THE views of Dr Miro Griffiths, drawing upon personal and professional experiences, are clearly worthy of our attention and respect ("‘Assisted dying’ Bill can never be made safe", The Herald, October 11). His case for opposing the proposed legislation is well-made and powerful. His description is particularly noteworthy with regard to how in other countries where the practice is allowed, the initial built-in safeguards have been relaxed subsequently in various ways.

On the other hand, I have also found the descriptions of the anguish and helplessness of those with family members stricken with life-threatening conditions both moving and persuasive. One is left with the feeling that there is unlikely to be any outcome to the current legislative process in Scotland which will satisfy both sides of the argument.

With that background one is tempted to suggest the holding of a referendum on such a vital matter, preceded by a prolonged period for debate and the distribution of relevant information. Let the people decide.

Ian W Thomson, Lenzie.

Writing a few wrongs

TIM Flinn (Letters, October 11) may know a thing or two about languages, but I’m afraid he doesn’t know much about alphabetic writing. The principle of a writing system in which each symbol represents a specific speech sound was invented by the Greeks, and later adopted by the Romans. Since the sound system of Latin was not the same as that of Greek, the Romans altered the Greek alphabet, discarding some letters and changing the sound-values of others. Every language now written with the Roman alphabet has followed precisely this course, modifying and adapting it for its own particular needs. The Scandinavian languages have three new vowel letters, following Z in the alphabet as they use it; Polish has no fewer than nine extra letters formed by adding accents or other modifications to existing characters.

Gaelic is a particularly interesting case in point, since the Irish were the first people to adopt the Roman alphabet and the continuous history of Old Irish and its modern descendants shows how their spellings have been altered over the centuries to keep pace with changes in the language. Modern Gaelic orthography is in fact well suited to its sounds, and represents them much more consistently than those of English or French are represented by their respective orthographies. Mr Flinn seems to think the sound-to-letter relationships of English should be applied in Gaelic: he might as well be indignant that the German word for “friend” is not written as “froint”, or the French word for “bird” as “wuzzoh”. And what could be more ridiculous than to hold English orthography up as any kind of model, when it allows for such things as “knight” spelt as it was pronounced a thousand years ago?

All power to Mr Flinn in his efforts to learn Gaelic. As he progresses, I’m sure he will come to realise that in the context of its entire historical development, the spelling system is much more sensible than he currently believes.

Derrick McClure, Aberdeen.

• IN his exposition on the absurdity of written Gaelic, Tim Flinn (Letters, October 11) asks why Shivon is spelled Siobhan.

He may as well ask why Cholmondley is pronounced Chumley and Beauchamp pronounced Beecham.

It must be 75 years since my teacher of English wrote Beauchamp on the blackboard and asked for a suggested pronunciation.

David Miller, Milngavie.

Read more: Why does written Gaelic have to be so patently absurd?

Anwar has got it all wrong

I HAVE commented previously on Aamer Anwar, the ubiquitous human rights lawyer, and on his extensive client list and obvious ability in his field. I was therefore looking forward with anticipation to his new documentary series The Firm to see what went on behind the scenes.

I am disappointed to say that I agree with Alison Rowat’s review of the first episode ("Suits you, sir, but Anwar’s delivery is over the top", The Herald, October 2) and in fact I turned off well before the end. We don’t do this self-aggrandisement thing in Scotland and Mr Anwar of all people should have been able to read the room before committing this huge error of judgment.

I still accept that he is a first-rate lawyer and I would probably want him on my side but I think he should stick to the practice of law and dial down the Harvey Spector.

As a matter of interest, when I turned Mr Anwar off, I switched to Beckham on Netflix. Now that’s how these things should be done.

Keith Swinley, Ayr.

Ditching the surveyors

PAUL McPhail (Letters, October 10) states that the City of Glasgow roads department required a surveyor to make a visit to confirm that roadside drains were indeed blocked after he reported four blocked roadside drains and that their clearance would take place at least two months after the surveyor’s report had been submitted.

In the school summer holidays I worked with the maintenance squad of Ayrshire County Council’s Highways Department from their howff under the Co-operative Hall in Beith. Our gaffer prioritised and organised our work which included the routine maintenance, in summer months, of roadside gutters, gullies and sievers. We shovelled accumulated gravel and silt from the roadsides and used scoops to empty gravel and silt from the sievers on to well-drained parts of the verges. At no time did our gaffer ever refer to the need for a surveyor’s report to justify essential routine seasonal maintenance jobs, nor did I ever see such a surveyor during my time there.

If that system of devolving responsibility of organising routine maintenance by manual labour alone, which required no supplies or materials other than the tools of the job, worked, then I wonder what benefits and savings are being made today by the introduction of a well-paid surveyor into the annual maintenance schedule?

(I recall one day when we were clearing gravel and gravel from Kings Road in Beith the squad stopped for a fag break on a bridge by Kilbirnie Loch, but as I didn’t smoke I carried on shovelling. It was only when I noticed that they were lighting their second cigarettes that I sauntered back to join them. The gaffer said that they had become really interested to see how far into Renfrewshire I might shovel my way.)

Stuart Swanston, Edinburgh.