Scotland being dragged into Red Sea war shows why indy is vital

The justification that freedom of navigation in the Red Sea allows for a shooting war could easily be extended to justify similar actions in the Black Sea or China Sea. Some senior Tories have already called for the Royal Navy to “test” Chinese resolve on this issue. Scotland should not be involved in this daft “gunboat diplomacy”.

GR Weir, Ochiltree.

Give Yousaf his due credit

THIS is the UK 2024.

It's prepared to go to war in the Red Sea against Palestinian-supporting Houthis in Yemen who want to deny Israel the benefits of a shipping route when Israel is denying Palestinians the basics of life.

But Prime Minister Rishi Sunak won't condemn Israel for committing what many international experts now accept is genocide against Palestinians.

And sadly Labour's UK (English) leader Keir Starmer (I refuse to call him Sir) agrees with the Conservatives: yes to air strikes, no to a ceasefire.

There appears to be a solitary voice against both these acts on the political scene in Scotland, First Minister Humza Yousaf, but is the media prepared to give him credit for that?

Andy Stenton, Glasgow.

Read more: Scottish Labour has no chance of winning Tory seats

Ambition trumps morality

YOU publish today another photograph showing tragedy in Gaza, of a man carrying the corpse of a young baby (“South Africa tells UN court Israel is carrying out ‘genocide’ in Gaza”, The Herald, January 13). Sadly, this is now the new normal for the people of Palestine.

Since the Israeli military launched its attack on Gaza, they’ve slaughtered about 250 Palestinians each and every day. The vast majority will have been innocent civilians and about 100 will have been children under the age of 15. To save his own political skin, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu intends to keep the massacre going for the rest of this year, so is that going to be another 90,000 dead, with 35,000 of them under 15?

At least South Africa, with its own recent troubled past, recognises what is happening and has spoken out and taken action to try to stop it. From our leading politicians, with the honourable exception of Humza Yousaf, we hear nothing. Not entirely surprising from Rishi Sunak, but Sir Keir Starmer has shown himself to be a much lesser man than I thought he was. As the leader of a party that claims to be democratic and socialist, I’d have expected him to speak out against the monstrous atrocity being perpetrated against the Palestinian people, but it appears that, for him, personal ambition trumps morality.

No wonder people have lost faith in politics. Sir Keir should beware: if the electorate are offered a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee this year, they might decide to stick with the empty vessel they currently have.

Doug Maughan, Dunblane.

Sir Keir Starmer: ambition before morality? (Image: PA)

Double standards

STRUAN Stevenson ("West can make the world a better place", The Herald, January 10) explains how Hamas is motivated by a "philosophy of hatred". It is more likely that Hamas, certainly Islamic and extreme, is primarily a Palestinian resistance group. Penned in for years by the far superior US-enabled military power of Israel, It launched a counter attack on October 7 and very briefly, and very brutally, reoccupied a tiny part of what it would see as Palestinian land. Ultimately a futile action, born out of weakness and frustration.

This nasty but limited action was, says Mr Stevenson, "a bloodbath of mass slaughter, torture, rape and butchery". It led to Israel’s much larger retaliation causing more than 20,000 deaths. Israeli behaviour is not described in the same lurid terms, though Mr Stevenson believes its severity will produce a corresponding Palestinian retaliation. This, unlike (implicitly rational) Israeli retaliation will be conducted by "terrorists" seeking revenge not just against Israel but will consist of a "resurgence of jihadist terror outrages" in America, the EU and UK.

So, there we have it. Armed opposition to Israel’s presence and policies in Palestine are "terror outrages"; Israel’s much more lethal and merciless attack on a much weaker enemy and a defenceless population is, well, just retaliation. The agent is not a terrorist, but a respectable prime minister.

Struan Stevenson thinks the US, the UK and the EU can make the world a better place. These are the nations which have spent the last three months ensuring that a deliberate, cold-blooded atrocity can proceed in Gaza without intervention. Perhaps Mr Stevenson should think again.

Ronald MacLean, Beauly.

• HOW much are the UK arms sales to Israel worth to our super-rich colonial masters? Twenty-three thousand-plus Palestinian lives?

P Davidson, Falkirk.

Promoting yet more division

IT is sadly predictable to hear our blinkered First Minister's comments on launching his party's election campaign - with the Nationalists' main ambition being to "kick the Tories out" ("Yousaf tells independence supporters they 'must' vote SNP", heraldscotland, January 12).

There was a time when Scotland had respectable and admired political leaders, from various parties, who would state their aims in positive terms - focusing on what could be done to develop the economy, improve health services, enhance educational standards, and invest in improving transport systems - all in a friendly country with a welcoming environment open to all.

Instead we have this narrow-minded individual, along with an increasing number of ineffective career politicians, spending all their time (and the highest taxes in the UK) on sowing as much division as possible, while quite happily allowing all essential services to collapse around them in order to transfer the blame on to someone else for their own failures, and where anyone who dares to have a view contrary to the dictatorial separatist mantra is told that they are clearly not welcome.

How poor a reflection on Scotland it is that there are those in our country who actively pursue such bitterness and division and - even worse - that we have a political leadership for whom it is their sole focus.

Robin McNaught, Bridge of Weir.

Read more: After the Post Office saga, how about the Waspi scandal?

Westminster owns this scandal

ON the Post Office injustices, Martin Redfern (Letters, January 12) forgot to mention that the Crown Office in Scotland is completely independent from government ministers.

The fact is that the Post Office is owned by the British Government and it is another Westminster scandal. The official rollout of Horizon began across thousands of Post Office branches in January 2000 when Labour was in power. Later that year the first six postmasters were convicted of false accounting and theft. Serious concerns about the Horizon system were first raised by Computer Weekly in 2009 and Labour’s then Post Office minister Pat McFadden has admitted that he was told about the Horizon scandal but said he was focused on Post Office closures which Labour enthusiastically pursued.

Sir Keir Starmer has been dragged into the Post Office scandal after the English Crown Prosecution Service revealed it had prosecuted 11 postmasters while the Labour leader was in charge resulting in three convictions. The Post Office lied and misled everyone but Fujitsu should pick the compensation tab - not the taxpayer.

Mary Thomas, Edinburgh.

Bonuses must be clawed back

THERE are calls for Paula Vennells to voluntarily return the bonuses that were paid to her when she was chief executive of the Post Office. The bonuses were no doubt based on performance - that is, profitability. As profits were inflated by monies taken illegally from sub postmasters surely the bonuses were paid under false pretences and should therefore be clawed back by legal means if necessary?

Alan McGibbon, Paisley.

Football has gone crazy

LET me declare from the outset that I know absolutely nothing about football. I might, though, have made it as a player if it hadn't been for a cruel twist of fate. The twist of fate being that I was pure rubbish.

As a child, growing up in the early 1970s, playing on the mean streets of Milngavie, hurriedly picking up the ball as a still-to-be-commonplace car came chugging along, my pals nicknamed me Owen - as in Owen Goal.

Even my father (who had been a player in his own right and introduced "tiki taka" to such top-flight teams as Leith Athletic and Edinburgh City in the 1940s) felt the need to sit me down at an early age and tell me, with tears falling from his eyes and rolling gently down his cheeks: "Son, ye're just rid rotten."

Back then, cars, dads and cruel nicknames were all a player had to contend with. Imagine my surprise then, on reading James Cairney's article ("The numbers behind sensible pre-contract move", Herald Sport, January 11), to learn about players having to generate "higher expected assists per 90" and how they must "score highly for deep progressions".

I admit I was not a good player and neither was I much of a tactician, but to read about the game being "businessified" through analytics and metrics dismays me.

I subscribe to the old-fashioned strategy of get the ball up the park and score more than them.

The thought of coaches spouting gobbledegook to a young person with brains in their boots is at best disheartening and at worst overly sanitising.

My old man, once he'd hung his boots up and moved into punditry (also known as shouting and swearing at the telly) used to say that he didn't "believe skill was or ever will be, the result of coaches. It is a result of a love affair between the child and the ball".

Oops. Sorry. It was actually Roy Keane who said that.

Told you. I know nothing about football.

Gordon Fisher, Stewarton.

Utterly drained

INTERESTING to read Robin Dow’s comments over the wine-pronouncing abilities of wine waiters (Letters, January 12). His particular concern was "Côtes du Rhône" with “the latter word being pronounced as in downpipe”. I tend to agree with the waiters however, mainly because the last time I spent an evening consuming this wine I ended up completely guttered.

Robert Menzies, Falkirk.