The sooner Trump is President, the safer we will be

The sooner he is President of the USA again, the sooner the world will be safer from rogue states, and from those with evil intent toward good world order.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinross.

• THERE are some images which change history. Think of the one of the Vietnamese child screaming and running with American napalm stuck to her flesh. It changed American opinion in favour of peace. The images and videos of Donald Trump's attempted assassination are others which will reverberate through time.

They show Mr Trump's character. While you and I may have been thinking of our own safety his reaction was not flight but fight - against barbarism. It shows the character of the man. And it also shows he was very aware of what was happening. I doubt his presidential opponent would have had any idea at all.

Furthermore, I suspect that it will also emphasise to Donald Trump the narrow margin between life and death. If this is the case it will spur him, if elected as leader of the free world, to do his utmost to bring the murderous conflicts in Gaza and in Ukraine to a close.

William Loneskie, Lauder.

Selective salvation

IT was reported that after the assassination attempt on his life, former President Donald Trump made a statement: "Thank you to everyone for their thoughts and prayers yesterday, as it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening." On that day God was being selective since Mr Trump was spared and Corey Comperatore was killed, while shielding his family, and others severely injured.

One has to assume that Donald Trump and those who believe like him with regard to the outcome of the event are of the mind that God remained inactive at the times when the lives of such as Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy and Mahatma Gandhi were so cruelly and violently ended.

Ian W Thomson, Lenzie.

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Investment is the answer

JAMES Quinn (Letters, July 17) seems to think that the only cure to a revenue fiscal deficit is austerity, cuts and tax rises.

I have pointed out many times that there is another option: capital investment to develop an underdeveloped region of the UK, growing the economy. This is an option denied to Scotland by the UK, who believes the only part of the UK worthy of such investment is London.

The reason Scotland has a deficit is that too little of the money generated by its vast resources, stays in Scotland, and I see no plans by the UK to address this.

Iain Cope, Glasgow.

Westminster can't be trusted

MAY I point out to James Quinn that in my letter of July 16 I referred to the fact that independence would allow us to grow our economy without the current constraints imposed upon us. Mr Quinn paints a gloomy picture of where he sees Scotland is today, but if so we didn't get that way by being independent. And of course, if Scotland had been independent, we would have benefited from 50 years of oil wealth instead of being the only country in the world to discover oil and get poorer, as pointed out by Jim Sillars.

I vividly recall, as a teenager, being told that Scotland had only about 15 years of oil in our waters, and before the independence referendum in 2014 we were again told that the oil was running out. Honestly, I don't trust a word that comes out of Westminster's mouth, whatever party is in government, but I have confidence that Scotland, like most other countries in the world, will make a success of running its own affairs as an independent nation.

After all, more than 60 countries have gained their independence from the UK, and none of them has asked to come back.

Ruth Marr, Stirling.

• JAMES Quinn writes: "Scotland has long-running, large structural fiscal and trade deficits which could not be sustained as an independent nation without massively increased austerity, increased taxation and further cuts to public services.”

I wonder where he has been these last 10 years?

I would suggest to him that rather than our unionist friends’ favoured Greece without the sunshine, a more appropriate analogy would be that we are actually Norway with Westminster.

Alan Carmichael, Glasgow.

North Sea oil continues to be a vexed topic (Image: PA)

Should it be blame or plaudits?

GR Weir (Letters, July 17) opines that devolution is being dismantled and that the Scottish Parliament doesn’t “actually control our money” Meanwhile Catriona C Clark (Letters, July 17) waxes lyrical with examples of what this “progressive Government" has achieved.

So which is it, guys? Do you blame the UK for not allowing you control of our money or congratulate it for enabling you to use devolved powers for any good things you’ve done?

Again of course neither of the disparate views of Mr Weir and Ms Clark have addressed the fundamental question, which is: how would an independent Scotland be able to carry out the “progressive “ ideas with a decreased revenue stream?

John Gilligan, Ayr.

SNP owes debt to Reform UK

THE SNP spent much time and energy in the weeks and months before the election urging Scots to make Scotland "Tory free". Admittedly, the Scottish Conservatives emerged from the election with one seat fewer than they had previously had. That, however, was due to the intervention of Reform UK, without which the Tories might well have netted another two or three seats.

It was Reform that saved the SNP from emerging with even fewer seats that the nine it now has. I hope the SNP is duly grateful.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

Starmer in borrowed clothes

IT'S not only Charles dressed up in funny clothes for the King's speech. Keir Starmer was in borrowed ones: Rishi Sunak's smoking ban and Nicola Sturgeon's initiative on nationalising rail for starters ("Securing growth 'fundamental mission' of Starmer government says King", heraldscotland, July 17).

David Lammy, the new Foreign Secretary, is looking a bit of a duffer representing that party that has throughout the Tory administration failed to call for a ceasefire in Gaza or ban the sale of arms to Israel despite the deaths of 14,000 children.

Also, Mr Starmer cleverly hung an albatross around Angela Rayner's neck by making one of her first tasks the defence of deliberately choosing to keep millions of children in poverty by not axing the two-child benefit nonsense. But then I suppose Labour doesn't want to look too much like Scotland in terms of caring for the desperate so soon after the election where anti-Tory fervour helped it to power on a very low voter turnout.

Not so much emperor's new clothes as wolf in sheep's clothing.

Amanda Baker, Edinburgh.

Planning a remedy

WE support the Herald's Housing Charter ("Charter for action launched by The Herald and charities", The Herald, July 13).

The focus of any campaign on the housing crisis must absolutely prioritise the most needy, the homeless and those who cannot afford decent housing. It is all too easy to fall into the same trap as Keir Starmer of believing that building vast amounts of housing will reduce house prices or improve conditions for those whose needs are most acute. Even by the UK Government's own best assessment, meeting Labour's 300,000-a-year housing target would reduce prices by 1.5-2% annually. That is nowhere near enough to make housing affordable for many, even assuming private sector developers would then build at that rate which they haven't ever done before. And that's to say nothing of the massive environmental impacts of going all out for housing growth.

UK Labour seems to believe that planning is the single biggest cause of the housing crisis but this doesn't stand up to scrutiny in England nor does it in Scotland. The reality is that we need a much more positive planning system to ensure we build genuinely affordable houses in places that allow people to live well whilst limiting our impacts on land, nature and the climate.

Clare Symonds, Planning Democracy, Limekilns.