Lest we forget about Gaza, Armistice Day protests must go ahead

While I abhor the violence reportedly perpetrated on the old fellow selling poppies, the protest (peaceful protest) should go ahead, primarily as we have totally "forgotten".

Ken Mackay, Glasgow.

Netanyahu's objectives

BENJAMIN Netanyahu has now announced that he intends to keep control of Gaza once he has won this war ("Netanyahu says Israel will have responsibility for Gaza ‘indefinitely’", The Herald, November 8). Does this not explain his indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, in contravention of international law?

Time and again, the Palestinians are told to move south before the bombs drop, often with very little time to comply, and no possibility of doing so. Result: more and more traumatised civilians are herded ever more tightly into smaller and smaller areas, where they are still bombed anyway, a simple way for Mr Netanyahu to kill an even greater number with each bomb. Those who survive will instead be killed by the denial of the basic necessities to maintain life. How much longer will it take him to have Gaza virtually cleared of Palestinians?

Is this not ethnic cleansing or even genocide under international law? Surely this announcement reveals that annexing Gaza and combining it with the existing illegal settlements has been his objective from the start?

I suspect that there must be many who, like me, rejoiced that justice had been achieved at last for the Jewish people when they were given a homeland but who now have lost all sympathy as the persecuted have become the persecutors, literally with a vengeance.

L McGregor, Falkirk.

• SOME would say that what is happening in Palestine is simply the latest episode in a continuing colonial war to exploit the resources of distant lands. I wonder if future historians will link the genocide being meted out on the Palestinians of Gaza to the recent announcement in the Times of Israel that 12 licences have been awarded by the Israeli government to six companies, including British multinational oil and gas firm BP plc and Italian energy giant Eni, to exploit natural gas fields in the waters off the coast of Gaza?

There is precedent as Israel already exploits the fossil fuel reserves in the area of Syria, the Golan Heights, it captured in 1967 and later annexed in 1981 by a law only it recognises.

David J Crawford, Glasgow.

Read more: Keep Armistice Day sacrosanct and ban pro-Palestinian demos

The case for remote infection control units

ROBERT Menzies (Letters, November 7), in referencing my letter of November 3, states that I failed to take into account that the Louisa Jordan model of pandemic care was a stop-go solution which would not meet current NHS guidelines on patient safety. I agree with his description of that facility. I was most certainly not suggesting that hiring an entertainment venue, putting a few beds and some screens into it, and having little idea how it was to be staffed, was the way forward. Of course it was temporary and inadequate.

What I was suggesting was that if remote infectious disease units properly designed and commissioned had been available in 2020 a more efficient response to the pandemic could have resulted. I used the Louisa Jordan analogy simply to illustrate the need for separation of treatment to control spread of infection. The fact that it was not used to treat cases only illustrates how unsuited it was for its intended purpose.

I used the expression "superhospital" because centralisation of services has been the mantra in recent decades. I do not wish to enter the debate as to whether that has been better for patient care or not beyond mentioning that, when living in Argyll I was involved in the Save the Vale campaign as services such as A&E, maternity, and mental health were gradually whittled away. I am aware of clinical opinion on the advantages of having everything in the one place but there are other considerations. Too often the impression is that the patient is following the consultant rather than the other way around.

Mr Menzies talks about rewriting guidance on A&E design to accommodate major incidents and includes pandemics in such eventualities. I agree with him that contingency planning is inadequate. Handing control of the design of hospitals to Private Finance Initiative consortia, which consisted of accountants, lawyers and builders who then commissioned a design team, tended to result in undersized facilities with contingency considerations losing out to business plans concentrating on full capacity running. Be that as it may my point is that it is arguable that another stream needs to be added to health planning and that is a family of remote infectious diseases units to cope better with future flu like pandemics, which will happen, and all other forms of infectious afflictions.

Viruses can only replicate inside the living cells of an organism. They must infect to survive. The Loiusa Jordan unit was a knee-jerk reaction to the need for isolation. I am simply suggesting that the capacity for isolation, when the next pandemic hits, should be built into future planning through the establishment of remote units, not in General Medical Hospitals.

Jim Proctor, Paisley.

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Confessions of a justified sinner

IN response to Stuart Brennan and JB Drummond (Letters, November 7), I feel obliged to own up to my sins: I cycle through red lights and sometimes on the pavement, mea culpa.

I am one of those demon cyclists who puts my own life ahead of the irritation of motorists and occasionally pedestrians, but in my own defence I plead mitigation. Sometimes I will be at the head of a queue at a crossroads, with all lights at red, and the green man illuminated, which gives me a chance to cross without hindering either pedestrians, if there are none crossing, or frustrating the motorists behind who will always be irritated by my slow start.

Another occasion is a pedestrian bridge nearby with a sign ordering cyclists to dismount; if there is no one on the bridge do I dismount? Nope. Sometimes too I will be faced with a busy and (in my opinion dangerous) road, do I take to the pavement if it is wide enough and without pedestrians? Yup. Mea culpa, mea culpa, as they used to say.

John Jamieson, Ayr.