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Are drugs to blame?

I WAS shocked to read that seven out of the 11 contenders to be our future prime minister admitted to taking illegal substances.

Is this the tip of the iceberg ? Is the state this country is in because the establishment are all on cloud cuckoo land most of the time.

Their performance regarding Brexit proves conclusively they have all lost the plot. Could the man or woman with their finger on the nuclear button be on a high at a time of crisis? It is a frightening thought for us all.

Are the people in charge of the justice system breaking the law, as Michael Gove has admitted to doing? Any important politicians who took drugs in the past could be liable to blackmail in the future.

Illegal drugs are one of the greatest dangers to our society - criminals who are dishing out death sentences to our youth by peddling drugs to them bring misery, crime, sex slavery and terrorism across the globe.

It should be stamped out at its source - for all our sakes and those of future generations.

In many countries dealing in drugs is punishable by the death penalty. Harsh but drastic measures for drastic diseases, comes to mind.

Bill Williams, Merlin Way, Covingham

The purpose of D-Day

I AM afraid John Stooke (SA, June 8) is historically incorrect when he states ”So many of our brave soldiers paid the ultimate price to unite Europe…”. The purpose of D-Day was to liberate the many separate countries in Europe that had suffered under the oppressive military occupation by Nazi Germany since 1940.

The European Economic Community (EEC) was not formed until the Treaty of Rome in 1957; with, originally, only six member states – Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg and The Netherlands. The European Union (EU) was not created until the Maastricht Treaty in 1993.

Furthermore, the quotation he mentions, “It’s a love that dare not speak its name”, was not made by Oscar Wilde but by Lord Alfred Douglas – and referred to their homosexual relationship (which was then a crime). So, how can this be likened to his “a Brexit that dare not mention its name”?

Malcolm Morrison, Prospect Hill, Swindon

War debt extends wider

On Saturday the Adver published my letter responding to Bill Williams’ argument that people shouldn’t protest at the red carpet treatment given to Donald Trump.

My letter pointed out that Trump was not democratically elected, that the USSR broke the back of the Hitler’s forces in the war - yet it is still right to criticise Stalin and that Trump has encouraged politics of xenophobia, racism, misogyny, homophobia, in general the politics of hatred which many hoped were seen off through the defeat of Hitler.

On Friday John L Crook wrote a letter pretty much the same as Bill’s and similarly wrong.

I’ll add one more argument. Why does the war debt, which we undoubtedly owe, not stretch to the many thousands of people from outside the UK (and the USA) who played a central role in the defeat of Hitler? Why, for example, is it OK for 87,000 troops from the Indian sub-continent to die fighting alongside those commemorated this week, 40 per cent of them Muslim, and then for their children to be scapegoated by racists today for problems they have nothing to do with.

Mexico played an important role as an ally in the Second World War while Trump never stops abusing Mexicans. John Crook needs to re-evaluate the cause of his feelings of shame.

Peter Smith, Woodside Avenue, Walcot