Facts are facts, but what do they prove?
The sports clubs with the most deaths are bowling clubs. This is not because bowling is dangerous, but because bowlers can play into their eighties and nineties.
Likewise, the fact that one in three Glasgow children have English as a second language merely means that their ethnic family life takes place around parents and grandparents who speak the native tongue at home, so it is the first language they learn.
Once they start schooling, they hear English regularly from classmates and teachers. Thereafter they have two languages.
This fact has nothing to do with recent immigration, unless it suits your politics (“PM brands Farage ‘toxic’ over attack on Glasgow”, The Herald, December 5).
I recall, some forty years ago, a meeting of Glasgow City Council (GCC) officers with residents of a terrace of tenements off Woodlands Road.
These residents were an international group, comprising Scots, Irish, English (the minority), Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese and Kenyans. All Glasgow citizens, and speaking good English. Some with children already at school learning English.
While working for GCC, I did have some language problems with ethnic residents in other parts of Glasgow, but only with elderly people whose English was very limited.
Sometimes their children or grandchildren acted as translators for us. This too was long before talk of immigration problems.
I feel that Nigel Farage is misrepresenting an age-old situation.
On the BBC’s Question Time this week, the Reform UK representative quoted many facts, while providing no worthwhile or humane solutions, thus confirming a lack of constructive policies.
JB Drummond, Kilmarnock.
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Reform UK demand national self-respect
The sanctimonious trio of Sir Keir Starmer, John Swinney and Anas Sarwar have suddenly discovered their inner anti-racism rhetoric.
Not one of them can point to a single Reform UK policy that is actually racist.
It’s the same tired tactic. Smear anyone who questions their immigration failures or challenges their fantasy version of multiculturalism.
Mr Starmer should spare us the theatrics.
This is the same man who warned that Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers” without migration control, before saying he regretted the statement, once it became politically awkward.
Meanwhile, Reform UK is shaped heavily by Zia Yusuf, a Muslim, an economist, and one of the party’s leading strategists.
That alone destroys the lazy caricature being peddled.
Here’s the truth Reform UK’s critics refuse to address.
Multiculturalism only works when the established population feels its identity, values and cohesion are protected, not worn down.
That is the normal expectation in every functioning, truly democratic country.
When people move abroad, they adapt to the host nation. That’s integration, not a controversial concept.
Mr Farage’s position is straightforward. Control immigration, insist on integration, and stop treating Britain’s culture as something disposable.
That’s not racism; it’s a normal national form of self-respect.
Instead of engaging honestly, the old and tired left-wing political class shouts “division” to dodge responsibility.
The public sees through it.
That’s why their attacks are ignored across the political spectrum, creating panic amongst the trio mentioned above.
Ian Lakin, Milltimber, Aberdeen.
Let’s welcome newcomers
The UK Labour government still can’t see it.
Sixty takeaway-delivery riders were found to be working illegally after a very expensive seven day countrywide enforcement blitz (“Dozens of delivery riders are set to be deported”, The Herald, December 5). They now face deportation.
The Home Office highlights the cases of two Chinese nationals, four Bangladeshis and three Indians.
At what cost is this operation to the taxpayer? It’s pathetic on so many counts. These people were working, as most immigrants want to do.
The hospitality, health service and agriculture sectors are crying out for workers. Why can’t a Labour government understand that?
A new exhibition opened at the Hunterian Art Gallery recently: ‘Views of Glasgow: A Window into Communities’.
It reveals how the city has welcomed immigrants.
There’s the story of Stella Reekie (1922-1982), a Church of Scotland deaconess, fluent in Urdu, who had an open home to every nationality, colour, religion.
It became known as the ‘International Flat’ at 20 Glasgow Street.
Meanwhile, Woodlands Community in West Princes Street is doing an incredible job.
It has an anti-racism library and produced the most amazing quilt to support Palestinians, with members spending days chatting, connecting and sewing.
This piece of art should be kept for national posterity.
Andy Stenton, Glasgow.
Visitors not welcome
What has Scotland done to deserve visits from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor in the past week?
Could the answer be ‘afterthought’?
Perhaps the findings of recent opinion polls in Scotland are being absorbed by Labour at Westminster.
Or was it a case of better show face before things get worse for Scottish Labour?
Those answers could all apply to the visit by the PM and Chancellor.
The reason for the visits are nothing more than an exercise in trying to save the fortunes of Scottish Labour, who have sunk without trace in the opinion polls.
I am not sure a visit from the two politicians, who have inflicted so much damage on businesses and individual households, will change the fortunes of the party north of the border.
Scotland has an opportunity it must embrace at the Holyrood Election in 2026.
We can send a clear message to Sir Kier Starmer and Rachel Reeves that their policies are not working in our interest and, in fact, are harming Scotland’s economy.
Catriona C Clark, Banknock, Falkirk.
Conservative party poopers
The Conservative Party will be in a better condition when members who agree with the views and aims of Reform UK have left and joined that party.
The people who insisted on crashing Britain out of Europe, shredding our European citizenship, and shredding the value of the pound are the authors of the Conservative Party’s surreal, sick hangover.
Those remaining must remember Mr Churchill, Mr Macmillan and Mrs Thatcher, and hope to find new leaders and new vision.
Sir John Major can look back on achievements which place him in the list of the greats.
His career folded under the same corrosive attacks that have changed ‘Britain in Europe’ to ‘Britain in crisis’.
Those attacks came from destructive forces inside his party. Perhaps they’re leaving now.
Tim Cox, Switzerland.
Trump’s Fifa award
At last… we now know how to win a peace prize.
Support the aggressor in a war; allow him to prolong the war; then ensure that the terms of a final resolution of the conflict will give him everything he started the war to achieve.
P. Davidson, Falkirk.
Monarchy has essential function
Where to begin with the familiar chestnut roasted by Ruth Marr, regarding her view that Royal pageantry is excessive in a time of crises (Herald Letters, December 5).
The King is constitutional head of state, advised by his government.
The German president pays a visit, the monarchy acts, as the monarchy is obliged to do.
And, yes, we, as a nation, are the richer for it. Ms Marr will no doubt, disagree, as she’s free to do.
Modernised royalty will come, in time. Hopefully, in seriously considered stages.
More than that, we risk great loss.
Brian D Henderson, Battlefield, Glasgow.
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