According to the French authorities who have counted them, there are several hundred squatters at Calais trying to smuggle themselves onto lorries to get to Britain.

Letter-writer Mr L O’Bee’s insistence on “thousands” is therefore incorrect, simply an exaggeration because he wants to believe it. These refugees are mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, and I agree that we should try to find ways of improving conditions in those countries so that their people don’t feel compelled to leave.

But what can Mr O’Bee possibly mean by suggesting “we should be governing or policing them”?

I think that’s what we did in Queen Victoria’s time, when it was called colonialism. Get real!

On the matter of giving economic aid to countries richer than ourselves, I challenged Mr O’Bee to name just one. With an air of triumph reminiscent of Little Jack Horner he comes up with two, and both of them wrong. Per capita, income in China is $11,850, India $5,350 and UK $35,760 – which means that, per head of population, Britain is seven times richer than India.

Whether we should still be sending aid to India at all is a separate question.

It strikes me that if India can afford a space programme, then it has enough financial resources without subsidies from us to feed and educate its own people.

Mr O’Bee offers advice that |the way to stop refugees leaving Sudan is to send troops to invade it and install a new government.

The last time we tried that was back in 1898 after the Battle of Omdurman, which went down in history as being the last time the British Army staged a cavalry charge. Dream on!

MARTIN KYRLE, address supplied.