The young are missing out through the lamentable fall in BBC standards

Of course there are many excellent programmes, Attenborough’s an obvious example, but like almost all dramas and documentaries it too is marred by the unnecessary, inappropriate, excessively loud and sometimes obliterating “background” music, even when Sir David tells us, sotto voce, to listen to the mating call of an exotic bird in the Indonesian rain forest.

BBC standards do seem to have fallen. We only have to compare Panorama now, often only a half-hour, with the full hour of serious investigation decades ago; and Question Time is now a tabloid version of its previous format.

One improvement to restore the BBC’s cultural and intellectual heft while meeting all three of its “inform, educate and entertain” values, would be to revive the excellent Brains Trust, which it did some years ago chaired by the splendid Mary Ann Sieghart. But unwisely given the “graveyard slot” at 11.15pm, it failed to reach its target viewer numbers and was prematurely cancelled.

Surely today’s younger generations are entitled to such serious debates by today’s great minds, as we were with Bertrand Russell, Joad, both Huxleys, Jennie Lee, Bronowski, Ayer, Berlin, Bullock, Marghanita Laski et al. Or would some of them be “cancelled” and “no-platformed” as many academics and university authorities now seem to favour?
John Birkett, St Andrews

I can't buy Scottish

WE are encouraged to save the planet by buying local. This is where it gets difficult. Supermarkets have limited stocks of Scottish produce.

While some Scots meats can be found, there is little evidence of dairy items such as cream, butter, yoghurt and even milk. Butter, for example, is available from England, Denmark, Ireland, France and even New Zealand while Scottish butter is nowhere to be seen. I tried four supermarkets looking for Scottish unsalted butter, but was only successful at the fifth.

I try not to purchase anything with a Union Flag or labelled British, wherever it is sourced. It is frustrating to have to travel so far to locate local goods. Lots of festive food displays are piled high with British goods, but again anything Scottish is hard to find.
Margaret Pennycook, Glasgow

A hollow victory

THE opinion from Lady Haldane stated that sex was “not limited to biological or birth sex, but includes those in possession of a GRC obtained in accordance with the 2004 [Gender Recognition] Act stating their acquired gender, and thus their sex” ("Court of Session rules that trans women are women in the eyes of the law", The Herald, December 14).

As the Wizard very nearly said: "I can't give you a womb, but I can give you a certificate".
Brian D Finch, Glasgow

Major flaws with heat pumps

IN the debates about heat pumps (Letters, December 9, 12 & 13), no one seems to mention the fact that such pumps should be sited on the ground outside one's house, nor that installation involves ripping out existing central heating radiators.

Tenement dwellers? Homeowners too old to cope with internal disruption?
David Miller, Milngavie

Winter memories not all bleak

OH the joy of dressing and undressing under the blankets in the late 1930s/40s winters. For me in bed and for my younger sister in the airing-cupboard by the hot-water tank. As Gordon Berry (Letters, December 14) writes, there was just one coal fire, lit each morning by father and kept going by mother sometimes using the coals that we girls collected from the railway embankment by the house. The heavy blackout curtains (it was wartime) helped to keep some warmth in.

I remember bleeding chilblains, cracked lips, chapped knees and having to go home to wet washing around the fire on the clotheshorse, if that Monday was a wet one. The windows streamed with water from the clothes-drying; it was great fun, I don't think, but as Mr Berry writes ... "somehow we survived".

Of course we had snowballing, building snowmen and drinks of hot cocoa. And lots of making slides and running about. Life wasn't all difficult if the physical discomfort was ignored. We are asked to heat just one room in our homes now, which given the price of electricity is easy to do but I am too old and creaky to be sliding under the duvet to dress and undress. I am wearing colourful ski-socks and my late husband's enormous sweater, with several things under it, so that should keep the icicles at bay. No bleeding chilblains have so far been detected.

I have to be thankful that we are not at war, or having to live on the streets. For that I am eternally grateful.
Thelma Edwards, Kelso

Sorry, but it's too hot

I NOTE a couple of letters (December 13 & 14) complaining about the cold when travelling by bus.

In my, albeit somewhat limited, experience of travelling by bus it is usually exactly the opposite.

I often find buses are far too hot and stuffy and one daren’t open a window for fresh air as someone is bound to complain. It doesn’t cost anything to heat a bus as the heat is a by-product of the engine so there is no excuse for buses being cold.

When venturing out in these freezing conditions it is sensible, indeed necessary, to wrap up well in layers of clothing to insulate oneself from the cold. To then sit in an overheated bus in outdoor clothing is tantamount to torture.

I very recently took my wife (by car) to hospital for an outpatient consultation which we were advised would take around an hour. As the temperature was below freezing I dressed accordingly. Whilst sitting in a hospital corridor waiting for my wife I had to strip down to my T-shirt. I understand that certain patients in certain wards need to be kept warm but for goodness sake this was a corridor.
David Clark, Tarbolton

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