regarding Auckland Castle and the 13 paintings by Francisco de Zurbaran (Today's briefing, April 1), if it hadn't been reported in The Herald, I and 99% of the population would be unaware of the existence of either the paintings or the castle.
I find it hard to be enthused by the news that a private individual has a spare £15 million to donate to the Church of England so the Church will not be forced to sell these pictures, especially when the investment portfolio of the Church is reputedly already worth £5 billion. Neither do I gain solace from the suggestion that public funds may be channelled via various public bodies into turning Auckland Castle – official home of the Bishop of Durham –into a visitor attraction while simultaneously (I assume) removing the burden of maintaining the edifice from the Church and dumping the recurrent costs on the public purse. This pantomime is played out against a tableau of cuts in public expenditure the likes of which our generation has never before witnessed.
If ever a news story highlighted the iniquitous distribution of wealth in this country and gave a lie to the sham spoken by politicians that “hard decisions have to be taken” and “we’re all in it together”, this is it.
David J Crawford,
Flat 3/3,
131 Shuna Street,
Glasgow.
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