PARENTS across the land are worried sick that their children are being bullied, leading to serious mental health problems, self-harm and even suicide. Politicians like Ruth Davidson have even come out confessing that they were bullied and they all agree that we must have a national strategy, and changes in the law to stop the bullies. None of us would disagree with that, you would think. Then it is revealed that the Speaker of the UK Parliament is not only a big bully, but that as he is in charge of such matters in our parliament, he is able to decide not to do anything about it, until it suits him, and no doubt his pension, to stay in post until he chooses to leave ("Bercow hints at summer exit amid clamour for him to go now", The Herald, October 17). The reason? We need his special talents to guide Parliament through the Brexit chaos. Aye, right.

Every day we see on television or read in the newspapers, the worst possible examples of powerful men, and yes they are all men, grossly misusing their power to bully others, in order to boost their puny ego’s and get their way.

We see Donald Trump taking his weekends off to campaign for the mid-term elections, strutting inanely around the stage, lauding a politician who floored a journalist, then adds insult to injury, once the laugh’s die down, by saying “that’s my kind of man,” someone who can floor a man, like I can. If ever we needed the evidence that Mr Trump is not fit to be President we had it there. What a horrendous example to his own teenage son, let alone others across the world.

The bullying Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has filled the media with the horror stories of his 15 man hit-squad killing a journalist who dared to criticise him.

The North Korean president had his brother killed. The diminutive President Putin gets others do his dirty work of poisoning those he doesn’t like and blames our security services.

What kind of role model are these powerful men portraying to our children and young people? They all exhibit the same problem of all bullies from the playground to presidencies. They are not strong men, they are the weakest of men, who do not have the courage to do the job themselves, who cannot win an argument by their moral courage or superior intellect, so have to turn to violence to get their way. How pathetic is that?

Mr Trump has made it very clear that he likes bullies and that he will do nothing about his fellow bully the Saudi Crown Prince, because he does not want to miss a chance for a profit of $100 billion that America first will gain for selling arms to the Saudis.

The UK Government is no better, because it too makes billions from selling arms to despots like the Crown Prince.

So our children and young people are left with no hope of bullying stopping anytime soon. They will just have to get used to the fact that yes, in this world, the bullies do seem to win, always.

Max Cruickshank,

117 Ascot Court, Glasgow.

IT would not require a Hercule Poirot to come to the conclusion that the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi could be anything but a state-sponsored malfeasance.

The outright denial of the act, followed by meandering versions of events, indicate a Saudi leadership belatedly coming to realise that the murder of Khashoggi appears to matter to the international community.

However, despite the alleged concern professed by the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the UK in the name of the "values" of international law, trade links and the exchange of mutually beneficial services will doubtless continue as before.

Saudi Arabia will persist with its indiscriminate bombing of Yemen with weaponry supplied by our own government, regardless of the cost in human lives or the so-called values of international law. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will persist in his contempt for human rights domestically as well as in international matters in the draconian crushing of internal opponents and intolerance to the civil liberties of his people.

President Trump, no supporter of journalists himself, quixotically criticised the actual murder of Mr Khashoggi, whilst praising the Saudi leadership. He, openly, and with a shrug of his shoulders, admitted that the United States needs a strong Saudi presence in the Middle East as a check on possible Iranian expansion.

Ultimately it matters little what the representatives of our Western democracies say in public. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman knows that these are token gestures that will be met with token responses.

As Robin Cook discovered, there is no room for ethics or morality in foreign policy, only self-interest. Some countries and individuals are beyond international law.

Owen Kelly,

8 Dunvegan Drive, Stirling.

I NOTE with interest the increasing opprobrium being heaped upon the Saudi government in connection with the violent death of Jamal Khashoggi. Both our own Jeremy Hunt and the American government threaten sanctions against Saudi Arabia; these sanctions will, due to our own self-interest, apparently fall short of restricting arms exports.

While the death of any one person in such circumstances is to be regretted, the western governments have not raised the same level of concern over the multiple deaths of children which occurred in Yemen, using Saudi weapons, provided by those same western countries.

Is there no limit to the hypocrisy of our political masters where such matters are concerned?

Alexander Farr,

21 Caplethill Road, Barrhead.