I GREW up in the glorious scheme that was Drumchapel in Glasgow, and was lucky to have a MP who never forgot it was the people who voted for him, Donald Dewar.
He was possessed with the unerring ability to seek out and find members of his constituency no matter the circumstance or location of the encounter. Twice he enquired as to my wellbeing and as to what issues of the day were troubling me. Both times were outwith the constituency, and he stopped talking to whichever dignitaries to speak to the man from the “Drum”.
I cannot imagine what he would have made of the current dog’s dinner which is the Labour Party, and wonder what he would make of the MPs fighting against their democratically elected leader.
I cannot believe that he would have attempted to pervert the democratic will of the party.
Can some grandee of the media please explain to our current batch of political “leaders” that their purpose is not to win elections at any cost? Their purpose is to demonstrate principles and beliefs, to exercise policies that promote the aforementioned and to convince the electorate they are worthy of the title “Honourable”.
Neil Morison, Dornie
Air strikes cause deaths just like terror attacks do
TODAY we awoke to the news that a lorry was deliberately driven into a large crowed of people celebrating Bastille Day on the promenade in Nice. Sensational pictures on the front of every newspaper across Europe. We now have condemnation of this atrocity and condolences offered to the French people from heads of state from around the world.
I do not for one minute condone what this person/persons did – it was truly barbaric, taking a blunt instrument, in this case a lorry, and using it to batter and bludgeon people to death.
How hypocritical, therefore, that heads of state who condemn such action are happy to send a much less blunt instrument, an aircraft, that will send a missile, smart, cluster, or bunker bursting bomb, into a crowded city, killing hundreds of innocent men, women and children, believing their hands are clean.
Think on this all you Westminster MPs when you vote next week on the renewal of Trident: “Those who live by the sword will perish by the sword.”
Walter Hamilton, Elie
WITHOUT knowing the full details yet, I see that the culprit in Nice was “known to police”. This fits a pattern from the attempted shoe bombing onwards, up to the present. Most participants were “known to police” and had been radicalised in prison.
This raises the question of what goes on in prison and whether too much respect is given to the religious freedom of prisoners. In particular the monitoring the content of religious sermons and education should be given greater priority than appears to be the case at present.
Drew A Reid, Falkirk
THE impact on the wider psyche of the French people of the Nice terrorist attack as they made their way home on Bastille Day from hundreds of fireworks displays cannot be overestimated. I have more often than not over past 20 years strolled away from the Feu d’artifice that marks the end of the public July 14 celebrations.
The 14th has a place in the cycle of French life akin to our Ne’erday. However, it is that and more as the infants are not tucked up in bed but are incorporated, indeed inducted into an important aspect of French national identity. The fireworks displays always start with three rockets: one red, one white, and one blue to signal liberté egalité fraternité. These are words that French children first learn at these events.
Like our Ne’erday, the 14th is at one and the same time always the same and always different.
As we grow older it evolves as our lives do. So intimately important is Ne’erday to us, it is sometimes anticipated and depending where we are in our lives possibly sometimes dreaded. So like Ne’erday for Scots, the 14th celebrations for the French are a personal as well as a public event.
For this reason this attack will impact on every household in France in a profound way. For this reason in this asymmetric war we are now all caught up in it will register as a big victory for the perpetrators.
My sympathies and more are with the people of France at this moment.
Notwithstanding, this horrific event, it is an inevitable outcome of the constant expeditionary wars we either take part in, promote or supply.
Moreover, at some point our leaders need to understand these are wars we cannot win. One person’s terrorist is an other’s asymmetric warrior with access to 21st-century implements that have potentially deadly characteristics, and that is not going to change.
Like the exhausted protagonists in the religiously fuelled Thirty Years’ War of 17th-century Europe, our leaders will eventually be forced to turn to diplomacy instead of the insane non-solutions of smart bombs and drones. A form of diplomacy that delivered certainly not justice but a stability of sorts that the fools Blair and Bush and their acolytes so wilfully derided.
Bill Ramsay, Glasgow
AS prevention is better than a cure, and any government’s first duty is the protection of its citizens, the Western authorities must consider the internment and deportation of all those who are on watch lists and/or considered to be a threat. If people know they and their loved ones will be targeted by Islamist terrorists, they will opt for prevention.
Doc, Glasgow, via text
HISTORIC terms like “the Enlightenment” imply an evolution and advancement of singular human minds to suggest better ways of managing forms and matter for the benefit of all. This generational increase in individual mind power informs the collective consciousness and enables us to continue upon the path of human improvement.
However, there will always be those who look behind to where we have come from and think we have reached the pinnacle of human development. Such people are a danger to the rest of humanity because they are likely to make decisions that impede our improvement and the greater the power they possess, the more retrograde the effect.
What would be more regressive to human betterment than a nuclear war, which would put those unlucky enough to survive back in the Dark Ages. Such a nuclear war could be started from a missile fired from a British Trident submarine. Where would be the progress in that?
Geoff Naylor, Winchester
Letters: II: We need Scottish TV analysis now more than ever
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