Politicians are obsessed with middle-class votes

Mr Alba uses his piece to spread the myth that the middle class and privately educated are "missing out" on top universities. But the truth is that they always were - and frankly, still are - widely over-represented at top universities. And it is not just Edinburgh. Nearly 40% of students at both Durham University and St Andrews University were privately educated.

In so many of our key national problems, we are stuck because politicians and commentators are too busy warring over middle-class voters. From that war, we get bad policy and commentary. For instance, we have the council tax freeze which cuts services that poorer communities need to please that middle. Indeed, another example could be the dubious headline on Mr Alba’s article that private school pupils are missing out on top universities, which completely misses the key crises in higher education: low pay for academics and the student housing crisis, which are ignored as they do not seriously affect the middle-class.

It’s high time Scotland got honest with itself. Is the social contract that we supposedly have in this country one between the Government and all the Scottish people or just merely the middle and upper classes?

Michael Heffernan, Wishaw.

Read more: Middle class and private school pupils pay price

Key flaw in McArthur bill

DENIS Bruce (Letters, December 26) puts his finger on the key flaw in Liam McArthur’s proposed Assisted Dying (Scotland) Bill. The proposal completely alters the relationship between our doctors and their patients. And it alters it in a way that affects not just individuals but the whole of society.

The bill proposes that doctors (and others who are inevitably implicated, such as pharmacists) take practical steps to aid and abet people to kill themselves. As a society we judge that killing is morally wrong. To involve others - whether healthcare professionals or family or the personnel in an "end of life" clinic - in deliberately ending life is immoral, and in this country currently illegal.

One of Mr Bruce’s concerns is that medical staff and other healthcare professionals will become "inured" with the passage of time. He’s right to be concerned. In Canada the number of people who committed suicide with the practical assistance of medics rose from 1,000 in 2016 to more than 10,000 in 2021.

There are three sources that can account for that: an increase in medics who are prepared to collude with and collaborate in persons killing themselves, an increase in members of the public who see medics as prepared to collude with and collaborate in them killing themselves, and courts of law which pass flawed legislation that breaks the social contract, "You shall not kill".

The words of Councillor Eileen McCartin, MBE, which you published on your Letters Pages on January 7, 2022, are as valid as ever: "If you want to commit suicide, so be it... but don’t ask anyone else to do it for you, and wrap up the actions in words which pretend it is something else."

David Kennedy, Glasgow.

Liam McArthur promoting his Assisted Dying Bill (Image: PA)

Don't blame the volcanoes

ALEXANDER McKay (Letters, December 28) asks how the recent Sundhnúkur eruption in Iceland compares to annual UK emissions. I haven’t found a published estimate for that specific eruption, but the US Geological Survey puts annual volcanic emissions around an average of 0.3 gigatons per year, with a range of plus or minus 50% each year. With around 1,500 active volcanoes, they average 200,000 tonnes each. If we assume all the volcanic emissions only come from 50 or so of those volcanoes that are erupting at any given time, we get 6 megatons (Mt) per active volcano, per year.

UK territorial emissions (without adjusting for imports, shipping, aviation), were 417Mt in 2022. So for just an hour of an average eruption, the UK emits the same amount of CO2 in under two-millionths of a year, or more precisely a little under 52 seconds. Accounting for our imports etc cuts this even further. The average active volcano has comparable emissions not to the UK, but to the smaller wards of Edinburgh City Council, or a capacity attendance at Tynecastle.

If everyone signed up to the net zero target of January 2050, and the world made linear progress towards it, volcanic emissions would only exceed human emissions in late October 2049.

Or for a completely different perspective, the UK Emissions Trading Scheme price puts the cost of reducing UK emissions at £43.60 per tonne. How much would it cost to stop a volcano from erupting?

Alan Ritchie, Glasgow.

Read more: Cuts to police numbers are hampering efforts to improve road safety

In defence of predators

CLARK Cross (Letters, December 28) proudly boasts that he has a Larsen trap set up in his garden and his comment “happy hunting in 2024” suggests that he is gleefully looking forward to trapping and killing magpies.

Magpies and songbirds appear to coexist happily in my garden and have done for the 28 years that I have lived here. In all those years I have seen no reduction in songbird numbers. The number one predator in my garden is the sparrowhawk. I wonder if Mr Cross would advocate trapping and killing them? As a bird lover I enjoy all species equally and do not believe that any human being should have the right to decide which ones live and which ones die.

Mr Cross says “watching a magpie rip a chick to bit bits is not a pretty sight”. Watching a lion rip a wildebeest to bits is arguably an even more disturbing sight but I am sure that most people would be horrified at any suggestion that lions should be trapped and killed.

Many birds and animals prey on others, are we to eradicate all predators from the face of the earth?

David Clark, Tarbolton.

Salute a great Scot

YOUR eulogy of Dr Donald Currie Caskie ("Remember when... we honoured the Tartan Pimpernel", The Herald, December 28) brought to my eyes tears of admiration for his indomitable courage in saving thousands of allied servicemen from Nazi-occupied France as the "Tartan Pimpernel".

We should salute him as one of the truly great Scots in the history of our nation.

Charles Wardrop, Perth.