THE outcome last week of the independent review into allegations of racism in Scottish cricket, finding the governance and leadership of the sport to be institutionally racist, was just so depressing.

I wasn’t surprised, though.

Not that I know anything about the goings on within cricket in Scotland. It’s a sport I have no interest in. It was to me, however, yet another example of what happens with many allegations of racism throughout society.

When the carpet is pulled back it so often reveals the dirty secrets that have been swept under it.

The English right-wing press, through their “Scottish” versions of their dismal rags, had a field day covering the story on their front pages. Such hypocrisy from these regular messengers of racist tropes is totally sickening.

Nevertheless, it is extremely disappointing and dispiriting that this happened in the country where a single street name in Glasgow, Kenmure Street, is synonymous with everything that is good about humanity.

I was struck by how many of the words and phrases I heard from the esteemed, very brave Scottish cricketers Majid Haq and Qasim Sheikh as well as their formidable lawyer Aamer Anwar, could have emanated from many other such cases involving allegations of racism.

I outlined these including some of my own that I consider reasonable in the circumstances: “Tried to fit in; feeling an outsider; treated differently to white counterparts; having to perform so much better than them just to get in the team; fear; recriminations; being called a liar; being “sent to Coventry”; being referred to as “your lot”; not feeling part of the “in crowd”; being ignored; being sidelined; being subject to racist language and mockery using racist tropes; being humiliated; depression; suicidal thoughts; being made to feel inferior purely due to skin colour; total lack of support from colleagues particularly those of a pale complexion; the outcome of challenging authority leading to the extreme sanction of end of career; denial, denial, denial, then the predictable and inevitable backlash once the bad guys have been caught out!

This situation will never change, and forgive me for using the language of a father giving advice to his five-year-old child, the good white people must always stand up, confront and challenge the bad white people whenever those bad white people are unfairly horrible to black and brown people. Sometimes things are just that simple!

Ivor Telfer

Dalgety Bay

IT is said that one should never correct an enemy when he, or she, is making a bad mistake. I regard Sunak and Truss, that is, both the current Tory candidates for the post of UK PM, as being my enemies.

However, that advice (about allowing an enemy to make mistakes), has a built-in assumption which in this case, does not apply. That assumption is that if that enemy is allowed to persist, he or she, and those who are making the same mistake, will be the only people who will suffer the consequences. Not so. If these two are allowed to continue everyone in the world will suffer, very badly indeed. In which case, we have a duty to speak out, even if we know that those enemies will pay scant attention.

Sunak in particular has recently emphasized the “immorality” of leaving a burden of debt to be paid off by our grandchildren and their descendants. Quite so. I agree completely. But I also think that the same applies (with knobs on) to the idea – indeed the express intention – of leaving to those same descendants (and to everyone else) a world which has an uninhabitable climate.

In a recently published book – Hothouse Earth – its author, Bill McGuire, has argued that the degeneration of our climate has already passed the point of no return. He may well be correct. But that does not relieve us of the responsibility to do what we can to ameliorate the harm that we are currently doing – which action has now become a moral imperative. I regard the fact that both these candidates have chosen to omit any mention of the climate problem from their self-promotion activities as constituting absolute proof of their lack of qualifications for the job they seek (and for the total stupidity of their supporters).

Hugh Noble

Appin

THE letter from your reader Brian Kelly intrigued me as we had similar experiences but with different outcomes (Letters, July 30).

After ten years working in a book and stationery business, I came to Scotland in 1965 to do a seven-month course in a Government Training Centre at Townhill in Dumfermline. Set up by the Labour government, there were centres located all over the UK offering training in dozens of trades. They even paid for a trainee’s accommodation, lunch in the centre’s canteen and a modest weekly wage. One of the instructors said that the few months training at the centre was more comprehensive than a 5-year apprenticeship.

So, what became of these centres which had set thousands off on a new career? Well, like much else of value, they were killed off in the early 80s by the callous Thatcher government, to be replaced by an “agency” which of course, like anything Thatcher laid her malign hand on, charged for its services.

My current fear is that the compassionless Conservatives of today are stealthily throttling another great Labour construct of the 1945 government – the NHS. It worries me that too many Scots think that as the Scottish NHS is quite separate from the rest of the UK, that it is safe. It’s not. I want the youngsters of today to benefit from the same opportunities I had in the 1960s and ‘70s, in a wealthy Scotland. Support for indy should be at 60% minimum now; are we still suffering from the Scottish Cringe?

Richard Walthew

Duns