificated, with every dog required to have a certification number on a compulsory microchip?

Ian McNicholas

Ebbw Vale

We’re asking the wrong questions about Brexit

I agree with Jennifer Godschall Johnson (It’s time to rejoin the EU, Friday 15 September) that Brexit is a disaster and that we should have a referendum about rejoining the EU. But how could we persuade the EU to have us back?

We are clearly a fickle, second-rate country with an undemocratic voting system and a strangely non-existent constitution. All our politicians seem to assume, possibly rightly, that the priority of most of us is to do what is best for us individually. So we pay too little in tax to finance our NHS, schools or police forces; we are, collectively, content for the poor to remain poor while the rich hold on to their wealth.

We are one of the world’s largest economies, but many poor families can’t afford food and fuel. Our government is too mean-spirited to welcome our fair share of needy immigrants, even if they fought alongside our forces in Afghanistan. And the largest opposition party is almost indistinguishable from the government because its leader seems to believe that, as John Rentoul says, stealing Tory policies is the way for Labour to be elected.

If I were an EU citizen, I would probably vote against having us back.

Susan Alexander

South Gloucestershire

A government shutdown would be a disaster for the US

While the Democrats and Republicans fight over political issues, the federal government careens toward a government shutdown on 1 October. That’s perilously close. But who cares if a bunch of federal bureaucrats don’t get paid on time?

Unfortunately, that’s not the full picture. As House speaker Kevin McCarthy recently said: “Nobody wins in a government shutdown. Nobody..." So, then who loses?

Well, a shutdown would not only significantly disrupt government employees, but also the programmes those employees administer, like food and childcare assistance programmes, construction, infrastructure, Medicare and Medicaid, scientific research, services for veterans and seniors, and health and safety inspections. Simply stated, you may be laid off and your cheque will not be in the mail. We all lose.

As much as they hate the idea, Congress and their constituencies – that’s us – must unite to fund the government beyond 30 September or face the consequences.

Mike Barrett

Virginia

A ticket to nowhere

The Liverpool Mayor, Steve Rotheram, suggests in today’s Independent that the way the Tory government is handling HS2 is ”a one way ticket to opposition”.

Given the staggering incompetence and the general sleaze that characterise this government after 13 years in power, one can only hope that the ticket in question is to the station at the end of the line: a one-way ticket to oblivion.

D Maughan Brown

York