Actions not words wanted for refugees

It’s easy for James Gray (MP for North Wiltshire, Letters March 7) to denounce the almost universally hated Putin.

However, he is silent when it comes to calling to account Putin’s enablers in the UK: Johnson and his cabal with their shady (perhaps not the best word, given the often brazen nature of their fraternising and compromising behaviour) Russian connections, the funding of the Tory Party by Russian oligarchs (Putin’s power base), the industrial scale laundering by the City of the billion stolen by these oligarchs from the Russian people over the last 30 years, the carrying out of Putin’s Brexit and so on.

Will Mr Gray call for the seizure of Russian assets in this country, to be used for reparations in Ukraine?

Mr Gray calls for ‘ help with the vast flow of refugees streaming into Poland’.

Will he support the welcoming of Ukrainian refugees to the UK without bureaucratic obstacles and chicanery?

We’ll see.

Martin Topping

Lyddon Way

Greenmeadow

Swindon

Govt inept and even worse, uncaring

I have tried to give the government the benefit of the doubt over its response to the unprovoked Russian attack on Ukraine.

But no longer - I cannot forgive the lies coming from these despicable people and, especially, from Priti Patel, who is our Home Secretary.

She has claimed that we have "surged a team" to look after visas for Ukranian refugees. The BBC report on the six o'clock news today showed otherwise.

Just three officials in Calais (who needed to be phoned to find their location) and no visas available - the nearest available were in Paris. Utterly pathetic - yet PM Boris Johnson claims that we are doing everything that we can and that he is leading the West's response.

The reality is that we have no real influence, as we are not even in the EU anymore. By all reports (Daily Mail, Mirror, Independent, to name but three) the UK has issued all of 50 visas to refugees, so far.

By comparison, Ireland has welcomed over 1,000 refugees and Poland (closer, yes) has welcomed (yes, 'welcomed', not just 'accepted') over one million people fleeing from war.

We should all be ashamed, not only by the ineptitude of our government, but even more so by its uncaring stance.

Steve Cowdry

Saddleback Road

Shaw

Swindon

Time to set an example to Europe

An open letter to James Gray: I am disgusted at the government’s handling of applications for entry to this country from Ukrainian refugees.

If the Polish government had acted as we have so far acted, they would have accepted less than 1000 refugees, rather than the million plus.

Our actions represent an abdication of all reasonable standards of human behaviour.

To expect refugees in Calais, after their traumatic journey, to go to Brussels or Paris to apply for visas is farcical.

To lie to them that there is a team in Calais to handle applications, when the team consists of about three people, is unforgivable.

Why insist on visas. Do the Polish require visas before allowing refugees to cross the border?

Don’t just match the Polish (and other) examples; let the UK set an example of what humanitarian aid should be.

Colin Labouchere

Kington St Michael

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