THIS morning I was refilling my weekly medication container for the week ahead. I looked at the boxes that the tablets came in and noted that of the eight different medications I take on a daily basis, only one has a UK patent and licence holder. The other seven are licensed and patented by EU countries ranging from Germany to Spain.

Am I worried that the medication I take for cardiomyopathy may be held up at docks if the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal in place? Without a doubt. I believe the real possibility of life-saving and life-prolonging medicine being unavailable due to potential additional customs checks should transcend tribal politics. Or are political parties not too concerned? After all dead people don’t vote.

Anne-Marie Colgan,

10 Castle Wynd, Bothwell.

AS I understand it the EU has agreed a deal which, apart from the so-called backstop, is acceptable to a majority of MPs at Westminster. The backstop is designed to prevent a physical border between the province and the Republic and the unravelling of the Good Friday Agreement.

The opposition of the DUP and the European Research Group (ERG) is preventing acceptance of the Backstop. The ERG cannot speak for the people of Northern Ireland. The backstop is supported by those who see it as essential to the continued economic prosperity of the citizens of the Province: the leaders of business and the agricultural community. But now that the consequences of Brexit are known, it would be worth finding out whether the DUP MPs still represent the view of the majority of the people of that part of the UK?

There are perfectly understandable reasons why there should not be another UK-wide referendum on Brexit; not least because a majority in the rest of the UK, excluding Scotland, voted to leave. But the result in Northern Ireland was different. Does it not then make sense to put this question to the voters in Northern Ireland alone: do you oppose the backstop, yes or no?

Ian Stein,

8 Ochlochy Park, Dunblane.

YOU quote Jeremy Hunt as saying: "If you want to stop Brexit you only need to do three things – kill this deal, get an extension and then have a second referendum......" ("Hunt: Back deal or risk losing Brexit", The Herald, March 11).

Is this not tantamount to an admission that "the will of the people" has changed? If he truly believes what he is now saying, should he not in fact be fighting for a second referendum?

Eric Duncan,

11a Muirend Road, Cardross.

IN the wonderful tale of Scheherazade, she had 1001 nights of telling entertaining stories in a bid to beguile her Shah, and postpone her fate. With our modern Scheherazade, Theresa May, she has been telling somewhat less-entertaining tales for getting on for 700 nights, to gull her fractious parliamentary audience and avoid her fate. We are now coming closer to the denouement that our navel-gazing big neighbour to the south wishes. Kicking the can down the road has got Prime Minister May to a position where she will find it difficult to advance or retreat. Enemies to the front, and enemies to the rear. Jeremy Corbyn is in much the same circumstance, and the EU has accommodated the UK as much as its internal structures and cohesion permit. Patience has worn thin with the UK sending new negotiators every other week, with demands but no proposals, other than rip us what was agreed previously.

Where will we be in six months from now? Leave aside Brexit, and this present minority Government is the least competent in my three score years and ten, with ministers keeping their jobs only because Mrs May lacks the strength to sack them. Yet astonishingly, Labour is not seen as a government in waiting. “Taking back control”? A joke on us, it would seem.

GR Weir,

17 Mill Street, Ochiltree.

Read more: May faces brutal defeat as Brexit vote confirmed

JOHN McDonnell describes the decision by eight Labour MPs to leave the party as bizarre ("Labour defectors now 'irrelevant'", The Herald, March). To lose one MP shows a problem, to lose eight shows a fundamental problem. Between the Shadow Chancellor and his leader they have no grasp of reality.

At a time when the English Tory Party is tearing itself apart over Europe you would expect Labour to be riding high in the polls, poised to form the next government.

The fact that it is not shows that the public simply do not trust the ultra-left-wing stance adopted by Labour's leadership. To gain the power to govern the country and implement your policies you must be trusted by the electorate at a General Election. If you can't hold your base group of MPs together how can the present Labour leadership expect the public to trust them to run the country?

The failure of Labour to secure this trust condemns Scotland to be subjected to Tory government.

I would suggest that the outpourings of the present Labour leadership as bizarre!

Dave Biggart,

Southcroft, Knockbuckle Road, Kilmacolm.

No wonder UK negotiations with the EU are shambolic when we have a UK Home Secretary who doesn’t know that a typical Scottish university course is four years when granting three-year visas to students; a Northern Ireland Secretary who displays no knowledge of The Troubles; a Transport Secretary who awards £33million to a non-existent ferry company while ignoring Scottish ports plus a Foreign Secretary who doesn’t know the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia then tells Scotland we can’t get a vote on independence despite a double SNP electoral mandate with Scots Parliament majority backing if we are taken out of the EU.

This was quickly followed by the former Brexit Secretary David Davis telling Andrew Marr: "There is no other treaty in the world I’m aware of where a sovereign nation undertakes to join up and can only leave when the other side says so.”

Hmm ... 1707 anyone? You couldn't make it up.

Fraser Grant,

61 Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh.