Readers' Letters: Government ministers must pay price of Glen Sannox debacle

The SNP has let the unbuilt ferry saga go on and on because it is unwilling to take decisive action. Now the much-awaited, much-needed Glen Sannox is to undergo yet more changes before it can enter service.

Màiri McAllan is the latest SNP MSP to fill the role of Transport Minister (Picture: Fraser Bremner-Pool/Getty Images)

This means the promised in-service date of autumn this year has been pushed back yet again, to the beginning of 2024. The time has come for the Scottish Government to finally take responsibility. The Transport Minister and even the First Minister must consider their positions. This is a national scandal and Scotland's shipbuilding reputation is being shredded. There is no wriggle room left.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Regretfully yours

The Scotsman’s latest article by Vic Valentine, “Transgender debate: Gender-affirming surgeries have a ‘regret rate’ of one per cent or less. For knee replacements, its 17 per cent” (Perspective, 18 August), presents unreliable and deeply flawed statistics. Valentine first quotes a study of nearly 3,500 people attending the Tavistock Gender clinic in London, claiming that only 0.47 per cent had any regrets. The statistic comes from a non-peer reviewed conference abstract looking at patients attending the clinic from 2016-17. None of the individuals were directly asked about feelings of regret. The 0.47 per cent regret rate comes from merely scanning the patient records for words like “regret” or “detransition”. Since most who detransition never return to their clinics, because they distrust the clinicians and resent them, this statistic is meaningless. Also, the study only looks at regret a mere two years after being seen at the clinic. Regret is usually much later.

The other study quoted states that only one per cent of those who have gender-affirming surgeries regret such treatment. This is, presumably, from a similarly flawed study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (9 August 2023) looking at regret following mastectomies. But the time frame was insufficient: only an average of 3.6 years post-surgery. There was a very high non-participation rate, clearly skewing the results in favour of those who did not regret. There was no control group. There was a highly politicised (as opposed to scientific) commentary and there was clear conflict of interest with authors being involved in the gender-affirming surgery industry.

I have met detransitioners, who really do regret their surgeries; people suffering because they have had either healthy breasts or genitalia removed. They have been permanently physically and mentally scarred. We should be alarmed and ashamed of what our health services are doing to such people in this field.

(Dr) Antony Latham, Chair of Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, Edinburgh

Get tough

All these people who want to "De-criminalise" drug use, need to take a look at their daily papers and understand the degree of criminal activity of those with “a drugs habit”. These activities range from dangerous drugs-influenced driving, break-ins and theft, to violence and assault. Our courts constantly hear that these crimes are committed by people under the influence of drugs. What is needed is not legalisation of drugs use, it is harsher penalties to dissuade and restrain drug users from continuing their habits without bothering to seek proper medical help.

Derek Farmer, Anstruther, Fife

Goodbye Parky

Your Michael Parkinson obituary (22 August) reminds me that in retirement, Michael Parkinson said Muhammad Ali was “remarkable" and the "most extraordinary human being he had ever met”.

His “favourite” interview, however, was with the wonderful Dr Jacob Bronowski of Ascent of Man fame, who had lost family in Auschwitz, and who, in trying to sum up his feelings after visiting the death camp, found this quotation came into his mind: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

Parkinson often brought two totally disparate characters together, such as Billy Connolly and Sir David Attenborough in 1998, who immediately got on well, and with his detailed explanation of an east European bird's devious egg-laying practice, designed to confuse her mate and enable her to look for another mate while avoiding her maternal duties, Sir David proved his humorous credentials were a match for the Big Yin's, who replied that it reminded him of his family as “my Dad always thought I was an only child!"

The whole show was a brilliant combination of two masters at the top of their trades.

John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife

Bad before Maggie

Leah Gunn Barrett really lets her imagination run free (Letters, 23 August). As a student I lived in Glasgow in the 1950s/60s – a bit before Thatcher's time – and did various part-time jobs such as bartending. Scotland's nationalised heavy industries then were haemorrhaging money, partly due to work practices.

For example, It was common practice on Friday nights for steel workers to drink the whole of their wages on the way home and I can remember frogmarching one inebriated night shift worker to his workplace only to find him back in the bar a little later. Buying a bucket of beer on the way to night work where there was more card playing than work done was common and I can remember one nationalised shipyard boasting that theft of rope was down to a few hundred pounds per week.

The violence Ms Barrett mentions as a result of Thatcher's work closures? In Glasgow for heavens sake! Never heard of the razor slashing days of the Fifties, Ms Barrett?

A McCormick, Terregles, Dumfries

Celtic kitten

I read with disbelief the comments from Green MSP Ross Greer in The Scotsman where he attacked the idea of Celtic Tiger economics, which he said led to economic collapse and mass migration from Ireland in 2008. Is this the same Ross Greer who campaigned for Independence in 2014 based on a White Paper that said Scotland would cut corporation tax below whatever Westminster (and Liz Truss) set it at and half, then abolish, airline taxes like Ireland. I think we should be told.

Davie Watson, Leith, Edinburgh

Wee free speech

Patrick Harvie – never one to pass up an opportunity to patronise a woman – says Kate Forbes should “reflect” on her qualified support for Father Ted writer Graham Linehan, whom he calls a “bully”, merely for expressing opinions he doesn't agree with.Perhaps Harvie may like to reflect on the supreme irony of the girl from the dour, humourless Wee Frees forced to champion the rights of an atheist comedian to lampoon the self-righteous hatred of Harvie's latter day Covenanters towards dissenters to their “Sound Doctrine”.

Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire

Preach on

You report that Calvinist MSP Kate Forbes claimed that “Behaviour has never changed as a result of being preached at” (“Urban environmentalists rile Forbes”, 22 August).That must come as a surprise to every Christian preacher; their purpose is to “preach the Gospel” (Mk 16:15) so as to change people's behaviour, ie from unbelief to belief.

In fact, the Christian Church could not have grown without preaching. John Calvin was a preacher and founder of the sect to which Ms Forbes belongs via her membership of the Free Church of Scotland.

Steuart Campbell, Edinburgh

Dome and dumber

Dr Richard Dixon (Scotsman, 23 August) once again looks for ways of reducing emissions in his tireless search for net zero. But he overlooks the challenge facing us once this has been achieved, which is the construction of a massive dome over the UK to keep out emissions from industrial nations whose enthusiasm for net zero is absent – USA, Korea, India, Japan… the list goes on. The cost of zero will have bankrupted us, but China will be there to do the job. We should be speaking to them now.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Kinross

Selective memory

Being tone deaf appears to be an essential attribute of Scottish nationalists. In spite of being told often that the authoritative view – eg of those at the Fraser of Allander Institute – is that GERS figures are reliable, Mary Thomas (Letters, 23 August) sallies forth with the customary nonsense that GERS figures “are based on UK Government estimates of Scotland’s poor position”.

Ms Thomas complains about Scotland being “charged £9.2 billion” in debt interest because of ‘Brexit, mismanagement of the economy, a failed energy policy and inflation”. How short her memory is, and how defective her understanding of international affairs. Where is her acknowledgment of the tens of billions paid out in furloughing and business support during the pandemic, to say nothing of the fast-tracking and rollout of vaccine development? Did Scots not benefit from these? I know it’s all a couple of years ago, but it seems strange that she has already forgotten about the Covid crisis that dominated our lives for many months.

The energy crisis owes much to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Why has Ms Thomas failed to notice that?

The answer, of course, is that your separatist correspondents are interested only in giving the UK, Westminster, London a good kicking, and therefore they skew their material and accusations accordingly.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

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