Readers' letters: Playing National Anthem strikes the wrong note at Murrayfield

Blair Kinghorn runs with the ball as Maro Itoje attempts a tackle during February's Six Nations match between Scotland and England - but should England find an alternative to the National Anthem when the teams face each other next year? (Picture: Stu Forster/Getty Images)

Christine Jardine’s article about the Murrayfield Stadium (12 August) reminds us that the winter sports season is not far off.

That in turn brings to mind the practice – offensive, to my mind – of the England rugby team using the National Anthem as their signature tune before international matches, while Scotland and Wales adopt tunes that have some special significance for them. This seems to imply that only England is truly British and the other nations are just tolerated associates.

One response would be for Scotland to play the National Anthem as well, but that would tend towards farce. Could not England find some song which celebrates England as opposed to Britain? Not too difficult,surely.

Gordon Macintyre, Edinburgh

Uplifting heroes

Mr Godrynski (Letters, August 13), don’t be such a curmudgeon about Team GB. Their funding would be but a drop in reversing the ocean of poor health in the UK and with no money for sports teams we would lose the sorely needed inspiration our young people derive from watching these amazing sportsmen and women.

Are you suggesting an independent Scotland, which I know you ardently desire, should not have any sports funding? Should not have a Team Scotland?

Whatever your background or nationality it requires immense hard work to achieve a call up for the national team, let alone win a medal.

It’s a massive industry too, employing hundreds of people. The national facilities serve grassroots and outreach programmes as well as top performers and the Manchester Velodrome is this years first ever European Centre for Cycling despite Brexit. Team GB is wonderfully diverse and sent more women than men for only the second time in history.

Yes, some sports are expensive largely because of the equipment. However, sports are often at the forefront of new technologies which then benefit us all. Electronic timing, to name but one, was first used at the Stockholm 1912 Olympics.

Yes we still need a lot more work to provide sporting opportunity to those from deprived backgrounds. Yes this Olympics has not been without some serious issues – but cancelling sports funding would be nothing but negative because ultimately we need our souls to be lifted. We need heros like Simone Biles, Letsile Tebogo and Emma Finucane. The romantic Italian high jumper who lost his wedding ring and turned it into a love story. Not to mention that laconic and now iconic Turkish shooter!Sports funding is worth every penny!

Lorna Thorpe, Alyth, Perth and Kinross

Sour grapes

It’s no surprise to hear Stan Grodynski (Letters, August 13) denigrating the achievements of Team GB, using the Olympics for the purpose of concocting bizarre separatist arguments.

Predictably, he pontificates at great length about the number of medals won by Norway and (of course) Ireland relative to their populations in comparison to the UK.

As a small boy, I recall collecting sponsorship and taking part in a national fun run to send an Irish team to the Moscow Olympics because the country was so strapped for cash.

The letter’s subtext is that Scottish athletes would have performed better had they trained and competed separately to their UK colleagues. This is really desperate stuff.There are references to “the iniquities of UK sports funding” and “elitist” activities such as equestrianism, rowing/sailing and cycling, where Britain did particularly well. Since when was cycling an elitist sport?

Mr Grodynski bemoans the “limited funding” available to non-departmental public body sportscotland. There’s no doubt that (like with everything else) there would be money galore for sport if Scotland split from the Union because we could simply borrow it, couldn’t we? Or organise a few sponsored fun runs.

Martin O’Gorman, Edinburgh

Enjoy success

I read with disbelief the letter from Stan Grodynski about Team GB and how Scotland on its own could do better. Must he and his fellow keyboard warriors try to find fault with anything that has GB or UK in it? Can’t he just take pleasure in the success of Team GB?

It really is sad that some people seem completely unable to enjoy living in the moment and instead try to find fault or arguments to support nationalism. No wonder so many of us find the rhetoric of Nationalists so divisive and unpleasant.

Brian Barbour, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland

Medal count

During the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics 2024 Closing Ceremony on Sunday, Scottish broadcaster Hazel Irvine told us Team GB were wearing Hawaiian-style tops featuring the symbols of the four UK Nations and had won 65 medals.

“Well,” fellow Scot Andrew Cotter replied, “I didn’t break it down into the constituent UK Nations but England, obviously, supplied just about everything.”

If Andrew had done his research, he would have discovered that Scotland took 13 of the 65 medals and, on the basis of population, might have been expected to win six.

John V Lloyd, Inverkeithing, Fife

Folly or genius?

I am perplexed by David Fernandez’s assertion (Letters, August 13) that President Zelensky’s incursion into the Kursk region of Russia is some kind of stunt, redolent of his previous career in comedy. Far from being Zelensky’s folly, the whole exercise of the Ukrainian War is turning out to be Putin’s, the more so with each passing day.

After over two years of stalemate, during which this war has seemed to be unwinnable and the Western world was becoming weary of it all, this incursion may well go down as a masterstroke. Even Mr Fernandez must recognise its decisiveness, transporting some of the suffering the Ukrainians have endured into Russian territory.

It’s deeply ironic to hear Putin complaining of innocent casualties in the Kursk region, when he started the whole folly in the first place. How many more innocent Ukrainian lives, including women and children, must be lost before Putin sees sense and walks away from his unpardonable folly?

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Only option

Despite what Alistair Grant says (Scotsman, August 13), independence is not receding into the distance as it represents the only real change open to Scotland in 2026.

While the quirky first-past-the-post voting system means that Labour with 33 per cent of the UK vote is triumphant, and the SNP on 30 per cent of the Scottish vote is humiliated, it masks the fact that around 50 per cent of voters in Scotland believe that independence is the only way that we can match the prosperity and quality of life enjoyed in Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Norway, as devolution without full fiscal powers cannot resolve the cost-of-living crisis or UK wide poverty.

Although the SNP has made several mistakes during its 17 years in government, the performance on health, education, transport, house building etc stands up very well when compared to the previous Scottish Lib/Lab Executive or with the current Labour devolved government in Wales.

The fact that Labour is not supporting any democratic route to self-government is no reason to give up. John Swinney is well liked and a safe pair of hands but the SNP needs a Kamala Harris-type figure to re energise the party and inspire Scotland going into 2026. It’s not too late for a Kate Forbes/Stephen Flynn fresh-faced ticket with plenty of new ideas and strategies to show that Scotland, with our vast energy resources and balance of trade surplus, would be better off as an independent nation, particularly within the EU or EFTA.

Mary Thomas, Edinburgh

Choices, choices

SNP ministers are braced for “painful choices" as they prepare for £77.5 million of cuts to public services to pay for the improved pay offer put to unions to prevent the bin workers strike (Scotsman, August 13).

The Scottish Government said it hoped that the offer by the council umbrella group Cosla of an average 4.3 per cent with the lower paid getting 5.63 per cent would stop the threatened strike by street cleaners and refuse workers. The Unite and GMB unions said that strike action would be suspended whilst they held a ballot of their members and Unison has also suspended strike action but recommended to their members that they turn down the improved deal.

What will the unions do when they realise that Scotland's part-time councillors are to receive an increase in the basic salary from £21,345 to £25,345. This is a hefty 19 per cent. The highest paid full-time councillors will be given £72,200, a rise of 13 per cent. This will cost Scottish taxpayers another £6 million a year. Seems like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Hate crime?

Why has no police action been taken over the shameful hounding out of two Israelis from comedian Reginald D Hunter’s Fringe show where even fellow audience members were hostile? Why is Humza Yousaf’s Hate Crime Act not being applied here? Scotland, the most welcoming small country in the world.

Dr G Edwards, Glasgow

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