Starmer should focus his attention on Britain’s true enemy in the Middle East

Plus: Police accountability; anti-business Budget; post-war pigs; Prescott’s rise; preserving French; and a car-maker that’s lost its way

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SIR – Sir Keir Starmer might gain more respect and credibility if, instead of supporting the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu (report, November 22), he applied that same zeal to the indictment and detention of the ayatollahs in Tehran. They are the root cause of the troubles in the Middle East, not Israel.
Charles FosterChalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire
SIR – One country with no particular connection to Britain is invaded, and the invader bombs and kills innocent citizens. In response, we provide refuge, arms and ammunition, including missiles.
A second country, one of our closest allies, is invaded, its citizens raped, knifed, burnt alive and taken hostage. It retaliates and tries to protect itself by destroying its enemy. In response, Britain allows mass demonstrations by the invader’s supporters, and threatens to arrest our ally’s leader.
Make it make sense.
Eve WilsonHill Head, Hampshire
SIR – Tragically, the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, and the euphoric reaction to it from around the world, prove the fundamental need for a strong and secure Jewish state.
The last year has seen the unleashing of anti-Semitism on a scale not seen since the 1930s – and it grows by the day. What lies next? I believe that, were the Jewish people without a state to stand up for their rights and protect us, we would again be utterly powerless and hostage to the tides of classical anti-Semitism and radical fundamentalism, enabled by spineless political leadership.
Jews have many loyal friends and supporters, but can anyone deny the need for its people to have a national home? Israel is imperfect, but it is strong, and is the one true safety net for the Jewish people.
Ben LazarusYad Binyamin, Israel
 
SIR – Essex Police have dropped their case against Allison Pearson (report, November 22). Is she to receive an apology? Or perhaps a personal visit at home from the Essex Chief Constable, accompanied by the Police and Crime Commissioner, with bunches of flowers? I rather doubt it.
Free speech is still valued in Britain, but we have witnessed attacks on it by powerful forces. The time has come for someone to be held to account for Ms Pearson’s nightmare – which will act as a warning to others.
Jonathan FoggLoulé, Algarve, Portugal
SIR – Amid all the worrying questions raised by the appalling treatment of Allison Pearson, one of the most frightening aspects is that Essex Police considered it perfectly acceptable to knock on her door at 9.40am on Remembrance Sunday.
Miranda GudenianHoniton, Devon
 
SIR – I work with a small business that has a turnover of about £5 million. It makes a net profit annually of about £200,000. The additional National Insurance cost it faces next year is roughly£40,000, which at first sight, given its sales, may sound manageable.
However, that extra cost reduces net profit directly, so to keep profit at the same level, and win back the £40,000 of costs, it will need to increase sales by almost £1 million overnight.
In any normal market, sales growth of 20 per cent in a rapidly growing engineering business might be expected to take two to three years. In the febrile and uncertain market created by Rachel Reeves’s Budget, that is never going to happen.
Instead there will be less investment in growth, fewer employees, lower pay increases, fewer bonuses for hard work, fewer employee benefits and – not to be forgotten – lower corporation tax payments.
The implications of such a large rise in business costs have evidently escaped this Government.
Ian Brent-SmithBicester, Oxfordshire
 
SIR – Donald Trump may encourage Volodymyr Zelensky to accept the loss of parts of his country (Analysis, November 22). Vladimir Putin will want to keep Crimea and other areas to save face.
It is criminal, however, that no political leader is raising the matter of the 20,000 kidnapped Ukrainian children. If not taken directly into Russia, they are reportedly compelled to destroy their Ukrainian passports and documents.
Where are they now? Why should the world stand by without Putin being shamed, condemned and compelled to return those children, as a key condition of any peace?
Mr Trump should bring Putin to the table, but only if he releases these victims of his invasion.
Richard MasonOxford
SIR – Andrei Kelin, the Russian ambassador to the UK, declares himself outraged that Ukraine is using British weapons to hit Russian territory (report, November 22), albeit to counter ruthless air attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Mr Kelin would do well to remember 2006, when polonium-210 was smuggled into Britain by FSB operators to kill Alexander Litvinenko, contaminating two London hotels, as well as 2018, when the deadly Russian nerve agent Novichok was spread around Salisbury by two FSB agents, subsequently killing a British citizen and harming British police officers.
Russian bullying should be called out and resisted – on our territory and that of our European neighbours.
Robin SandersonParis, France
 
SIR – In this digital age, the publication in print of the last volume of the ninth edition of the dictionary of the French language, compiled by the Académie française, may seem – as implied by Jane Shilling (Comment, November 17) – somewhat anachronistic.
But the Académie’s aim is not to provide a frequently updated online reference tool, like the Robert and Larousse dictionaries, but a historical record in ink on paper at the time of publication.
Nevertheless, the Académie has not shunned computer technology. On a newly created Dictionnaire de l’Académie website, you can look up any word featured in the ninth edition and read its meaning with examples of usage. What is more, if the word is not one of the 21,000 new entries in the latest edition, you can look it up in any of the earlier editions. This text is cleverly supplemented with a readable reproduction of the relevant page in whichever edition the word was defined, via the wondrous digitised records of Gallica, created by the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Among the “neologisms” of the ninth edition borrowed from English are barbecue, self-service, weekend and Western. Interestingly, barbecue is given as a 20th-century loan word, though its usage in English goes back to the late 17th century.
When Christian Tyler interviewed Maurice Druon, the then secrétaire perpétuel of the Académie, for the Financial Times in 1994, it became clear that he was not just concerned with words but also with syntax when it came to safeguarding the quality of the French language. To Tyler’s remark that it was his belief that French had fewer words than English, Druon replied: “Dare I say, you have less syntax?”
John AdamsonCambridge
 
SIR – As a 12-year-old whipper-snapper on a palatial cruise ship, I descended to the restaurant, deep in the bowels, for afternoon tea. It was an unwelcome roster for the crew on a sunny day. I complained that my tea plate was a little grubby, upon which the steward picked it up and flung it across the room, where it shattered a wall mirror. The steward? John Prescott (Obituaries, November 22).
In 1988 I was the courier on the footplate seat of a full holiday coach entering Dover harbour early on a spring morning. The leader of a group of strikers standing around a brazier signalled at us to stop. When the driver opened the door, he hopped on to the footplate and offered some choice words to us “strike breakers”. It was none other than John Prescott again.
I was saddened to read of his death. He was a legendary deputy prime minister, never to be forgotten.
Michael StainerFolkestone, Kent
 
SIR – My husband was confused reading your article about Lemsip not being effective (Features, November 22). He is rather partial to one when man-flu strikes, and claims he sleeps like a baby. What he hadn’t taken on board was the large slug of whiskey I put in when making it.
Alexandra ElletsonMarlborough, Wiltshire
 
SIR – Jaguar has lost its way by planning to change the iconic “growler” cat logo to a modernised symbol of nothing (report, November 20).
Fortunately, I have one of the last F-Pace Jaguars ever made, and I hope that it will see me through this marketing madness.I doubt if BMW, Audi or Mercedes would foolishly change their logos. Think again, Jaguar.
Terry O’NeillCramlington, Northumberland
SIR – In 1904 my grandfather, Charles Albert Higgins, moved to Blackpool. Round the corner lived the Lyonses, whose son William – Billy – co-founded the Swallow Sidecar Company in 1922, which, via a period as SS Cars when Billy bought out his partner, would become Jaguar Cars Ltd in 1945 (Letters, November 21).
My uncle Fred and Billy became close friends because of their common interest in motorbikes and engineering, and used to race their Indian and Harley-Davidsons against each other.
Billy Lyons and his partner William Walmsley went on to build motorcycle sidecars, before progressing to making cars in a factory in Cocker Street, Blackpool, where they put their own Swallow Sidecar bodywork on to Austin 7 car chassis in 1927.
It was around this time that Billy invited my uncle to join him in his new business venture – but unfortunately he declined, because his father had recently died and he was needed to support the family business.
Derek MortonStockport, Cheshire
SIR – As a nine-year-old boy I used to visit the Jaguar works in Coventry. I would tag along with my father, Sydney, who was one of the company’s suppliers.
In the reception area was a sleek, black, pre-war car with the registration SS1. The uniformed commissionaire would greet my father with: “Good morning, sir, we’ve polished your car for you.”
I was allowed to sit in it while my father went about his business.
John H StephenLondon NW8
 
SIR – We’ve had a heat pump for a year and would highly recommend one.
Matthew Lynn says they “screech through the night…keeping the whole street awake” (“Ed Miliband’s new heat pump plan could spark civil unrest”, Comment, November 22), but whenever people ask us about the noise, the closest comparison we can find is a fridge – perhaps a little louder in cold weeks like this one.
Mr Lynn is welcome to come round with his noise meter and check.
Andrew IngramMaidenhead, Berkshire
 
SIR – My grandfather bought five Anderson shelters (Letters, November 22) after the war for keeping pigs in fields. They are still being used to house our Large Black pigs. He also bought two Morrison shelters to use as stands to put milk churns on, ready for the collection lorry. One survives as the workbench in our farm workshop.
Clive SnellYeovil, Somerset
 
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