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Fears for the future

How a political career can turn is best exemplified by the adulation being poured out on Donald Trump following his decision to bomb a Syrian airbase, wiping out a fifth of the country’s warplanes.

Once again we witness Western leaders attempting to outdo each other in calling for the end of Russian support for President Assad and demanding the beleaguered president must go.

It is not the first time we have heard such calls.

Who can forget the regime change engineered by Britain in Iraq and Libya, changes which we were assured would lead to the spread of democracy in the region and greater security from terrorism at home?

There is no doubt Assad is an unpleasant man, the question is whether he is any worse than any other of the despotic tyrants who govern with an iron fist.

The current president of Egypt has a track record of evil which bears direct comparison to Assad and yet the USA recently lauded him as an inspirational leader.

The Saudi rulers are engaged in a religious war with Yemen, bombing innocent women and children with British military hardware.

Would Gen HR McMaster (US NSA) suggest Britain is culpable in the murder of innocents and will Mr Tillerson (US Sec of State) include Saudi Arabia in his much vaunted “We re-dedicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world”?

I suspect not.

Nature abhors a vacuum and the demise of Assad would lead to a period of uncertainty and terror as tribal and religious loyalties are tested in the extreme, IS and other disparate groups will seek to fill the void and yet another middle east ‘problem’ will present itself.

The one thing we can be assured of is Britain will be at the front of the queue offering an open chequebook to rebuild a country in a region which will continue to be a haven for international terrorism for decades to come.

DES MORGAN

Caraway Drive

Swindon

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Cognitive dissonance

Jeff Adams criticised my letter showing that there are Christians living in the Middle East, writing he doesn’t know what I am trying to prove.

I will tell him and your readers what I am trying to prove.

In the past 10 years or longer we were subjected in your letters pages to a series of lies and misinformation, mainly by UKIP supporters, to build up in people’s mind the false idea that the EU is bad – this is called cognitive dissonance.

Once this is built up in the mind one is unable to take in the truth and change one’s opinion. Perhaps you could say “set in one’s ways”. I am not writing about the last couple of months of the referendum campaign when the celebs on both sides became rather silly.

This campaign of falsehoods worked in the case of the EU.

I will do everything in my power to prevent closet racists from doing the same to demonise Muslims. We were told in a letter that there were no Christians allowed in the Middle East and I replied that there were and showed this to be true.

It is part of the extreme right wing disinformation technique to label truths they find unpalatable as meaningless or false facts; that’s how the USA ended up with Trump.

One writer says there are no Christians in the Middle East and the next says there are but they are persecuted, and I agree with him, or rather he agrees with me as I said in my letter to which he replied.

Isis are a bunch of evil people who kill anyone with whom they disagree, regardless of religion.

Egypt, who he says do nothing in the face of churches being bombed, have just declared a state of emergency as a result of two churches being bombed and groups of Egyptian Muslims frequently surround churches to prevent them being attacked by extremists.

STEVE THOMPSON

Norman Road

Swindon

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Wrong road priorities

I WAS puzzled to see that Sherston High Street was recently resurfaced.

Normally I would be pleased to see one of the village’s much dilapidated roads receiving such treatment, but the High Street would not have been on my list for improvement, as on most of the access roads to the village, the potholes resemble craters!

On a recent dark morning, I not only wrecked a tyre on one of these, but damaged the wheel as well! Why in the sixth largest economy in the world do we have to put up with Third World road conditions? But the bigger question is why was Sherston High Street prioritised over other roads in a much worse state?

The cynic in me thinks that there’s a local councillors (the deputy leader of Wiltshire Council no less), who needs to get re-elected in May and wants to impress the electorate with a high visibility project, rather than tackle the real priorities.

MARTIN SMITH

Sandpits Lane

Sherston

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Grabbing the wealth

MAY I please be allowed to comment on the letter from Jeff Adams of April 10?

Mr Adams, one cannot blame the MP s for grabbing a share of the country’s wealth. Look at what footballers get paid for one and a half hour’s work a week.

Not only do they get the money but many do their very best to avoid paying Pay As You Earn Income Tax, unlike myself, who has tax stopped at source from my pension.

As to the rest of your statements. About reductions to benefits, it is no small wonder, in view of what some people are paying, on top of the BBC licence fee, to various companies for extra TV.

A lot of the profit from these companies disappears overseas, thus increasing our country's balance of payments deficit.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED