Sometimes the timing of events can be interesting.
I refer to the final PMQs, not only for this parliamentary session, but for Sir Keir Starmer.
Also of interest, this session’s final Scottish Questions at Westminster proceeded PMQs. Less than a month ago Labour backbenchers were calling for the PM to resign: “He must go!” None of this was evident in the recent PMQs.
Instead, there was praise and thanks in bucket-loads from those very backbenches. What hypocrisy, and a clear warning for the PM in waiting… Turning to Scottish Questions, Pamela Nash the Labour MP for Motherwell, Wishaw and Carluke, questioned the SNP Scottish Government’s support for our rural economy.
In particular our farming community. Yet no government has inflicted more damage to the long-term existence and sustainability of our farming communities, with their damaging farm inheritance tax. Yes, there was a slight U-turn by this Labour Government, after much protest from farmers. However, our rural communities are affected.
And what about those in rural communities who have paid the hefty price of the UK government’s soaring energy costs, and aren’t connected to the national grid, and use heating oil / LPG (Liquified Petroleum Gas)?
Labour at Westminster, who have full powers over energy policy and cost, gave a meagre £200 per household, in an attempt to ease the huge increase in fuel costs. Yet the SNP Scottish Government mitigated once again, and provided a further £300 per household.
So, no lessons about our rural community from Labour at Westminster, please.
Catriona C Clark, Falkirk.
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Capital punishment is no deterrence
Alan Fitzpatrick suggests capital punishment should be re-introduced as deterrence against murder (Letters, July 15).
He makes no reference to homicide rates (which include murder and culpable homicide) falling already.
The latest Scottish Government statistical report, ‘Homicide in Scotland 2024/25’, states: “In 2024-25, there were 45 victims of homicide, 12 fewer than in 2023-24. The number of homicide victims in 2024-25 was the lowest since comparable records began in 1976.
The number of homicide victims has shown a downward trend since 2005-06.” The question, then, is in what way would capital punishment lower murder rates even further?
I suggest not at all. The report makes clear that homicides most often occur where the victim and attacker are known to each other.
Where the most common reasons for killing are fight or quarrel, rage or fury or feud or faction rivalry.
And the most common weapon used was a sharp instrument, such as a knife. Although statistics on this point are incomplete, the killer was often under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs.
Given these facts, is Mr Fitzpatrick suggesting the would-be killer will objectively consider the consequences of their actions, and be deterred from killing because of capital punishment?
Even if that is what he’s suggesting, he says nothing about wrongful conviction.
Do we simply accept that some innocent people will be judicially killed, and consider that the overall effect of deterrence is worth these deaths?
For me, the prospect of a wrongful conviction and death rules out any prospect of re-introducing capital punishment.
As an alternative, Mr Fitzpatrick suggests murderers should face a mandatory life in prison, “with no question of the state wasting time and effort in trying to rehabilitate them.”
Leaving aside the extent to which this is actually a deterrence, there’s the obvious point of cost. The homicide report above confirms that the highest rates of homicide are committed by males aged between 16 and 42, with the median age being 33.
The current life expectancy of males is 81 for females, and 77 for males.
The average cost of imprisonment (based on 2023/24 figures) is £47,000 a year. The taxpayer is therefore going to have pay millions more to keep murderers in prison, but to what end? Murderers are the least likely to re-offend.
Locking them up until they die therefore serves no purpose. Imprisoning without any prospect of release, especially where, as Mr Fitzpatrick suggests, murderers are “held in a unique strict regime prison, with only the bare humanitarian minimum of facilities and comforts” will only lead to prisoners becoming uncooperative and possibly violent to staff.
We need only look at the reasons for introducing the Special Unit at Barlinnie Prison in the 1970s to understand the need to move from harsh, restrictive prison regimes.
Imposing capital punishment, or a whole life sentence on a murderer, will not deter a would-be murderer from killing.
David Logan, Milngavie.
Forging a future means independence
Union supporters seem stuck in the past, while Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales are looking forward.
The internet has made it easy for retrophiles, fans of the past, to find each other and rebuild their identities around what has gone.
Recent studies show retrophiles use history to reconstruct who they are, often through consumption and acquisition of symbols from a bygone era.
This fits the modern unionist case perfectly. Much of the ‘Better Together’ argument is retrophilia dressed up as politics.
Clinging to empire, the pound and Westminster as they existed decades ago. It is nostalgia for a UK that no longer exists, a late capitalist culture selling the past back to us.
But nations move on. Scotland voted to remain in the EU, rejected austerity, and consistently polls very high for self-determination. Northern Ireland’s demographics and the Protocol debate point the same way.
Wales is debating its constitutional future more openly than ever. The 21st century is about small, nimble, democratic nations working together as equals. Independence for Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales isn’t about rejecting our shared history.
It is about accepting that the future won’t look like 1945, 1979, or even 2014. Unionism is living in the past.
The future is independence.
Herbert Petrie, Aberdeen.
Absurd word
I am somewhat amused to hear on a repeated basis SNP Ministers using the new in-word ‘pace’ to describe the many plans of the Scottish government.
Everything now in Scotland - be it the NHS, our education system or the economy - is being fixed by the SNP at pace.
The big problem is that because of the relative speed of the SNP, pace can only be described as snail-like, with progress so slow that it is almost at ‘standing pace’.
Dennis Forbes Grattan, Bucksburn, Aberdeen.
A history lesson for Trump
Around 547 BCE Pythia, the Delphi Oracle was consulted by Croesus, the wealthy king of Lydia, seeking advice about a planned campaign against the Persian Empire.
Pythia reportedly answered: “You will destroy a great empire.” He presumed it would be the Persian empire, only instead to discover he had destroyed his own.
Fast forward to modern times, and the recent ongoing campaign of the United States against Iran, the successor nation to the ancient Persian empire, led by President Donald J. Trump, who some regard as a modern Croesus.
It is not known who President Trump consulted before he attacked Iran.
Clearly it was not the Oracle at Delphi. The question is, will the result be any different for him than it was for Croesus?
The jury is out.
Elizabeth Marshall, Edinburgh.
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