A challenge for the home secretary

Whether or not the action is legal (UK plan to use navy to stop migrant crossings is unlawful, lawyers warn, 7 August), may I suggest that Priti Patel agrees to join the first navy vessel employed on such a duty and that she stands beside the ship’s officer responsible for explaining to the migrants what they intend to do. She should then remain close to the migrants until they are disembarked in non-UK waters. I doubt she would have the stomach to do it a second time.
David Cunliffe
Hanley Swan, Worcestershire

• The police explanation of the decision to stop Dawn Butler MP in Hackney (Labour MP Dawn Butler stopped by police in London, 9 August) raises questions. Why did they attempt to enter the registration number of her car into the police computer at all? And what is suspicious about driving a car from Yorkshire to London? It is a great pity police have shown less interest in the movements of a car registered in London and sighted in the Barnard Castle area during lockdown.
Ian Simpson
London

• If the UK can take in up to 3 million people from Hong Kong, what is stopping the UK accepting many more refugees and asylum seekers, completely legally, as part of our international obligations?
Janet Lewis
London

• Frank Jackson (Letters, 7 August) claims that one of the reasons for the Nagasaki bombing was to test “an implosion type using plutonium”. This design had been used in the Trinity test on 16 July; whatever the reasons for a second bomb, testing is unlikely to have been one of them.
Stephen Ingamells
Ilford, London

• In a hotel in Cornwall, when the owner brought us our breakfast and the paper we had ordered, she said loudly: “Only one rasher each for the Reids. They’re Guardian readers, you know” (Letters, 9 August).
Peter Reid
Plymouth

• The use of pronouns evolves, and we should embrace the changes. I would like to thank Neil Ferguson (Letters, 9 August) for broadening my vocabulary by introducing me to the word “concinnity”, but also to say “you is wrong”, or, as I would prefer, “you are wrong”.
Rowena Beighton-Dykes
Oxton, Wirral

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