Why do we allow the Catholic Church to get away with discrimination?

Only those approved by the Catholic Church can hold a senior management post in a Catholic school. However all posts in non-denominational are open to all.

I doubt if this discrimination would be tolerated in any other profession.

Roy Gardiner, Kilmarnock.

When did faith go out of date?

MAY I respond to Alistair Easton's letter by referring to the Latin root of the word "education" itself?

Educare literally means "to carry out " or to lead out, surely in this context, "to tease " out what is potentially already there.

So with our children, whether in the discipline of maths, science English or the arts and so on, they are guided to develop.

The aim of Catholic schools is to encourage the children also to develop their faith in God which we, like other Christians, believe was given at their baptism.

Catholic pupils are prompted by their teachers to see how the teachings of Jesus are not simply for information but are taught as an invitation to a way of life.

Since when did this go out of date?

Joe Mills (Catholic priest and school chaplain), Glasgow.

So why are they so popular?

PERHAPS it would be beneficial to ask the non-Catholic parents who request that their child be admitted to a Catholic secondary school why they make this request. I know of quite a number, not even in the catchment area of the school, who have done this over the years. The results of such a survey would make interesting reading.

John O'Kane, Glasgow.

Read more: There's no justification now for Catholic schools

Tidal power the way ahead

I AGREE with Guy Stenhouse ("It’s time to start making the hard decisions about energy generation", The Herald, November 15) that we need to move our energy generation from fossil fuels.

However, in recommending that we embark on building new nuclear plants, he is showing his 1950s thinking. He ignores the cost of waste disposal, the log lag time of construction and the cost overruns of new nuclear plants, the exorbitant cost per unit of new nuclear electricity or the fact that uranium is a finite and increasingly expensive resource.

He would be better to consider more continuous methods of renewable energy, such as tidal power, in which Scotland is a world leader. His favoured Westminster government declined to build a Severn barrage a few years ago as it was too expensive. If it had been built, I wonder if it would still be expensive in today’s terms.

He also declines to recommend that Britain’s housing stock, among the least well insulated in Europe, should be upgraded as a means of reducing electricity consumption.

Sam Craig, Glasgow.

The facts of the protests

IS it anti-Semitic to state fact? There is a tendency for the mainstream media to report both sides of an argument or incident with equal importance irrespective of the strength of support for the differing points of view; they say it’s because of “balance”.

I have to say that it is impossible to cruise the internet without encountering numerous mass protests worldwide where the common man is voicing his support for the people of Palestine and revulsion at the genocide being meted out on the innocents in Gaza. These protests are even happening in countries whose governments either actively support the actions of Israel or who by their inaction allow the murder of Palestinian children to continue. It is also true to say that some of these protestors are Jews; some are orthodox Jews who decry the actions of Zionists in Israel whose behaviour they insist contravenes the instructions contained in Jewish scripture as to how Jews should conduct themselves.

At the same time I find it difficult to find demonstrations of the same magnitude supporting the actions of the Israeli government and certainly none that contain Palestinians. The largest demonstrations so far in Israel itself have been against the actions of the current Prime Minister. To me it appears obvious that the overwhelming mass of humanity abhors what is taking place in Palestine, yet it continues unabated.

In 1986 the then Senator Biden stated that “if Israel did not exist the USA would have to invent it to protect American interests in the Middle East”. In his role as President he recently repeated the same message to the president of Israel. That could perhaps explain why American armed forces are currently protecting Israel from retaliatory attacks while Israel bombs Gaza back to the Stone Age.

Wealth is the root of all conflict.

David J Crawford, Glasgow.

Read more: A chance to plant new ideas

• HOW can any human being, no matter their faith,watch newborn babies fight for their lives in al Shifa hospital and not be moved to tears?

This conflict has been ongoing throughout my entire lifetime, and to see Israeli troops flatten Gaza to the ground and surround hospitals and allow patients to die is not war, neither is it plausible or possible to eradicate Hamas.

I do not know the answer but it is not to kill or displace Palestinians and allow helpless babies to die.

Neil Stewart, Balfron.

Huge damage from lockdown

ANDY Maciver is right to ask "Did lockdowns kill more folk than they saved?" (The Herald, November 10). More generally, the health damage was immense.

Princess Anne has said the lockdown “stole” Prince Philip’s final years, and to forbid folk from holding hands with their dying loved ones was an unspeakable mistake.

The effects on children were especially reprehensible, given that it was very early recognised that they were at minimal risk. Various papers reported that (a) the lockdown "harmed nearly half of children"; (b) Covid's lost pupils would cause a huge crimewave; (c) there was an alarming post-lockdown surge in children needing additional support, due to huge behavioural and emotional concerns.

Ultimately culpable for all this is Jeremy Hunt, whose Exercise Cygnus in 2018 was posited not on a coronavirus epidemic but a flu one, despite movies such as Contagion (2012) portraying just such a scenario. The results of the exercise were locked away; triple gins all round.

George Morton, Rosyth.