THOUGH the subjects that correspondents P Maxwell and R Grant (Letters November 1) write are apparently disparate, to me there is a connection.

P Maxwell’s belief that man might eventually reach another planet is implausible, logistically.

The nearest ten stars are 12 light years away; at man’s almost, by comparison, perambulatory maximum speed of 6.94 miles per second, it would take over 321,000 years to reach them, or about 4,600 human generations.

The size of space ship, and facilities required for such an undertaking are beyond imagination, plus the fact that being stars they are suns bigger and hotter than our own, so are uninhabitable.

That is not to say there are no other life forms in the universe, almost certainly there are.

However, R W Grant has apparently managed to achieve the impossible.

His assertion that the British empire’s loss was due to the Labour Party proves he is already on another planet.

The empire was staggering to its end even before the last war.

The war itself proved the end of the myth of white supremacy, and led to the disintegration of empire under successive governments of various political persuasions.

So instead of blaming the Labour Party for everything from climate change, to England’s failure to win the Ashes, and any other improbabilities in an attempt to make the pathetic Liberal Democrats look better.

I suggest he makes some effort to return his party to the considerate caring party it used to be.

A party that was sympathetic to all of society, not just the wealthy, which has characterised this present Government with its deliberate attack on the working class, which did not cause the recession.

Without Liberal support it could not have done it.

D R SMITH, Southampton.