I NOTE with interest Mark Smith's column ("How tall should Glasgow be? Much, much taller", The Herald, July 15). As an architecture student in 1970 I wrote a dissertation on a high-rise buildings policy for Glasgow city centre. I remember proposing various height restrictions, even going as far as advocating the demolition of the then College of Building. Higher tower blocks I suggested be limited to clusters like those at Townhead.

Height wasn’t the real problem with these residential blocks, however. They were poorly built and did not take into account the varying needs of the occupants. Elderly people housed on the upper levels had limited views and were vulnerable when the lifts failed or during a fire. A Glasgow University study published in the 1960s recommended against putting elderly and disabled people above the fourth floor for these very reasons. Yet 50 years later we had vulnerable people dying on the upper levels of Grenfell Tower.

The 1960s also saw the Parker Morris review which introduced minimum space standards for public housing. When I subsequently found myself working on council tower blocks which did not meet these standards I raised it with my superiors. That resulted in my being invited to pack my bags.

Added to my concerns was the use of concrete slabs stacked together like a house of cards to build some blocks. It took the collapse of the Ronan Point high rise in 1968 to finally draw attention to the failures inherent in such systems.

The pursuit of higher standards in tower block design was ended in 1979 by Margaret Thatcher, who abolished the Parker Morris guidelines. This predictably resulted in an avalanche of rabbit hutches masquerading as social housing.

The World Trade Center disaster in 2003 further weakened the justification for building high. The site was already notorious for excessive wind speeds at the base of the towers. Today in Glasgow you can experience something similar around certain tall buildings along Argyle Street.

Further Conservative deregulatory zeal surfaced in 2010 with David Cameron’s mantra “one regulation in, two out”. Grenfell Tower was a direct consequence of this madness. New cladding regulations that could have prevented the high death toll had been sidelined.

Fast forward to the present and little has changed. A recent planning application I saw for a high-rise block in Glasgow had tiny one-bedroomed apartments where getting changed in the bedroom means nobody else can access the bathroom. Yet this was classed as a "high-quality residential development" in the council planning report.

With defective cladding and disintegrating glass discovered on the high-rise facade of the QEUH ward block, the question should not be so much about the future location of high-rise tower blocks but rather how do we stop the failures found in tall buildings being endlessly repeated?

Robert Menzies, Falkirk.

READ MORE: Fiona Hyslop should bang heads together and get ScotRail back on track

READ MORE: Digital telephone landline switch could be disastrous for some

An unjust sentence

IN view of concerns surrounding the recent tragic death of a 17-year-old boy in Polmont Young Offenders Institution ("Teen dies at Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution", The Herald, July 18), I think it is appropriate to consider the case of Michael Ross, currently serving a sentence of 25 years for a murder which occurred in 1994, when he was 15 years old, and legally still a child.

The shooting of an Asian waiter in a Kirkwall restaurant shocked the Orkney community, but remained unsolved for 12 years. By the time Michael Ross was charged with the murder, for which he has always declared his innocence, he was an adult. Fourteen years after the murder, Michael was convicted by a majority verdict and given a 25-year fixed sentence, of which he has now served 16 years.

If current legislation is followed, no one under the age of 18 will be sent to prison, regardless of the offence. Even at the time of the Orkney murder no child of 15 could have been given a 25-year custodial term.

How is this fair?

Alison Lambie, Stirling.

Get the Letter of the Day straight to your inbox.


Medicine: art before science

I CONGRATULATE Dr Hamish MacLaren on his excellent letter (July 15) warning of the real dangers of accepting artificial intelligence as an automatic benefit to the practice of medicine. the past four decades have seen an increasing amount of the Health Care Budget spent on computerisation with very mixed results; lack of a careful clinical history followed by a rush to doing blunderbuss (expensive) investigations often lead to an imprecise diagnosis without a thorough clinical examination.

No wonder healthcare is so expensive and patient satisfaction seems to be eroding.

Even for this generation of practitioners I think the art of medicine is a human activity not purely a cold science, although a scientific basis is important.

Dr Iain McNicol, Port Appin, Argyll.

Death of golf as we knew it

WELL, I hope those who now have control of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews are proud of themselves; for handing over control of one of the greatest, egalitarian, sporting occasions on Earth to the touts, hospitality swingers and sundry money-grubbing charlatans. Ordinary people no longer able to pay at the gate to experience the wonderful spectacle of an Open Golf Championship. Troon town centre no longer full with the electric atmosphere of eager local punters, ordinary men women and children who love golf, spilling out of train after train to walk to Old Troon golf course. It’s now all about that other course: "money of course".

The first name on the Claret Jug is that of Young Tom Morris, who had won the Open on four successive occasions, hence winning the original Championship Belt outright after three. Young Tom tragically died at the age of 24, just four months after the death of his wife and newborn child in childbirth. Someone said to his father that he thought his son had died of a broken heart. Old Tom is reputed to have disagreed, saying that: “If you could die of a broken heart, then I wouldn’t be here either.”

Perhaps we all now know something of the death of golf as the ordinary man’s playing sport in Scotland.

DH Telford, Fairlie.

Our picture from the 1950 Open at TroonOur picture from the 1950 Open at Troon (Image: Newsquest)

• YOUR photograph from 1950's Open Championship at Troon ("Remember when .. Scorers were up to par at Troon", The Herald, July 18) revived happy memories of my first visit to an Open, a treat from my parents for passing my Highers.

Bobby Locke's prize for winning with a score of 279 was, in today's terms, a miserly £300.

Locke was one of the great putters, and I often visualise a 15-yard putt which changed direction three times on an undulating green, before finding the centre of the hole.

It is said that memories are the best things in life.

David Miller, Milngavie.