I AGREE with Bill Bishop that Shemima Begum is not the most endearing of individuals.

Despite that, the fact remains that she was only 15 years-old when she made a foolish life changing decision.

Given that I believe her citizenship should be restored to her subject to careful supervision.

A recent televised political interview our friend with the placards was removed by two police officers and hopefully he will not be returning, but never say never.

Thanks to our inept Westminster politicians the Brexit situation is a mess. Members of Parliament are now questioning whether or not we should have a second EU Referendum.

The real question should be 'why are we having referendums at all'. We pay politicians to make decisions on our behalf not for us to make decisions not for us to make decisions for them.

However, having gone down the Referendum path we were assured it was a one-off event and the result would be binding on Parliament.

The question on the Ballot paper was binary ie a simply remain in leave or leave the EU. We voted to leave the EU and after approximately a year the vast majority of MPs voted to invoke Article 50 which meant we would leave the EU two years thereafter.

The question then arose about how we would leave the EU which illustrates the weakness of the binary system. Remain MPS are now trying to exploit this weakness to get another Referendum which they hope will overturn the first one.

This should be strongly resisted because it is an attempted confidence trick. It is just a variation of the old 'heads we win tails you lose' con.

If remain were to win Article 50 would be instantly revoked. If Leave were to win does anyone seriously believe that this Parliament would implement the result.

We now have the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond. an arch Remainer, trying to influence the result of the Conservative leadership by declaring that he could not support a candidate who was prepared was prepared to leave the EU without a deal. He further declared he might be prepared to vote against his party if there was a motion of 'no confidence', if it was in the National Interest.

Noble words but these do not stand up to scrutiny.

In the event of a motion of no confidence Philip Hammond could indeed vote against the Government and possibly help to bring it down.

There would then probably have to be a General Election in which the Conservative Government would almost certainly be annihilated and the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn would probably sweep to power.

Is Philip Hammond a fiscally responsible Chancellor, seriously trying to tell us that he thinks the election of a fiscally dubious Labour Party is preferable to a No Deal Brexit.

Is he really saying that the election of Jeremy Corbyn and his cohorts is 'in the National Interest'. I do not believe for one second that he would want to be remembered as being responsible of the election of a Labour Government.

His noble words are just as so much Remain bluster reminiscent of his predecessor George Osborne who predicted all manner of disasters which never occurred. It must be a pre-requisite of the job.

JAMES MARTIN,

Kelty.