Herald on Sunday letters: what readers are talking about this week

That policy should be taken on board Scotland wide by the Scottish government, with new rules banning the sale of any non-paper toilet products – cotton buds and toilet wipes, for example. That ban would cost little to enforce with spot checks by a small band of paired travelling inspectors armed with a camera and enforcement notices.

George Dale

Beith

The beauty of life next to water

In Vicky Allan's article on our affinity to our seas and rivers, I can attest that when she says we feel good next to water – a "blue mind" – she speaks for me. Having been brought up in my early years in Lanarkshire, our annual holidays were in places such as Saltcoats, Dunoon or Helensburgh. At 11 I was transplanted to Montrose where the long sandy beaches and the rivers North and South Esk became my playground.

Later in life I worked across America and Canada and I can confirm that when I was based in the Mid West, St Louis, It felt strange to be so far from the oceans. A move to Providence, Rhode Island, was a welcome relief and much time was spent in her quaint coastal resorts and beautiful beaches.

As I write this in my retirement my wife and our dogs are waiting impatiently for me, as once more Montrose beach is calling.

Ian M Forrest

Laurencekirk

Two sides to this story

I refer to your article (Herald on Sunday, December 29) concerning the killing of beech trees on Inchtavannach Island.

I am no apologist for SNH, but I deplore the attitude of Luss Estates in this matter.

Inchtavannach Island is an area of native Atlantic oak woodland habitat within a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) designated for that habitat. The Atlantic oak woodland there had been invaded, and would in time have been destroyed, by invasive beech trees.

Some of the passages in the Herald article reek of ignorance about native woodland management that might have been forgivable fifty years ago but should have no place in any present considerations of how to rescue and enhance such native woodlands.

The article claims, "Inchtavannach island [...] is now littered with rotting trunks and dead branches, while other trees have been left to decay where they stand." Good. That is what native woodlands should be like, with an abundance of standing and fallen deadwood to nurture and sustain invertebrates and fungi. Native woodlands are not, and should not be, tidy gardens if they are to sustain our diminishing biodiversity.

My only criticism of SNH is that they don't now forcefully tell Sir Malcolm Colquhoun, Laird of Luss Estates, to take a running jump. Instead, public money is apparently to be spent removing some of the dead wood from the island, thus causing real ecological damage, whilst pandering to the misguided emotions of someone who appears not to understand the natural heritage value of the land he owns.

Roy Turnbull

Nethy Bridge

Time to go to war on VAR

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with VAR in football. What looks like a way of eliminating doubt over controversial moments during a game, has been shown with its introduction in England to be a nit-picking and hair-splitting exercise

Football is a free-flowing game which depends for its excitement and interest on its movement on the pitch.

That is what gets the crowd going, bringing the fans' passion to the fore.

VAR should be a broad brush rather than a fine toothcomb, which results in long delays as an incident is looked at from many different angles to get to the truth.

Long delays, created by resorting to video replays, stifle the passion of the crowd and break the concentration of the players ... It helps to kill the atmosphere which gives the game its excitement.

VAR should come into the equation in showing what the linespersons and the referees witnessed from their angles at the times of the incidents.

If those angles confirm the judgments of the officials at the time, then their decisions should be upheld and, where they show a wrong decision was made, the decision should be overruled.

Referees need their place in the game to be respected by allowing this discretionary practice as outlined. Otherwise they are only as good as the video replays which take their place.

Referees have to make their decisions on the basis of what they see from the angle they view the incidents and this is a spur-of-the-moment situation, which their linespersons can help them with, all being miked up.

There should not be a scrutiny of the minutiae allowing a decision to be overturned on a hair breadth's view of an incident.

The way VAR has been used in England makes a mockery of the whole procedure and dampens the enthusiasm of both players and spectators alike.

Digital technology should enhance the game rather than putting it into a straitjacket.

Rangers would do well to reconsider their demand for the use of VAR, as operated south of the Border, in the Scottish game – a demand which looks as though it was made in the heat of the moment

Denis Bruce

Bishopbriggs

Disgust over gong

Nothing illustrates why we reject toxic Tory domination in Scotland better then the decision to reward the useless, failed former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith for his shocking attacks on the poorest people in Britain.

Following the greed of the Tory bankers which led to the financial crisis and the decade of Tory austerity, the decade of nasty Tory governments have achieved two main economic targets. Firstly of course they doled out a huge tax handout to the bankers and hedge fun managers who both largely caused the crisis and also largely fund the Tory party. Secondly they then blamed the poor, sick and disabled for being “scroungers” and successfully set about making them poorer and sicker by making massive cuts to the NHS and the welfare state. These cuts were organised with great relish by Iain Duncan Smith. The United Nations described the consequences of his attacks on the poor as “tragic”.

All the people now living in dire poverty and all the mentally ill and disabled people thrown into misery and destitution by the nasty Tories are probably beyond caring. But for the rest of us the decision to bung Duncan Smith a knighthood is as odious as it is unsurprising, given the appalling Tory record of looking after their own at everyone else’s expense.

K Heath

Cortachy, Kirriemuir

English might want shot of us

ACCORDING to Andy Sloan (Letters, December 29) he thinks it would further the SNP cause to hold the next “independence” march in London to ensure Boris gets the “message”. He may have a moot point when one considers that more and more of our English neighbours are fed up subsidising our free prescriptions, student tuition fees and much more when at the same time being subjected to a constant barrage of grievances by Nicola Sturgeon.

Indeed he could well find the numbers attending such a march swell over tenfold by English supporters urging the Scots to leave – minus the credit card of course.

Ian Lakin

Milltimber, Aberdeen

Fix our ruined roads

Driving in the south side of our city of Glasgow is a nightmare. Nowhere else in the UK has so many of the deepest and largest potholes. It is a credit to the Scottish Government to possess the best obstacle course in the UK and possibly the Third World.

I wonder why.

Our roads are not kept in good repair and we are forced to swerve to miss the holes that damage our cars.

When I drive south it is amazing to cross the border from our Third World and witness new smooth roads.

I assume our glorious leader doesn't drive a car.

Surely we don't have to put up with this.

I've got an idea. Let's actually spend some of our money on road repairs.

John R Slade

Disgruntled civil engineer

Glasgow