I WAS profoundly depressed to learn of the election of yet another comedy Republican “politician” – Scott Brown, a semi-nude centrefold model in Cosmopolitan 1982, as Senator for Massachusetts – to a lengthening list of Republicans in high office whose showbiz/media/populist credentials might be thought inadequate for a legislature which influences world as well as domestic events.

Is it naivete or blind prejudice of the most laughable kind on the part of voters in the US; or a cynicism of the most poisonous sort exercised by these sinister Republicans who do, indeed, continue to influence the national and international landscape which they survey from their lofty perches on the shoulders of such intellectual and far-seeing giants as Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sarah Palin and now Scott Brown?

Alarm bells ringing for us all?

Robert Hammal, Richmond, North Yorkshire.