Readers' letters: Single-sex schools should be consigned to history

The amalgamation of Mary Erskine and Stewart’s Melville schools (Scotsman, 20 October) is surely overdue. Despite protests to the contrary, there is no place for single-sex schools in the 21st century. Thankfully, the status of women has changed and the state sector has been coeducational for many decades. Amazingly, the new head of the amalgamated schools is a woman, no doubt on merit.

Single-sex schools reflect 19th century values, when girls’ education was far less important than that of boys. The education of girls was very much an afterthought, and still is in the likes of Afghanistan. Gaining parity of women to men, and girls to boys, has been a hard and ongoing struggle in all areas, not least in education.

My only reservation over the amalgamation is the school roll of more than 2,000 pupils – what would be called in the state sector a mega school. With the live issue of applying VAT to school fees, I hope this amalgamation is for purely educational purposes without reference to finance.

The amalgamation of the Mary Erskine School, pictured, and Stewart's Melville has caused controversy

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Spirited away

While the introduction of legislation to remove the remaining 92 hereditary peers from the House of Lords is to be welcomed, a very easy next step would be to remove the 26 Church of England bishops. Known as the Lords Spiritual, these individuals have an automatic right to sit and vote in the House of Lords.

It is indeed bizarre in the 21st century to have a legislative body that, outside Iran, is the only legislature in the world which automatically includes religious representatives.

There is no representation from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. The bishops also clearly represent nothing other than the Church of England, an anachronism in an increasingly secular society.

The role of the Lords Spiritual is active and influential in law-making. Not only do they speak, vote, and serve on committees like other peers, bishops are subject to a number of privileges, includling speaking rights over other peers – when a bishop wants to speak, others are expected to give way.

There should be no reserved seats in Parliament for any one religion. The current position is a clear violation of the principle of freedom of religion and belief and equal treatment before the law. With the hereditary peers removed, the continued inclusion of the bishops becomes even more bizarre.

Alex Orr, Edinburgh

Ugly rumour

Stewart McDonald appears to think that Alex Salmond (who first assumed the leadership of the SNP in 1990, not 2004) was somehow inspired by the architects of ‘New’ Labour (Scotsman, 19 October).

I can assure him that Alex, along with like-minded others, began his transformation of the SNP when McDonald’s idol was not long gone from his failed Oxford rock band, Ugly Rumours.

Marjorie Ellis Thompson, Edinburgh

Cold comfort

I will admit that I was ignorant of the “electric wallpaper” mentioned by Steuart Campbell (Letters,19 October). It sounds like fun, unless you touch it accidentally with wet hands, of course, at which point, I expect there to be a loud bang and an electrocuted, but unmouldy home-owner will soon be found several yards outside the room, having been ejected at some force through the windows.

However, it struck me as I read Mr Campbell’s letter that there is a huge – absolutely vast – gap in the market and, at the same time, a chance to change the entire nation’s perspective every single day. Its potential is even greater than that offered by all those wonderful, Chinese-built wind turbines that are dug into virgin soil in areas of formerly outstanding natural beauty throughout Scotland but which never seem to do anything much. What the British people need, more than ever, especially on those cold winter mornings that we specialise in, is centrally-heated loo-seats!

No more placing of naked flesh on cold plastic or wood. With centrally-heated loo-seats, that national asset, the Great British Bottom will no more leap upwards, accompanied by a loud oath from the other end of the entity in question. Instead, there will be contented purring from Land’s End to John O’Groats and every new winter’s day will take on an entirely different outlook.

Andrew HN Gray, Edinburgh

Drill and discipline

Born in a Leith tenement in 1937, I have long realised the massive effect that being brought up in a uniformed society had on my young life compared to the youth of today.

Age 12 I joined my brother and my cousins in the 2nd Leith Company of the Boys’ Brigade, one of the 22 Companies that comprised the Leith Battalion in these distant days, and whose numbers stretched from Pilrig Church to the foot of Leith Walk on the annual Sunday parade. Drill and discipline, along with instruction on first-aid, gymnastics and a variety of other subjects earned us the right to a week under canvas in a variety of sites around Scotland.

However, the end of the Second World War changed the pattern of life for young people, particularly those born into inner-city flats and tenements where the norm was for families to live close to each other. Ancient tenements were destroyed and their inhabitants despatched to high-rise flats on the edge of cities and with a total lack of facilities for displaced young people. They formed into gangs and soon became derided as “Schemies”, blamed for theft and disorder around the city.

My memories of life in the streets of Leith have long gone. No longer do Pcs stroll round the streets in pairs with full knowledge of where the villains were to be found. That disappeared with the arrival of the first Panda car.

The optimism of the 1950s has long since evaporated. Mundanity is now in charge!

George Wilkie, Hemingford Grey, Cambs

Pension blackmail

I read with some interest Christine Jardine’s article regarding overseas British citizen claiming UK state pension (Scotsman, 21 October). This is the third or fourth such article I have read recently. It is, I feel, slight emotional blackmail that Christine Jardine should use a 100-year-old lady who contributed greatly to our country as an example when there are a great many other examples currently in the Press.

There are a great many former UK residents who have moved abroad, not only to be nearer loved ones as Ms Jardine states, but also to work who feel they are entitled to get their UK pension increases when in fact they have contributed nothing to the UK economy for in some cases more than 25 years.

The UK Government gives we UK pensioners increases to cover annual inflation and average increased earnings within the UK so why should non-UK resident pensioners feel they have any entitlement to an increase when the purpose of the increase has no effect on them? These non-residents do not have cope with the UK cost-of-living increases

As a resident UK citizen two years from his 80th birthday no longer receiving his £300 Winter Fuel allowance and just below the limit to get any sort of government assistance do I think Christine Jardine’s former constituency member should get a pension increase having left the UK by her own choice a quarter of a century ago? Most certainly not.

William Horsburgh, Glasgow

Down the line

UK Transport Secretary Louise Haigh and other UK ministers are to take a direct role in overseeing the building of HS2, with the projected costs having risen from £30 billion to as much as £74bn.

HS2 Ltd began operations in January 2009. The line, if it is ever completed, will run parallel to the West Coast Main Line. This fact alone makes it the white elephant opposed by its critics. Originally there were general plans for its extension beyond the West Midlands to Edinburgh and Glasgow. . The Scottish Government now receives Barnett-based funding in respect of HS2. Is it possible that it did not while HS2 was projected to go to Scotland?

In the current plan the HS2 line is due to ‘finish’ at Birmingham, where work on the foundations of the new Curzon Street station started only this month. HS2 trains will arrive there between 2029 and 2033.

But Louise Haigh is still to decide whether the ‘start’ will be a new station at Old Oak Common, or London Euston. Surely politicians should have fixed the destinations of HS2 before starting and continuing this potentially 24-year project?

E Campbell, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire

Unfit for office

HS2 has now, to no one’s surprise, been revealed as burning billions of badly need public money. The Scottish Government is doing no better trying to build ferries. We have spent well over £20 billion and still do not have an integrated NHS computer system. And 76 years of careful planning have only produced a brutal housing shortage. Government is obviously lousy at governing.

The main cause is that the bulk of government employees at all levels have a poor and limited education. To someone lacking an understanding of the physical sciences, mathematics and technology, the workings of the modern world are a dark mystery. Without a good grasp of these subjects no one should reach a decision-making level in government.

But don’t hold your breath. It is now over a century since it was decided that the PPE – politics, philosophy and economics – was a suitable education for senior civil servants and it was arguably out of date even then.

David Hogg, Edinburgh

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