From the safe distance of an Oxford college it probably does seem highly improbable that the US would invade Venezuela (Letters, 1 May). But if you live in a struggling oil-rich country, knowing your continent has suffered US political and military intervention throughout most people’s lifetimes, and then look across to the US role in the devastation of oil-rich areas of the Middle East, it is harder to sleep at night.
Mark Lewinski
Swaffham Prior, Cambridgeshire
• Malcolm Deas is absolutely right in decrying the notion of an American intervention in Venezuela as nonsense. Why on earth would the US risk the reputational damage of a military intervention when its ends can equally well be achieved by giving covert aid and comfort to the Venezuelan opposition, as in many a previous case?
Douglas Graham
Hamilton, South Lanarkshire
• I enjoyed the photograph of spring flowers in Nottinghamshire (Weather view, 3 May), but what a shame they were Spanish bluebells and not our endangered native ones.
Dr Douglas Campbell
Dibden Purlieu, Hampshire
• Why the coy decision to suppress the real meaning of Boris Johnson’s name-calling? Mugwumps are notorious reptilian drug dealers in William Burroughs’s The Naked Lunch.
Dr Kenneth Spencer
Hull
• If Theresa May is so in favour of stable government why is she so shy about setting out her stall?
John Christie
Barford St Michael, Oxfordshire
• What, exactly, distinguishes a strong and stable government from one that is rigid and inert?
Martin London
Henllan, Denbighshire
• What do we call our grandchildren’s other grandparents (Letters, passim)? The Rivals.
Janet Briffett
London
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