SIR – Where are we heading? Serious criminals are walking the streets because we don’t have the prison accommodation for them. Less serious criminals are given conditional discharges, or are given fines which they do not pay.

The Government will cut police numbers by 25 per cent. The police will be left in a no-win situation, as will our troops, whose numbers and weaponry are being reduced.

So, with less police, and an inability to defend our shores, how long before the nation is taken over by the criminal world as in Russia, where business and government is controlled by the mafia?

There will still be plenty of funds to pay our central and local government, whose numbers are ten times higher than other developed countries, and we will have billions to spare to fund a war against an unknown enemy, and give aid to other nations who do nothing but abuse us.

Now I know the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

Keith Rayner, Laburnum Drive, Baildon