DOES anyone know why Celtic Football Club is allowed to get away with its supporters displaying hateful banners and chanting at football matches? The latest manifestation has been the hoisting of a banner, during a minute’s applause for our late Queen, which read "If you hate the royal family clap your hands."

I doubt this is illegal – although perhaps Humza Yousaf’s hate crime bill would extend to this kind of thing – and I appreciate that we must accept freedom of speech, however offensive.

But the question that remains is: why does the Scottish Football Association allow this manifestation of hatred to continue without penalising the club? Is it not ashamed of this kind of behaviour?
Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

• IT was disappointing to see on TV on Sunday numbers of Celtic fans at St Mirren displaying their feelings for the royal family in the way they did with their banner. They are entitled to their constitutional opinions and a republican view is a perfectly valid one. I am not sure about it being expressed the way it was in Paisley.

Surely those who wished to stand quietly or take part in the minute’s applause should have been allowed their time to reflect without disruption. Is that not also a human right? Could the demonstrating fans not have simply turned their backs? That would have been a very much more powerful way of expressing themselves. As it was, several Celtic players looked decidedly uncomfortable and the team put on their worst show of the season. And the fans’ display in Europe on the same matter in midweek may cause trouble for their club with Uefa.

Let me say also that at Easter Road on Saturday there were numbers, of both Aberdeen and Hibs fans, booing throughout the minute’s applause; also apparently with a section of Dundee United fans at Ibrox, so this is not simply a Celtic-Rangers thing.

It is time, surely, to find another way to express sympathy in matters like these. Perhaps football stadiums are not the places for displays of anything remotely religious, political or constitutional.
Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Funeral service was so moving

HAVING been hugely impressed that Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth was working until two days before her (thankfully peaceful) death at the age of 96, and been surprisingly touched at various points over the last two weeks, I “lost it” watching today’s funeral service at Westminster Cathedral.

Everything was wonderfully choreographed; the pageantry was magnificent; the singing and music, especially from the choir, was sublime. But it was the lone piper at the end of the service that really that really moved me, surprisingly, as I don’t really like the bagpipes.

Do you think we could draft in the team responsible for the last two weeks’ events to come and run the Kingdom?
Lesley Mackiggan, Glasgow

• I WAS surprised to hear the Skye Boat Song being played as the cortege carried the Queen to St George's Chapel when it commemorates the Jacobite uprising, which challenged the royal family from which the Queen was descended.

I can only assume that the song was chosen because the words "carry the lad that's born to be king" contrasts so vividly with the lass who was born in 1926 without any expectation of being born to be queen.
Sandy Gemmill, Edinburgh

What might have been...

RECENT events, with the passing of the Queen, have not unexpectedly occasioned some discussion with regard to the hereditary monarchy providing the head of state for the UK. It is interesting to reflect upon how exposed to pot luck such an arrangement is.

The succession of Edward VIII did not go according to plan with his abdication in 1936. Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, and Cosmo Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury, were together resolved at the time to oppose Edward having a morganatic marriage

to Mrs Simpson. There has been much speculation concerning the pro-German views of Edward and there was much comment about his visit to Germany with his wife after the abdication when they were pictured meeting with Hitler. One is left to ponder how differently matters may have been shaped had Edward remained on the throne.

One is also tempted to ponder how relaxed the country would be about succession to the throne if Harry had been the first child of Charles and Diana instead of his brother William, now Prince of Wales. Harry once referred to his father and his brother as being "trapped" in the monarchy.

Maybe we are fortunate that Edward decided to get out and that Harry will never get in.
Ian W Thomson, Lenzie

Our first Elizabeth

THIS member of the old Irish de Burgh tribe has a bygone bone to pick with assertions that Scotland never had a previous Queen Elizabeth, as has been stated on these pages.

I am no royalist but perhaps Elizabeth de Burgh, King Robert de Brus's second wife, queen consort and mother of King David II, merits a mention in passing. She disappeared for centuries after her tomb was wrecked and lost during the Reformation. Her coffin was rediscovered in 1917 and re-interred with The Bruce's in Dunfermline Abbey.

History records her as "the captive queen". The couple were separated for eight years when she was imprisoned in England and was returned to her husband in exchange for the Earl of Hereford after Bannockburn.

They were crowned king and queen at Scone in 1306 on the Lia Faill – the legendary black basalt Stone of Destiny which, allegedly, has never left Scotland.

She was a daughter of Ricard de Burgh, baron of Connaught and second earl of Ulster.
Gerry Burke, Strachur, Argyll

What about the unkindness of God?

I RESPECT the right of Michael Veitch (Letters, September 19) to hold whatever belief he has. However, his statement that he observes “the kindness of God” in the death of the late Queen as evidence of the existence of God is somewhat myopic.

He conveniently turns a blind eye to the misery experienced in life by those less fortunate who are sometimes obliged to die a very painful and horrible death at the end of their life. Is that evidence of the “unkindness of God” or perhaps justification to question His existence?

Fortunately we have a medical profession who genuinely can, in most cases, alleviate pain and suffering and hopefully soon, assisted dying for those whom presumably God has decided should contract an excruciatingly painful and terminal illness.
Iain McIntyre, Sauchie

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