Low turnout is a damning indictment of our political system
Perhaps it is fitting that democracy finally died in the UK on a Black Friday the 13th. It is hugely significant that at a time when the country is in recession, is fighting an unpopular war, is bankrupt due to politicians supporting a corrupt banking industry and we have a significant number of MPs who are proven to be untrustworthy that almost 70% of the electorate did not register a vote.
It can no longer be denied or ignored that the electorate is progressively turning its back on our so-called democratic system. I believe it is an indication of the disenfranchisement of the electorate by a system that increasingly ignores their wishes and serves them poorly.
After 12 years of a Labour administration that the founder members of the original Labour Party would not recognise and which, by its own statistics, has made the rich richer and the poor poorer, the electorate is left with no real choice. The unwelcome rise of the BNP and the whiff of vote-tampering are further symptoms of a system in terminal failure.
I often speculate what response would be elicited if there was an option on the ballot paper for none of the above and we were offered a chance to register a vote against the system in its entirety. It would get my complete and unequivocal support.
David J Crawford, Glasgow.
Commenting on the Glasgow North East by-election, BBC political editor Michael Crick quoted a local resident telling him that “if Labour put up a donkey they would vote for him here”. That may have tickled Mr Crick but, based on previous election results in this and some other Glasgow and neighbouring constituencies, the assertion comes as no surprise to many of us in this part of the world.
This time Labour did put up a credible candidate, with the kudos of having been born and brought up in the constituency and still living there (when he is not lecturing in London). But he was wrong to claim that Thursday’s result was “a great endorsement for Gordon Brown and the Labour government”. The government and its disastrous record on the economic and banking crisis, the recession, Iraq and Afghanistan were hardly mentioned and had little bearing on the result.
Instead, Labour again waged a dirty tricks campaign similar to its success last year in Glenrothes. Then it was based on lies about huge increases in home care charges to be imposed by an SNP council, and this time on claims that the SNP government is “ripping off Glasgow”, which not only is untrue but has nothing to do with a Westminster election. Yet the SNP had learned no lessons and was unprepared for the attack.
John Swinney must now regret timing the cancellation of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link (Garl) in his pre-budget speech a few weeks ago, even though it was never cost-effective. With a Glasgow by-election pending, this political naivety proved a major contributory factor to the result.
If Alex Salmond hopes to win 20 SNP seats or anything like that number at next year’s General Election, he and his party will have to learn to combat underhand political tactics and take the war to their opponents. Merely demolishing Iain Gray at the weekly FMQ pillow-fight at Holyrood will not be enough.
Iain A D Mann, Glasgow.
Congratulations to Willie Bain on his stunning victory in Glasgow North East. When he gets a moment, perhaps he and his Labour colleagues might explain what was the thinking behind the monstering of Edinburgh during the election campaign? Now, it’s quite legitimate to attack the SNP and its policies but what was the game plan behind associating Edinburgh with the SNP and using it as a stick?
It doesn’t seem all that long ago that we had the lord provosts of both cities promising to work closely with each other for the advancement of all, and now this.
It was also disappointing that Iain Gray joined in the “Glasgow ripped off by Edinburgh (SNP)” campaign line and that the capital’s own Labour MPs and MSP saw fit to say nothing about the inference behind it. Which leads me to ask, in the budget cuts that lie ahead for Scotland, is Glasgow now going to be exempt? Does a vote for Labour anywhere in Scotland now mean that Glasgow is put first, while the rest of us suffer cuts in services? I think we should be told.
It is of special interest to me as my MP is one Alistair Darling, who will shortly be coming round looking for votes. If, as it looks, Labour has become an anti-Edinburgh party, then he can whistle for it and I’ll enjoy bending the ears of the canvassers when they chap the door.
George Malone, Edinburgh.
Israel is entitled to maintain its security wall in the face of unremitting and sustained threats to citizens
David Pratt (“Berlin Wall is gone but Israel’s inhumane barrier still stands”, The Herald, November 13) wilfully misleads your readers as to the nature of the Berlin Wall as opposed to Israel’s security barrier. The former was created forcibly to stop East German citizens from reaching freedom, the latter is to protect Israel’s civilians from Palestinian terror. It has proved its usefulness by contributing to a drastic reduction in Israeli fatalities, something your correspondent ignores – as well
as the many other walls recently erected all over the world, such as the Saudi-Yemeni, the Moroccan and the US-Mexico.
The concrete Berlin Wall is 96 miles long, whereas the flimsy Israeli fence is 436 miles long, of which less than 3% is concrete, a mere 12 miles.
The correspondent’s use of the word ghetto is an affront to the innocent victims of the Nazis who never raised a weapon against Germany or contested its right to exist. They were incarcerated in the ghetto just because they were Jews. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and numerous other terror groups, on the other hand, have openly declared their aim of creating a pan-Islamic Middle East in which Israel will be obliterated.
The author laments the “scant mention of Israel’s illegal separation wall” in the media. The reason is that there is no connection between the two. Nobody in their right mind sees any similarity except the liberal lefties with their boring leitmotif of “land grab”. When Egypt and Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel they got their lands back. The same will happen with the Palestinians who on many
occasions have received generous offers from Israel and decided it is best to reject them. They must first desist from their favourite hobby of slaughtering one another, and accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
A Soudry, Glasgow.
I congratulate David Pratt for having the courage to say in print that which is said by many people around the country. It takes personal courage to speak out in public against Israel.
Most American politicians refuse to do so because, they admit, it will cost them their jobs. That is why, bizarrely in the land of the free and the home of the brave, the US Congress just voted to condemn the Goldstone Report by a vote of 344-24. There is even a joke in the Middle East that there are three occupied territories: the West Bank, Gaza and the US.
Also, David Pratt mentions appeasement, taken since 1938 to be a derogatory term. Yet, ironically, there is no country in the modern age more appeased than Israel for, should any person or country defy it or its supporters, its propaganda and PR machine will be turned against them. Regular readers of The Herald will know what I mean.
So well done, David; Goliath is on his way.
Paul Scott, Edinburgh.
We have recently returned from a village on the West Bank and appreciated David Pratt’s timely piece about the Israeli wall. Having visited Berlin in 1962, nine months after that wall was built, I was chillingly reminded of this when I passed through the concrete barrier to Jerusalem.
An elderly Palestinian lady in front of us was weeping as she was prevented from visiting her relatives, and even a group with American passports was turned away because two of them had North African names. Chalked significantly on that stretch of the wall was the phrase “one wall – two prisons” since there is a real sense in which it is those who perpetrate inhumane practices who are imprisoned in their inhumanity. Time and again we learned of farmers being unable to reach the olive groves which had been in their families for generations for no other reason than they bordered the new and expanding illegal settlements on land confiscated from them.
We saw UN maps showing the proposed extension of the wall which would cut off villages from their only source of income. Desmond Tutu rightly said to Palestinians that their situation was worse than that suffered by his people under apartheid. The Hebrew prophet Isaiah said it thousands of years ago when he wrote: “Woe betide those who add house to house and join field to field until everyone else is displaced and you are left as sole inhabitants of the countryside”(5.8).
Powerful nations which have done so much to support Israel must be called on to take action to stop what can only be described as ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
Rev Iain Whyte and Rev Isabel Whyte, North Queensferry.
Anthem competition
I am disappointed that Richard McHarg’s expressive letter (“An anthem for the nation”, November 12) did not elicit a wider response than a single jocular and clever reply from David Carvel.
There was no lack of enthusiasm on the subject when The Herald sponsored a Scottish anthem competition back in 1999 which drew no fewer than 239 entries. There must have been many composed since then, none of which has had the opportunity to be presented and judged for potential worth.
I am certain that if a radio programme was to be initiated, in which a large selection of formidable entries was to be presented to a voting public, followed by the best being professionally orchestrated and sung on television, something spectacular might be forthcoming. Such programmes would be well supported.
Would that the Scots possessed a national anthem comparable to that noble and inspiring Welsh patriotic song, Land of My Fathers, an anthem which would quicken the pulse and raise the hackles, attributes which all of the present contenders sadly fail to generate.
Frederick Jenkins, Kippen.
Reformation had a malign influence on education
It is a pity Dr J A Begg spoils an otherwise erudite letter (November 11) by rehashing the myth of “a Kirk which built a school in every parish”.
The widely-held belief that elementary education was improved by the Reformation is belied by records of the 60 years following the event.
In 1627, two generations after the decree which suppressed Catholicism, three generations after the general attack on Catholic institutions had begun, central government set up a commission to inquire into the state of the various parishes [Reports on the state of various Parishes in Scotland 1627; printed for the Maitland Club, 1835].
Forty-nine of these returns have survived. In 12 cases, the existence of a school was recorded; in nine of these, there was no endowment for it; in 30, it was recorded that no school existed.
In the case of Logie in Stirlingshire, the direct malign result of the Reformation was remembered and set down: “There is at the said Kirk an English school but in respect of the multitude of people it is requisite there should be a better provision for a grammar school as there was of old, but it decayed by reason it has no provision at all, except a house and yard which now is in feu by the king to James Forrester of the Logie since the Reformation.”
The return shows these laments represent the real state of affairs, and little or no education was being given to children in these parishes.
Again and again, the elders of the Kirk, men whose forefathers had perhaps been bailiffs of monastic estates and had been accustomed to the intricacies of medieval accounts, who were the official witnesses of these returns, have to record their witness by making a mark “without touching the pen of James Sandelands notary because we cannot write”.
In destroying Catholicism, which had nurtured Scotland so long, the Calvinists uprooted institutions and traditions that they may well have later desired to see revived.
Robert Burns received elementary education from his father, not from the Kirk. We had to wait until Victorian times, and the Education (Scotland) Act of 1872, before we saw free compulsory elementary education in Scotland.
Brian Quail, Glasgow.
Sympathy over letter
Perhaps for the first time, I have felt sympathy for Gordon Brown. His letter sent to Jacqui Janes was without doubt heartfelt and the spelling, grammar and punctuation should have been irrelevant. Was this letter written in a hurry? Was the Prime Minister tired? Was his attention distracted at the time of writing? All these are acceptable in a personal letter.
I teach college students that letters divide into two categories: formal and informal. This was an informal letter in which content should have remained
private. The argument that the letter should have been checked by a press secretary before sending misses the
point. Mr Brown had never met Mrs Janes or previously known of her. Thus, making a mistake in her name is completely excusable.
Tory leader David Cameron’s comments are hypocritical. I wrote to him 10 months ago explaining that my new son had almost died of strep B infection and saying I wanted to see screening of pregnant women six weeks before birth. I neither received a response nor an acknowledgement. I did, however, receive a prompt and concise response from the very conscientious Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish Health Secretary. My question is: did my letter even get to Mr Cameron or did some member of his staff consider it irrelevant?
Mrs Janes, in her immediate grief, has failed to understand the context in which this letter was written, which is a great pity as it should have been special and conveyed mutual sorrow.
Caroline Stevenson, Wishaw.
Unfair to Sir Alex
I read with contempt Iain A D Mann’s personal attack on Sir Alex Ferguson (Letters November 11).
For Sir Alex, each day starts at 7am at Manchester United’s ground. After every game, he entertains businessmen and supporters until late. The last time I was in his company, he was still at Old Trafford at 11.45pm, and then had to catch the first flight the following morning to Aberdeen to attend a commemorative service for a soldier who had died.
He works tirelessly for numerous charities: The Pearce Institute, Boys’ Brigade, Preshal Trust, Harmony Row FC, Drumchapel FC, Govan Initiative, Contact Theatre and Muscular Dystrophy, to name but a few. He also founded the
Elizabeth Hardie Ferguson Charitable Trust Fund which gives money to charities all over the UK.
I could fill a full Letters page with the list of charities he supports and with details of the millions of pounds he has raised and given away to charity and disadvantaged people.
Mr Mann’s comments misplaced, negative and ill-informed.
James Mortimer, Glasgow.
