MICHAEL Fry has written in The National that the West must stay out of Afghanistan. He described that the sole survivor of the army from the first Afghan War was a Scot called Dr Brydon. It has been suggested that the fictional Dr Watson, who was an Afghanistan veteran and companion of Sherlock Holmes, was based on him.
However another Scot who was a victim of the war was also the inspiration of Kipling’s books Kim and The Man Who Would Be King. This was Sir Alexander Burnes, kin of Robert Burns, who died with his brother in the residency in Kabul in 1839 at the hands of the mob. The writer of a biography of this Victorian hero was the former British Ambassador to Tashkent, Craig Murray.
READ MORE: Michael Fry: Why UK and west must now stay out of Afghanistan
In the book Sikunder Burnes, he warned: “There are striking parallels between the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839 and the latest occupation of that country. In 1840 we sought to prop up a puppet Pashtun ruler – promoting pro-Western policies inimical to most Afghans. This led to revolt by major elements of the Pashtun tribal structure and Sunni religious leaderships. That precisely described the situation in 1840 and 2010. Will we never learn?”
Thus the British government was warned of the disaster that is happening today more than 10 years ago. Craig Murray is now in jail in Scotland for his activities as a journalist. Is this the suppression of a clear-sighted intellectual as told of in 1984 by Orwell? A similar case in England is the expulsion of Ken Loach from the Labour Party for refusing to recant. The BBC is accused of avoiding criticism of the UK Government. Channel Four is under siege for persisting with this course.
O tempora, o mores.
Iain WD Forde
Scotlandwell
THANKS must be made for a great edition of The National on Wednesday. Thank you at last for the honest and brave articles by Kevin McKenna and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh on Afghanistan and excellent letters from Selma Rahman and Keith Steiner.
Tasmina’s “neocon ninnies” was a perfectly justified and a chuckle-raising description of the SNP foreign affairs position on Afghanistan.
The letters pages are increasingly the first I read during the hiatus we find ourselves experiencing in our quest for independence. Time for the wider inclusive Yes movement to get together for Yes and give a lead. The SNP will follow.
Tony Martin
Gullane, East Lothian
READ MORE: Kevin McKenna: Who are the real savages – the Taliban, or Britain and the US?
CONGRATULATIONS to Kevin McKenna for Wednesday’s brilliant article in The National. It expressed completely my main reason for being a total 100% supporter of Scottish independence. If we can have this article distributed widely by any means – social media for example – we might even get the message in this article through to our older generation.
Bill Lossie
via email
I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree with Christopher Bruce’s proposition (Letters, August 19) that trolleybuses and the associated infrastructure should be introduced in our cities and towns.
I would like to add that trolleybus systems are still operating in around 300 cities worldwide, with many systems being renewed, for example in Salzburg. Modern trolleybuses have batteries that allow them to travel for considerable distances off the wires, but because the batteries can be charged while the bus is in motion on wired parts of the route, the batteries do not need to be as big and heavy as the ones in electric buses powered purely by batteries, meaning trolleybuses should damage roads less than battery electric buses.
READ MORE: Bring back trolley buses, limit city car access and charge for empty seats
Analysis by Martin Wright published in Urban Transport Magazine suggests that the total cost of a trolleybus system can be lower than that of an equivalent system using battery electric buses.
In 2007, I campaigned for trolleybuses to be considered as a possible alternative to trams in Edinburgh – they had been rejected at an early stage of planning for the tram system, with the only justification being that they were “outmoded”; there was no cost-benefit consideration.
I accept that trams may well have been the best solution for the densely populated areas of Edinburgh served by the tram, but I fear that we are repeating the mistake of ignoring trolleybuses, which are a proven and current technology.
David Sterratt
Edinburgh
THE GERS figures are designed to suggest Scotland is in economic difficulty. However, the UK’s own Office of National Statistics shows the notional deficit per head is considerably higher in Northern Ireland, Wales and North East England than in Scotland and North West England, and the West Midlands are also higher than in Scotland. Only London, South East England and East England show net contributions per head.
Are Unionists therefore arguing that the regions around Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester are all economic “basket cases”? These statistics simply show that all the jobs, and hence income tax, are centralised in the south.
Tom Johnston
Cumbernauld
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