I AGREE with Kevin McKenna (“This ban smacks of pandering to the middle-class dilettantes”, The Herald, October 21) that the proposed law outlawing smacking of children is another of the useless laws passed by the SNP government. The already under-resourced and pressurised police force will find it almost impossible to deal with for various reasons.
As I had my grandchildren to stay for a few days during the recent school holidays I watched a few programmes with them. The number of characters in the programmes they watched who behave in an unacceptable way but receive no punishment for their wrong doings worried me, as they are sending wrong messages to young children. Three that come to mind immediately are the characters Horrid Henry, Naughty Norman in Fireman Sam and Piper in Henry Danger. All of them show misbehaviour as an acceptable way to behave. To me it would make more sense and have greater impact if the Government both in Scotland and in the UK found a way to prevent these programmes being shown on our screens. Yes, I did turn them off, but how many children are watching these programmes unsupervised.
RoseMary Burinski,
45 Church Street, Auchinleck.
WHEN discussing with friends whether they were ever harmed by physical chastisement by their parents or teachers, it was put to me that an alternative form of punishment would be to remove their cellphones or other electronic devices. However, I continued to wonder if this would cause long-term psychological trauma of some kind. No doubt educators, child psychologists and social workers could be consulted in their role as “experts”.
Barry Lees,
12 Denholm Street, Greenock.
CALL me old-fashioned and reactionary but in response to recent debate (Letters, October 24 ), and admittedly with tongue close to cheek, I can think of some in public life who might have benefitted from a wee skelp when growing up.
The boy Donald brought up by Mary Anne MacLeod from the Isle of Lewis comes to mind.
But who knows? I expect some readers will have their own list.
R Russell Smith,
96 Milton Road, Kilbirnie.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel