Can this really be Labour acting this way over Israel? Shame on them

It's provided almost half of all reconnaissance flights, giving Israel information about movements in Gaza, effectively spying for Benjamin Netanyahu's extreme right-wing regime.

As Israel continues what is unquestionably ethnic cleansing in Palestine, the UK is absolutely complicit.

All the Prime Minister can offer are words of condemnation, calls for a ceasefire and the return of the 100-plus Israeli hostages still believed to be alive 12 months after the Hamas attack.

Keir Starmer appears to ignore in his rhetoric the more than 40,000 Palestinians killed in Israel's disproportionate retaliation, which includes:

• the bombing of hospitals and the drone targeting of doctors;

• the destruction of schools and deaths of thousands of children;

• the bulldozing of infrastructure including water and electricity;

• the displacement of millions of Gazans;

• the takeover of Palestinian land and homes by illegal settlers;

• the murder of journalists including Al Jazeera reporters.

He also forgets, or refuses to acknowledge, the repression, occupation and violence Palestinians have suffered at the hands of Israel for the past 70-odd years.

I don't know what party Keir Starmer believes he's leading, but it's not the Labour Party. He lives in a different world. And Scotland's Labour leader Anas Sarwar remains silent.

Andy Stenton, Glasgow.

Read more letters

• Reparations? The world owes plenty to the British Empire
• The Palestine protests are about sorrow and anger, not hate

We must stop the arms sales

A CAMPAIGN of mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing is under way in Gaza. Men are being separated from women and children, reminiscent of what happened in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s when the men and boys were killed and dumped into mass graves. How many mass graves have been found in Gaza? Have we even bothered counting them?

Palestinians are being rounded up by the Israeli military. Women and children are forced to flee at gunpoint, uncertain if they will ever see their fathers, husbands and brothers again.

The injured bleed out in the streets. Coffins have run out in northern Gaza. For over a year Palestinians have documented the genocide being carried out against them in horrifying detail. The rest of the world can see from the photos taken on smartphones by the invading Israeli occupying force.

Yet Joe Biden has given the Israelis a month to stop it. The puppet in Downing Street is too interested in the freebies from a Labour Party donor to stop giving money and arms to Israel. Does he really need his free glasses to see the genocide?

Stopping weapons is the only path to peace.

Margaret Forbes, Blanefield.

• YOUR correspondent Ken Kennedy (Letters, October 25) has written to say he is contributing to the latest DEC humanitarian appeal. My wife and myself were about to donate when I noticed that part of the money will be going to Israel. No donation.

Eric Macdonald, Paisley.

We must retain Holyrood

ALEXANDER McKay (letters, October 25) says that devolution is not working for Scotland and that we should abandon it.

To my mind, Scotland has benefited greatly from devolution. At least on devolved matters we get a say, we get to make the decisions that ultimately affect the people of Scotland. Compare that to matters not yet devolved, still under the jurisdiction of Westminster; Scotland does not even get a seat at the table.

Alexander McKay suggests we "turn back", abolish Holyrood and bring back a revamped and updated version of Westminster. This would result in a public outcry, the likes of which we have not seen on the streets of Scotland.

Westminster never served Scotland with any respect in my lifetime and I have no reason to think "change" would be on the cards. Decisions about Scotland, for the people of Scotland, should be made in Scotland by the Scottish Parliament, not one 400 miles away with a majority of MP from other countries.

Catriona C Clark, Falkirk.

Has devolution served us well? (Image: Getty)

Towards true local democracy

AS members of the wide-ranging group who recently launched the Building A Local Scotland campaign for a revival of genuine local democracy in Scotland, we were interested to read Marissa MacWhirter’s recent column on whether Glasgow needs a City Region Mayor ("Do we need a mayor with the ‘it’ factor to stand up for Glasgow or just some decent marketing?", The Herald, October 11); and we welcome any contribution to what is a much-needed public debate about the future of local government in Scotland.

We believe, though, that the current crisis in Scottish local government has to be tackled from the grassroots up, rather than by top-down measures such as the introduction of city mayors, and requires a radical rebalancing of power between local and central government, to ensure a healthy future for democracy in Scotland.

When the Scottish Parliament came into being 25 years ago, one of the promises of devolution was that it would not stop at Holyrood, but would also bring a new age of reform and empowerment for local democracy.

Successive Scottish governments, though, have only further centralised power, leaving our councils disempowered, robbed of financial autonomy, and so poorly structured that Scotland now has fewer elected councillors per head of population than any other country in Europe. Indeed with 32 councils too big to be truly local, and in most cases too small to be truly strategic, Scotland arguably now has no real local democracy at all; and suffers a chronic democratic deficit at the local level that is the most basic building-block of democracy.

If you would like to join us in working towards a new age of true local democracy in Scotland, you can find our declaration of intent, a chance to sign up as a supporter, and further information and ideas, on our website at https://buildlocal.scot/. This is a debate that needs to go far beyond flashy top-down solutions, into the very heart of democracy itself, and our belief in the power of our communities to help shape their own future; do join us in debate, and in working out ways to make that living democracy a reality, here in Scotland.

Joyce McMillan, Edinburgh, plus Lesley Riddoch, Esther Roberton, Dave Watson, Willie Sullivan, Prof Mike Danson and Peter McColl.

Concerns over Branchform

I SEE the possibility of the National Crime Agency and Serious Fraud Office assisting Police Scotland with its Operation Branchform was raised in the House of Lords ("UK crime agencies ready to ‘assist’ Police Scotland in Branchform probe", The Herald, October 25). Really? The core group of full-time people who operate the SNP machine is small, and in commercial terms comparison is a very small company, not some complex banking or international investment group of the kind that would require the involvement of those two organisations.

I know I am not alone in wondering why, with only three people originally taken to a police station for questioning, and the small size of the SNP management core, apparently no conclusion can be reached after almost three years of police investigation and references to the Crown Office. This extraordinary length of time hanging over the heads of people whose names are known is unfair to them, and raises questions about whether the Crown Office, as it was under James Wolffe’s leadership, continues to be unable to disentangle law from politics.

Jim Sillars, Edinburgh.

Climate fight is all but lost

AT 75 years of age, I will happily miss the greatest catastrophe to hit humanity ever: global warming.

In 2023 many of nature’s natural carbon “sinks” stopped absorbing CO2. Land, plants and forests absorbed almost no carbon at all and the amount absorbed by the oceans is diminishing.

Politicians can see no further than the next election cycle. Many who dismiss climate change as a nonsense and wish we could carry on burning coal and other fossil fuels are leading the planet to a future extinction event where many species will disappear, humanity among them.

The forecast is grim and we are now certain to pass tipping points which will increase the rapidity of change and the speed of which will preclude evolutionary change to allow land, air and sea creatures to adopt to a warmer climate. To instil common sense in their weans, Scottish mothers used to say things like“if your pal stuck their hands in the fire would you do the same"? So just because another country does a stupid thing, unless acumen has entirely vanished (which I often suspect), we Scots should know better.

GR Weir, Ochiltree.