SIR – With all the social and economic problems afflicting this country, many must wonder why the only premise deemed worthy of disrupting Parliament’s long summer recess is the civil war in Syria, which most believe is of no direct concern to the UK.

This is especially when neither Israel’s repeated military excursions or expansion of settlements into Gaza Strip and West Bank in Palestine, nor the more recent massacre of almost 1,000 protesters by Egypt’s military junta, have provoked any similar concerns.

Interfering in a civil war is like intervening in a fight between man and wife, when often they will both turn on any outside aggressor.

Sadly, the lust for bloodshed overseas in British prime ministers and their foreign secretaries of recent years, eg Tony Blair and Jack Straw’s Iraq, seems endemic with now David Cameron and William Hague apparently obsessed with going down that same futile path. But at the end of the day I hope they and all MPs realise that every missile launched, every bomb dropped or every bullet fired has, yet again, more chance of hitting innocent civilian targets than just the bad people.

Or that by this continued interference they stoke up resentment and hatred of the west in the Muslim world.

D S Boyes, Rodley Lane, Leeds