Letters
Scots myth
I would be very surprised if Mancunian-born (and accented) Corporal Kurt Lee does not consider himself an Englishman, yet you refer to him as a “Scots hero of Taleban battle” (18 June).
RE opt-in is right
Supporters who mainly argue for the retention of Church of Scotland dominance in religious education (RE) appear to overlook the fact that Scotland is now multi-religious and also has an increasing proportion of non-believers who deserve equal consideration.
Online abuse
David Cameron has vowed that he will “put the heat” on the likes of Google and web firms to force them to ban child abuse websites. Mr Cameron is reported to have said: “The world has changed so fundamentally with the internet that we’ve got real threats there to our children and the appalling scourge of child pornography. We’ve got to take a lot of action.”
Stay out of Syria
I am sure David Cameron found it galling to receive a lecture on human rights from Vladimir Putin, especially since, on this occasion, the Russian is probably right (your report, 17 June).
Union in Europe
It would appear Peter Jones has been in hibernation throughout our recent cold winter. That, at least, would explain the imbalance in his article (Perspective, 18 June) about the risks to Scotland’s ongoing membership of the European Union.
Breach of trust
With reference to the recent correspondence on the National Trust of Scotland it is sad to note the existing trustees reverting to type. To “recommend” members to vote for three of the 13 nominated candidates is totally inappropriate and ill-judged.
Battle for Hearts and remembrance
In an article on the car crash that is Heart of Midlothian (18 June) Alan Patullo quotes Fraser Wishart, chief executive of the Scottish Football Association (SFA), as saying: “Others lived within their means – Hearts did not.”
Overblown case
The number of letters that attempt to attack the wind industry continues to astonish me. What forms of energy do these people think we will use when fossil fuels do actually run out?
Order of today
You published a letter from my brother Alan (18 June) supporting a No vote in the independence referendum on the basis that the UK honours system, if independence were to be gained, would no longer apply in Scotland, and all our celebrities, captains of industry, sport stars, etc, who currently receive such honours would all migrate southwards in order to qualify, to the detriment of public, cultural and sporting life in Scotland.
A moral issue
Scottish Government ministers are presenting to the Scottish Parliament just before the summer break the long-heralded legislation that would allow same-sex marriage in Scotland.
Letters: Leader not living up to manifesto
GINA Davidson (News, June 13) rightly scorns the Council Director of Corporate Governance’s proposal that the handling of whistle-blowing reports should remain with the authority’s senior officials alone and suggests that councillors may “have forgotten that they are the masters and the officials the servants”.
2 commentsMore questions
Several writers commented about the BBC’s Question Time last Thursday featuring a panel of referendum commentators facing an audience of 16- to 17-year-olds (Perspective, 15 and 17 June).
Trust candidates
Professor Denis Mollison’s long record of support for the National Trust for Scotland is one we are very grateful for (Letters, 15 June).
Outlandish move
So the Scottish Government’s Land Reform Policy Group has now been watered down to the Community Ownership Review Group (Letters, 11 June).
Ill treatment
I can’t begin to describe how disgusted and upset I am by the behaviour of Oban’s Lorn and Islands District General Hospital (your report, 17 June).
War blame
Alan Clayton (Letters, 17 June) may be too partisan, it seems to me, in attributing blame for the ruinous First World War.
Catalan coverage
It is surprising to note the coverage given to the comments by Catalan MEP, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, that Spain would not accept an independent Scotland into the European Union (your report, 17 June).
Future honours
Lately there have been many items in your newspaper suggesting an independent Scotland would find it difficult to get along in the world because it would be excluded from arrangements that are presently organised on a UK-wide basis.
Licences needed
The news (14 June) of the illegal destruction of a nest on a shooting estate in an Angus glen containing the first pair of sea eagles to breed in east Scotland for 150 years was appalling.
Arming Syrian rebels is not the answer
Although it is not a common experience on my part, I cannot help but think that Vladimir Putin’s analysis of the situation in Syria is the right one (your report, 17 June).
Myth busters
Your report of the row over the existence of Nessie (15 June) highlights the problem of making money out of myths.
Equal rights
In arguing against me on behalf of a public service, funded for the most part by public money, Neil Addison (Letters, 17 June) claims that the Equality Act grants Stonewall a positive discrimination right to restrict its services to homosexuals.
No energy is free
Your report (17 June), that the wind farm industry is propped up by a subsidy of £100,000 per job, which is paid for through our energy bills, can be of little surprise to anyone who has studied the economics of wind farms.
Letters: Stockbridge backs Accies development
I read with interest James Simpson’s offer “to work with the Accies to bring forward other ideas for a solution which can be achieved with the consent and support of the whole community” (Letters, June 11).
5 commentsSyrian concerns
As IF more than 90,000 dead in Syria to date wasn’t bad enough, the United States – in deciding to arm the rebel forces (your reports) – is to raise the stakes even higher in this deadly game of political poker where many more innocents will perish as the civil war will escalate with increased firepower.
Passing test of time
Dr STEPHEN Moreton reverses common sense (Letters, 15 June). Monotheistic faiths are practised by the majority of the human population.
Legal restrictions
Alistair McBay of the National Secular Society (Letters, 14 June) says that it only wants St Margaret’s Children’s Society to obey the law. I would agree, but the question is, what does and should the law require? The Equality Act permits a charity to discriminate if that is part of its constitution. It is an exemption for charities that has existed since the first Race Relations Act and permits, for example, Stonewall to restrict its services to homosexuals. St Margaret’s merely seeks to use the exemption the law already permits.
Members will decide union poll stance
The article by Professor Gregor Gall, “No, you won’t get me as part of the Union” (Perspective, 11 June), refers to the “likelihood” of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) backing Scottish independence. I am writing to put the record straight.
Cruel experiments
ACCORDING to reports a recent study by scientists at Queen Mary, University of London found that cockroaches are social beings who “talk” to one another about food and prefer to dine in groups.
Poor showing
So, EDINBURGH Festival director Jonathan Mills gets a knighthood (your report, 15 June). I wonder what for? I have been a frequent critic of Mr Mills, not least for his opera programmes, which have got worse every year. This year we get only three operas, one of them a Fidelio set in a spaceship.
Generation war
When Alf Young (Perspective, 15 June) and the Bishop of London, the Rt Reverend Richard Chartres, “bang-on” about the same subject it is worth taking note and inter-generational inequality has become a national preoccupation.
Kirk departures
I WAS very saddened to read that a number of ministers, elders and members are leaving the Church of Scotland (your report, 13 June).
Rewriting history
DR JOHN Cameron writes that Kaiser Wilhelm II “was hardly blameless” for the outbreak of the First World War (Letters, 14 June). While this is true, neither were all the other European politicians and generals. I think in particular of General Horatio Herbert, the Lord Kitchener, the British Army’s main recruiting agent at the beginning of the war.
RBS shareholders
Indubitably, Stephen Hester, the “surgeon of Royal Bank of Scotland leaves taxpayers stitched up”, as George Kerevan clearly shows in his analysis. (Perspective, 14 June). However, it is the cartoon that graphically reveals the often-forgotten small shareholder, excluded from the trough.
Nationalist blow
IT SEEMS that the SNP is objecting to the balance of the panel on the BBC’s Question Time from Edinburgh last week, especially because neither George Galloway’s nor Nigel Farage’s parties have any representation in Scotland. Equally, as neither lives in Scotland, the SNP seems to regard this as unacceptable .
Decline of football defies any easy solution
I NOTE your two contradictory stories (9 June) on television coverage of Scottish international football. On the front page, Alex Salmond insists that he will give us football on the telly for free after independence. On the sports pages, the SFA are pleased with their new deal with Sky, which will put £60 million into the game here. We have two choices on this. The SFA either take this money but deny access to thousands who cannot see the games, or forego this money and open the games up to everyone. In the latter situation, if we don’t want to see football clubs in financial turmoil, then the Scottish Government will have to find the money instead.
Ex-pat empathy with suffragette
ALTHOUGH a mere male, I was interested in your article “Making of a martyr” (The Week, 2 June) as I have recently become disenfranchised and I am beginning to realise why some people feel the need to take such action. My sin is to be an ex-pat Scot, compounded by the fact that I live in England and am not considered good enough to have my say in next year’s referendum.
Act of Union was unpopular
IN HIS letter (9 June) Alexander McKay states that “99.5 per cent of Scots in 1707 knew little and cared less what set of landed gentry ruled them than another” – implying that the majority of Scots were indifference to the loss of nationhood incurred by the union.
Poor case against sexual equality
OPPOSITION to marriage equality as demonstrated by several religious contributors to your letters page over the last few weeks falls into three lines of argument.
Had enough of Scottish Labour
MICHAEL Dickie, judging by his letter (9 June), travels under a strange illusion if he thinks we the English want Scottish Labour MPs dominating English politics as they did in the Blair and Brown administrations – despite Labour returning around 40 MPs, the Scottish Labour intake provided 20 Cabinet ministers, all of whom had signed the Scottish Claim of Right.
Letters: Secular segregation is another step backwards
Advocates of religious observance, which goes beyond comparative religious education in teaching children to believe in one religion, have suggested that the answer to growing concerns about Christian indoctrination in state schools is to have what they call state “Secular Schools”.
Turbines’ toll
Like many others I am greatly saddened to hear of the death of a recently introduced white-tailed eagle, in the east of Scotland (your report, 14 June) I am pleased to read that environment minister Paul Wheelhouse MSP is keen to prosecute those responsible.
9 commentsBullying agenda
Today is Global Wind Day, an annual event co-ordinated by the European Wind Energy Association and Global Wind Energy Council. It is a day, according to the event’s website, “for discovering wind, its power and the possibilities it holds to change our world”.
7 commentsTrust democracy
When I was first elected to the National Trust for Scotland’s council in 1979, I was the only candidate nominated by ordinary members – all the rest were nominated by the council itself; and there was no voting by members at all.
Counsel of fears behind Unionist case
BRIAN Wilson (“SNP con-trick masks the true reality”, Perspective, 12 June), rightly points out the degree to which Scottish administrative centres are responsible for processing state benefits on behalf of the UK government. Mr Wilson suggests that it is difficult to imagine why Westminster would allow its benefit system to be run from a foreign country.
4 commentsQuestion of bias
Thursday night’s Question Time on the BBC was an absolute disgrace as far as presenting a fair discussion on Scottish independence. Four panellists for the anti-independence side and two pro-independence was typical of the BBC’s biased stance in such discussions: two politicians who represent few, if any voters in Scotland and one who represents only a few more. Anas Sarwar (Scottish Labour) and Angus Robertson (SNP) were the only two politicians entitled to be there, along with the very able Lesley Riddoch
4 commentsRed-tape trauma
Thomas Reilly (Letters, 13, June) proposes a Nobel Prize for the person who uncovers whether or not our judges are bound by conflicting oaths, one to a secret society and one to the Queen.
3 commentsHateful beliefs
Contrary to Dr Mary Brown (Letters, 14 June) Michael Kelly did not “conflate religious belief … with a belief that homosexuality is perverted or wrong”. The two are closely linked.
4 commentsLobbying plea
THE pursuit of a more transparent and accountable political system in Scotland is worthy of support but legislation is not required to achieve this (your report, 14 June). The responsibility for upholding the integrity of politics in Scotland lies with our elected officials, who can promote transparency by agreeing to publish their diaries (as they currently publish their expenses). This would have the same effect as the proposals laid out by Neil Findlay MSP’s draft bill, but with a much smaller burden on the public purse compared with creating a lobbying register.
Who benefits?
Robin McAlpine (Perspective, 14 June) is in favour of universal benefits, as opposed to means-testing.
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Weather for Edinburgh
Wednesday 19 June 2013
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 9 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 12 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North east
