Potholes instead of bomb craters: never ever forget how lucky we are

In this country we constantly complain about everything: the cost of living, immigration, the state of the NHS, the ineptitude of the government of whatever colour, the state of the roads, railways and ferries and of course the weather.

Take a beat to think about the ordinary people on all sides of the political divide in the increasingly unstable and war-torn Middle East. What would they give to live in a safe democracy such as ours?

Yes, we have potholes, but not bomb craters in our streets, and our children are not dying in their thousands.

Joan Smith, Mallaig.

Australians Brad and Priscilla Standfield were one of 100 couples who tied the knot to mark 100 years of Old Marylebone Town Hall in London, as featured in the print edition of The Herald on Wednesday. (Image: PA) Hypocrisy of the Government

WESTMINSTER is soon to have a bill on assisted dying, introduced to limit the suffering of the terminally ill; hopefully, that will quickly be followed by one in Holyrood with the same aim. I have a dog in that fight as a man in his seventies recently diagnosed, thankfully at an early stage, with a condition that might get me in the end, unless something else gets me first. When that time comes I want a say in the process.

Simultaneously, in Palestine and Lebanon, thousands of people are being "assisted to die" by the Israeli Defence Force under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud cabinet of religious extremists.

The difference is that at Westminster and Holyrood there will be a respectful and reasoned debate on assisted death in the UK, while as far as I know, there will be no debate on our well-dressed and clear-sighted Prime Minister's support for Israel, and its policy of mercilessly assisting to die more than 40,000 people in that region.

Among the estimated 25,000 women and children killed so far can be added a family of four, Mohammed Abu Zahra, his wife Sajaa, and their two children Karam and Sham, reported as killed on the morning I write. I can say without risk of contradiction that, given the choice, they would have opted to live.

Sometimes it's not death that stops us in our tracks, it's the sheer hypocrisy of our Government.

John Jamieson, Ayr.

Two sides to this story

FROM the tone and content of Duncan McFarlane's letter (October 4) he can report lots of incidents going back a long time. These have a common theme of Israeli actions against defenceless civilians but there are always two sides to any story, something Mr McFarlane seems to have a blank memory of.

These shocking incidents are paralleled by equally shocking attacks on Israeli civilians The ones most of us will remember is that of October 7 or even in Tel Aviv/Jaffa just a few days ago. Iran's missiles could have hit anyone; indeed a Palestinian civilian died on the West Bank. Mr McFarlane seems to not have noticed.

The war will only end when the malign influence of Iran's current government is no longer overshadowing the entire Middle East. Instead of constantly blaming Israel why not put pressure on Iran to sue for peace? Don't forget it was Hamas who started all of this recent round of fighting.

Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.

Resistance to conquest

WITH reference to the latest invasions into the West Bank and Lebanon and attacks on Iran, this is just the latest example of settler colonial conquest and resistance to the said invasions.

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values, or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do. Which is why the subjects of the violence continue to fight for their rights. And if the rest of us insist on ignoring this, well then, we are complicit with the perpetrators. We are the willing participants in the ongoing war crimes.

Once again, I have to insist that I am not antisemitic, but I am pro-justice and anti-genocide.

Margaret Forbes, Blanefield.

• ALEXANDER McKay (Letters, October 3) claims that the actions of the Israeli government are justified because an internationally recognised terrorist group has been established in a neighbouring country and has fired rockets into Israel. Thank goodness the Irish Republican Army had bombs, rather than rockets.

Sandy Gemmill, Edinburgh.

Read more letters

• Unconditional support of Israel will lead us all to disaster
• How can we possibly negotiate with this Israeli regime?
• I thought Starmer would be a safe pair of hands. I was wrong

Chagos move was too hasty

IT is becoming worrying to note the randomness of the Prime Minister’s decision-making process. Just a short time ago there was a distinct lack of remorse in accepting “freebies” yet this week he is paying back some of the value of those gifts. However he has excelled himself in setting a very dangerous precedent in randomly handing back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius ("UK hands over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius", The Herald, October 4).

These islands have strategic significance and when the Middle East could erupt into full-scale war, his timing in making this decision lacks foresight and thought and seems to have been in haste. Is it not the case that such a potential decision should at least have been debated in Parliament and should not the Foreign Affairs Committee and/or the Defence Committee have been consulted?

It seems Sir Keir Starmer wants to make a “decision a day” regardless of the consequences. The residents of the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar will perhaps have some restless nights going forward.

Richard Allison, Edinburgh.

Cheated of our fair share

SINCE Labour came to power, it has cancelled projected investments in Scotland now approaching £1 billion, claiming they were unfunded. Labour also claimed the Tory carbon capture for England was also unfunded, yet it has apparently found £22 billion to invest in a very similar programme, again limited to England.

Scotland has been promised carbon capture by both Labour and Tory parties for years, but has failed to bring any such investment to the table. England received a huge cash injection for electric car and battery production. Wales is to receive some £500 million for its steel industry. Apart from a brass plate in Aberdeen, it looks as if Scotland is being cheated of its fair share by this government.

GR Weir, Ochiltree.

Edinburgh Airport is a disgrace

I WAS pleased to read that the owners of Edinburgh Airport are investing £5.8 million to improve the check-in area (“£5.8m investment in check-in hall at Edinburgh Airport under way”, October 2). However, it’s a sticking plaster when major surgery is urgently required: Edinburgh Airport is a disgrace.

My wife and I are still catching up on travelling we’d planned to do after I retired in late 2019 (from my job as a long-haul pilot, strangely enough; you’d think I’d have had enough of sitting on an aeroplane after 30 years). Covid blew away our plans for the first two years, but this year has been busy.

We’re not long back from a trip to China, mainly in Tibet. We flew out of Edinburgh to Doha, then to Chengdu in China and on to Lhasa in Tibet. Doha has a fabulous airport, some of it more like a botanic garden than a departure hall; Chengdu has two slick, modern airports – the newer one linked to the city by a fast, comfortable rail link. And Lhasa’s airport is also modern, smart and efficient.

By comparison, Edinburgh is dreadful. The terminal is simply far too small for the number of users. Check-in is congested and horrible; security is worse, made bearable only by the excellent staff, with whom I sympathise for having to work in such an environment; the departure hall is over-crowded and noisy, with not nearly enough circulation space; the arrival experience is even worse, with stairs to climb (and lifts out of order) and then stairs to descend into a packed immigration hall, followed by a cramped baggage hall.

This year, we’ve also been through airports in Bengaluru, Goa and Mumbai in India; Tokyo, Nagasaki and Fukuoka in Japan; Goteborg and Stockholm in Sweden; and Edinburgh and London Heathrow T5. By far and away, Edinburgh Airport has been the worst, making the poor Heathrow T5 almost decent by comparison.

It’s the British problem: we haven’t invested in our infrastructure for decades and now it’s catching up with us. We haven’t invested in our airports, our road and rail networks, our energy and water systems and, yes, in our ferries. No wonder our productivity lags behind our European neighbours. We now find ourselves in a dreadful bind: the UK needs major investment, but our government says it doesn’t have the money for it. As Private Frazer might say: “We’re doomed”, unless we get some sense out of Westminster.

Doug Maughan, Dunblane.

Edinburgh Airport  is to receive new investment (Image: PA)

Second-class service

ROADS into Glasgow city centre are to be closed from 5am till 4.30pm this Sunday (October 6), to allow the Great Scottish Run to take place. This means no buses into or through the city centre which deprives the citizens of Glasgow of the opportunity to shop, socialise or even get to work.

No doubt the council will tell us that the loss of business to a city centre already suffering a dramatic drop in trade and visitor numbers is worth it to promote "active travel" . How ironic then that the council's political masters in the gilded city of Edinburgh have decreed that its very own ScotRail won't be running any trains on Sunday morning to get runners or spectators to the start line on time, unlike the late-running extra trains provided for the Taylor Swift concert at Murrayfield (but not Trnsmt at Glasgow Green).

Will Susan Aitken stand up for Glasgow on this or will she as usual allow the people of Glasgow, both council tax and business rate payers to be treated like second-class citizens?

William Gold, Glasgow.

Tepee or not tepee?

ONE of the clues in today's quick crossword (October 4) was "Native American conical tent", the expected answer being "wigwam". That is an error: the conical buffalo-hide tent used by the Northern Plains peoples was a tipi (also spelt tepee). The word is from the language of the Dakotas, an archetypal representative people of this culture.

A wigwam was a domed shelter of branches covered with bark or reed mats, used by the peoples of the Eastern Woodlands. The word (from the Abenaki language) was adopted by English-speakers much earlier than "tipi" and came to be used loosely for any kind of constructed dwelling seen as primitive: Sir Walter Scott even uses it of the black houses of the Highlands. As a loanword with this general sense it was sometimes misapplied by English-speakers to the Plains hide tents; but the usage is still erroneous.

Derrick McClure, Aberdeen.