Unions should not be allowed to disrupt public services like ScotRail

Working in the public and nationalised sector brings with it a range of benefits not found in the private sector. That's not to say that it is the land of milk and honey. The work can be emotionally exhausting and sometimes thankless. Worse than that, public sector workers are frequently derided. But in addition to its benefits and perquisites it has other rewards, not least of which is that of service to the public. It should, using the word in its original sense, be vocational, a calling. That isn't something to be scoffed at. Not every employee can say that their work has a positive, meaningful effect. There's no doubt that public sector workers provide services that are vital to the smooth running of people's lives.

However, the very fact that these services are vital means that they should never be withdrawn through industrial action. Militants should not be allowed to have their cake and eat it. Whether it is college lecturers, train drivers or nurses these vitally important public services should be protected from the political opportunism of radical trade unionists. We have the Conservatives-In-Name-Only to thank for the highest tax burden in 70 years. Thanks to the economically illiterate in Holyrood, tax rates here are even higher. But it has fallen to the public service trade unions to complete the taxpayers’ humiliation by rubbing our noses in the disruption of their never-ending industrial action. It should have been a condition of ScotRail's nationalisation that the trade unions were banned from causing massive disruptions to ordinary taxpayers’ lives.

Employment and industrial relations laws are reserved to the UK Government. SNP politicians endlessly demand the devolution of powers from Westminster. Fiona Hyslop should get on the phone to Keir Starmer and demand that power on these matters should be immediately devolved to Holyrood so that she can ban strikes and other disruptive industrial action throughout the public sector. That way the vital services that the public sector perform can be reformed and liberated from those who think the taxpayer owes them a living.

Graeme Arnott, Stewarton.

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Proof the voters were right

JAMES McEnaney reports that Microsoft has made changes to its licensing arrangements for schools to use, without charge, its products on which they are dependent ("Schools face loss of “crucial” IT services from August 2024’, The Herald, July 11). This will affect the use of these products in schools and on personal devices, making it impossible to download essential applications such as Microsoft Word through the Scottish Government’s Glow account for schools. Limited access to Microsoft products can be purchased.

Before we cast Microsoft as the villain of the piece, we should note that, as Mr McEnaney reports, the Welsh Government secured an upgraded Microsoft licence in 2019. This cost £1.2 million, but gives Welsh schools a range of Microsoft products with the full desktop version of Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus which includes a Welsh language interface and proofing tools.

Why was Wales ahead of the game but SNP Scotland was not, leaving schools facing from August 1what some have called "chaos" and a "nightmare"? Perhaps the Welsh Government doesn’t have a foreign aid programme costing millions of pounds. Perhaps it doesn’t waste money on promoting secession from the UK. In addition, there seems to be a pattern developing, with recent revelations about the SNP administration forfeiting up to £450 million of EU funding because of its failure to meet EU deadlines, and the farce of the Deposit Return Scheme when Lorna Slater failed to liaise in timely fashion with His Majesty’s Government.

Voters made a judgment on Scottish Government incompetence last week. They were not wrong.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

• I AM not sure that giving untold millions to multinational Microsoft for limited access to its proprietary software is a good use of schools’ money - especially as there are many free alternatives (such as Google Sheets, which integrates well with the Chromebooks used by many schools).

Personally, I’d spend the money on more teachers.

Jim Finlayson, Beauly.

Give credit to SNP on housing

NEIL Mackay lambasts the Scottish Government for its recent lack of action to solve the homelessness crisis ("SNP has failed us, as Labour's recent house pledge shows", The Herald, July 11). However it was the newly elected SNP Government back in 2009 which ended Margaret Thatcher’s decades-old right to buy and started building council houses again.

Keir Starmer doesn’t believe in public housing any more than Tony Blair and Mrs Thatcher did. The housing programme he plans involves funding the private sector to build housing which will belong to them forever. Meanwhile the right to buy (long abolished in Scotland) will continue to decimate the affordable housing stock in England.

Mary McCabe, Glasgow.

Biden must do the right thing

"THE herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves": The words of Boris Johnson during his resignation speech on the steps of Downing Street. For months he had battled away against ongoing criticism of his leadership and judgment. But the drip, drip effect eventually became a tsunami and one of the great, modern Teflon political bruisers eventually had to admit defeat and stand aside for the good of his party.

I can see the same thing happening with Joe Biden now. The media seem to have made up their mind that he's holed beneath the waterline. The polls are depressing. The support of many of his colleagues seems sincere but lukewarm.

The manoeuvring is going on in the background to find a new candidate, even if many prominent Democrats have yet to publicly acknowledge it.

The Democrats simply can't allow the ego and pride of one individual to risk losing the election to Donald Trump. No man is bigger than the party, no matter how respected he is and what his many achievements are.

For Mr Biden to behave as he is doing this week is just as bad as Donald Trump sticking his two fingers up to the will of the people.

This election should be an open goal against a scandalised and disgraced former POTUS who is like a drunk goalkeeper chasing a balloon.

It's not a matter of if, but when Mr Biden stands aside. The "men in suits" will soon be arriving at the White House and giving him the option of retiring gracefully and with his legacy intact. If he declines, things will get messy, and it will not end well. The best thing Joe Biden can do is go quickly whilst he still has some control over the narrative and manner of his departure.

It's not too late for the Democrats to win the election, but every day this saga goes on, it only plays into the hands of Mr Trump.

Can I just finish with another quote from another British Prime Minister, the great Sir Winston Churchill who said: "To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour."

Do the right thing, Joe. Take one for the team and let someone else pick up the baton and take the fight to Donald Trump.

David Fernandez, Strathaven.

Football's not coming home

“FOOTBALL’S coming home” proclaim the English fans and media, as we look forward to the Euro final against Spain on Sunday.

This is intriguing, as if it was anywhere it should be “coming home” to, it should be to Scotland and not to our southern neighbours.

For it was the Scots who devised the modern version of the game as we know it. Without our civilising intervention, what England might have given the world was just another version of rugby.

What is now called the English Football Association (FA) was formed at the instigation of a young solicitor from Hull, Ebenezer Morley, and what he proposed would be seen now as a basis for rugby with extra violence.

A more civilised code did emerge, but the English game was still mainly a question of head-down dribbling. It was the Scots who had the notion of artfully distributing the ball among the players. This started with young men, from Perthshire and the Highlands mainly, who gathered at Queen’s Park in Glasgow in 1867. They obtained a copy of the FA laws and amended them to conform with an almost scientific blend of dribbling and passing.

When they invented passing, these men had invented modern football. Far from being an English game, it was one that was conceived to confound the English because the Scots, being generally smaller than their opponents in football’s oldest international rivalry, could hardly afford to take them on physically.

Scotland’s interests in the Euros have long since subsided, and the English borrowing our history is quite a compliment, the only downside being that it is sadly not acknowledged.

Alex Orr, Edinburgh.

The legendary tenor Kenneth McKellar has been omitted from his home town Paisley's Walk of Fame (Image: Newsquest)

Disdain for popular Scottish music

DAN Edgar (Letters, July 10) is right to highlight Kenneth McKellar’s absence from Paisley’s Walk of Fame (“Follow in footsteps of legends on new Buddie walking trail”, The Herald, July 4), but he shouldn’t be surprised by this omission. For many years now, those who regard themselves as those who must be obeyed in matters cultural have been bent on systematically erasing the many variants of popular Scottish music from public view, BBC Scotland being the principal culprit.

Were it to be suggested by some brave soul at Pacific Quay that they should screen a re-run of the White Heather Club, doubtless there would be an outbreak of communal apoplexy, the fact that millions tuned into the programme every week simply proving how ignorant and unsophisticated they were. That such attitudes have deprived perhaps Scotland’s greatest tenor of a small degree of recognition in the town of his birth is lamentable.

D Macintyre, Greenock.