I CONGRATULATE The Herald for sustaining its policy of bringing the scandal of poverty to its readers’ attention.
I am prompted to write once more following the recent articles “Revealed: The rising death rate among the poorest in society” (news, November 9), “Must poverty always be part of life’s rich tapestry? (Robert McNeil, Herald Magazine, November 7) and “Austerity cuts led to ‘shameful’ fall in life expectancy for Scots” (news, November 10).
There has been only one reaction to these stories in your Letters Pages, that being from Doug Maughan (November 10).
I am not surprised that the reaction is so limited. In the news story of November 9 the United Nations is quoted as saying that “poverty is a political choice”. Your Conservative readers, having made that choice, are hardly in a position to draw further attention to the issue. In fact I quote to these Conservatives the words of Mr McNeil: “You need to search your conscience about staying silent or even condoning current treatment of the poor”.
I am however disappointed that the response my own faith community, the Church of Scotland, has been non-existent. After all, in word and deed, Jesus returned repeatedly to the plight of the poor whose poverty he considered to be the consequence of the abuse of power and for which political stance he was condemned to death.
John Milne, Uddingston.
TURNING UP TRUMPS
OUR Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has invited the US President-elect, Joe Biden, to visit Glasgow next year for the COP26 climate conference. Can't help wondering where President-elect Biden will stay. Could he follow the current President and stay at Trump Turnberry?
Henry B McColl, Cumbernauld.
SAY CHEESE
WHILST usually having better things to do than stand in the supermarket where I do my weekly shop, counting the varieties of cheese on offer, it was nevertheless seeing the photograph of General De Gaulle during his 1942 visit to Glasgow ("Those were the days", The Herald, November 10) that brought cheese to mind, and his remark "How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?"
He also said, of politicians: "Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word."
The General was probably right on both counts. Incidentally, how many varieties of cheese are now available in Scotland and should First Minister Sturgeon be out and about casting her eye over the cheese counters?
Thelma Edwards, Kelso.
MULTIPLE CHOICE
MAY another so and so congratulate Allan C Steele (Letters, November 11) on his liking of the word "so" in its capacity to bring brevity to a statement, and hope that his signing off with a salutary "so long" is not indicative of the ending of so many so interesting contributions to your pages.
An added benefit is that I have learned the meaning of polysemous, the character of a word to have multiple meanings. Amen, or so be it.
David Miller, Milngavie.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel