“NONE are so blind as those who will not see”. The blindness of politicians has often been described. Now the effects are steadily acquiring a new global significance.

I refer to two in particular. Are we all aware of the power of the arms industry? You can’t prove that it is manipulating just about everybody and everything, but it has profited enormously from neo-colonial Blair-Bush type wars, and now from Cameron’s Libya.

These wars usually cause more misery than they pretend to avoid. Who is really in control? And why has our census been sent to the greatest American arms firm to be processed?

The second concern is world population. Each day thousands of lives are added to a planet whose resources are not infinite. As with the runaway arms machine, no political concern exists to bring nations together to talk.

One despairs, as daily the world population increases and our only response seems to be to kill people in one war or another.

Huge and terrible weapons are rolled out in our name and are paid for, while our hospitals, care for the young and the elderly and the infirm, and so much else, is under-funded.

Roy Stevens, Willow Bank, New Earswick, York.