HOW does it come to pass that the public pronouncements of some members of the Royal Family receive so much publicity in the media, including those of Prince Harry ("Prince warns over social media dangers", The Herald, April 4)? His Gran, I suppose, is a person of some influence, which helped him in 2018 to become the Duke of Sussex (they had not had one in that part of the south of England for a while), and his wife a Duchess, and also to become the Duke of Dumbarton (Dumbarton could hardly contain its excitement). In fact he lives one of the most privileged lives in the country. It is easy to understand why such a life, with its barrage of awards and shows of deference, could generate a great sense of self-importance. If he has decided to make regular public statements – as I suspect that now looks likely – on various elements of life's rich tapestry, I hope that he does not come over as being as intellectually pretentious as has father sometimes does.
Once again, The Herald has got it about right for pontifications by members of the Royal Family, unlike other parts of the press, in terms of publicity – a small report (quickly read if of interest) at the bottom of page three.
Ian W Thomson,
38 Kirkintilloch Road, Lenzie.
Are men not to have an opinion on abortion?
MAY I say to Ms Gartshore (Letters, April 4) that, If she had recognised the implications of what my letter of April 2 said instead of jumping to conclusions, she would have noticed that it referred to the situations where a woman consents to intimacy and allows herself to become pregnant; 193,000 terminations a year do not come about from rape, the vast majority of terminated pregnancies coming from consensual relationships.
Some will lay the blame on alcohol excess or forgetting to use any one of the multiple contraceptives available today, relying on termination as the ultimate contraceptive.
What happened to Ms Gartshore's relative was totally unacceptable. However, gang rape accounts for a very small number of pregnancies.
It should be open to victims of such offences to have the choice to decide the way forward for them.
As I am sure she will recognise, hard cases make for bad laws.
Am I to infer that because men cannot be mothers that they are not allowed to have an opinion on matters such as abortion?
Denis Bruce,
5 Rannoch Gardens, Bishopbriggs.
Chilling fact about land ice
I WRITE to clarify Ian Rankin’s thoughts on rising sea levels, which he puzzled over (Letters, April 2). He is of course correct that the melting of the ice pack in the Arctic Ocean will have little or no effect on sea levels. Unfortunately, it is not the ice in the Arctic Ocean that is the problem, but the ice sequestered on the land masses of the Antarctic continent and Greenland. When this ice melts it flows to sea; it has nowhere else to go. When geologists and scientists calculate the volume of this ice melt they produce frightening levels of sea level rise. I hope this explanation helps his self-confessed simple engineering mind.
John McKellar,
112 Middleton Street, Alexandria.
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