It's good to see someone standing up for Kate Forbes. MSPs take note

Anyone with a knowledge of 1984 will recognise these tactics but it takes a hero or heroine to stand up to this powerful cabal and I regard Kevin McKenna as one such hero.

Lovina Roe, Perth.

Morally beyond the pale

IN Neil Mackay’s Big Read (“Scotland will not be immune from the shock from a Trump victory”, November 3), Professor Peter Jackson says that “doing something rash to Britain’s nuclear deterrent would be unbelievably irresponsible”. He bends the meaning of that term entirely out of shape.

What is legally irresponsible is the failure over five decades on the part of the five nuclear-armed states (UK included) to comply with their obligation under Article V1 of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty to take real steps towards disarmament.

What is off-the-scale irresponsible is to maintain and even improve the deadly destructive power of these weapons and regularly threaten top use them, and to continue with this insane policy at a time of unprecedented international tension.

What is morally beyond the pale irresponsible is to be ready to commit a hideous atrocity with civilians of every age and condition as its victims.

You can sanitise the intent all you like with an abstract phrase like “deterrent”, but having nuclear weapons has no other meaning than a determination to burn the children of your enemy, and in doing so, to bring the house down on all of us.

David Mackenzie, Edinburgh.

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Will US act after Gaza deadline?

THERE are only a few days left for Israel to comply with the deadline imposed by Washington on humanitarian aid.

There is no doubt that the US election has impacted on America’s oversight on Israeli tactics in their ongoing conflict with Palestinians, but with the election over, they can have no pretence that their complicity on war crimes can be ignored. Aid to Gaza is well down on the 350 trucks a day minimum (it was 500 trucks a day before October 2023) that America demanded, with aid trucks falling to an average of 13 a day in early October (71 trucks at the end of the month). Starvation and disease are now real threats to the civilian population and Israeli tactics are undoubted war crimes.

Will America act after the 30-day deadline? Will the UK still allow this disgraceful conduct to continue, under the dubious “right of defence”? Will Israel be allowed to ethnically “cleanse” Gaza?

GR Weir, Ochiltree.

Consultants paid too much

I WOULD like people to reflect on the poor conditions under which doctors in Gaza try to meet the demands made upon them in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

How much money are they earning or are they just being true to the altruism underlying their vocation?

Then look at our cosseted senior consultants who are earning four times the hourly rate for reducing the inflated numbers of patients on waiting lists.

Of course, for overtime they merit extra payments for the extra hours and the strains imposed upon their family life.

The exorbitant amounts now being paid to them are draining the funds of the NHS.

At the foundation of the NHS, Aneurin Bevan claimed that he had to stuff the mouths of doctors with gold to get them onside for the establishment of this service.

It looks as though their appetite in that department has not shifted one little jot from that moment.

Denis Bruce, Bishopbriggs.

We must increase police funding

HOW can we expect our police services to operate efficiently when the SNP has slashed the numbers of officers to the bone and is leaving the force with old, crumbling police stations and out-of-date crime detection equipment?

Things are so bad that it has been agreed that certain crimes will not now be investigated and not surprisingly, latest reports show deaths on Scottish roads are rising.

Unless the SNP dramatically increases funding, public order will be at risk with a second-class police service.

Dennis Forbes Grattan, Aberdeen.

We should be grateful to the King

FOR my wife's birthday, we recently had the pleasure of staying in the Lodge at Dumfries House. It's been said that what strikes the visitor upon arrival at Dumfries House is the house's symmetry. That's true. But what is perhaps more true is the sense of balance that the visitor obtains after having visited.

Our Sunday morning began with a tour of the house's paintings. Particularly striking were two works completed by Jacob Thompson of Penrith in the 1830s. Thompson was commissioned by John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute to paint landscape scenes of the estate. One is a view of Dumfries House from the north, whilst the other is a view of the house painted from the walled garden. The paintings are not, however, architectural. They instead present the house both as a work of art and a social reality. The house is symbolically present, at the very centre of the paintings, but what matters more is what goes on around the house. Thompson’s paintings are therefore a perfect metaphor for the meaning of today's Dumfries House.

According to the 2023/24 King's Foundation Impact Report, almost a quarter of a million people have visited Dumfries House this year alone. The beneficial effect of the house's regeneration on the economy of East Ayrshire can then be measured in the pounds, shillings and pence spent by these visitors. But Dumfries House was not regenerated to be part of a theme park in which our heritage is repacked for the benefit of tourists. It's much more than just a house.

Dumfries House is the second-largest employer in the East Ayrshire area after the council. That is a proud worthy achievement in its own right. But in addition to these jobs, the house and estate also creates another layer of jobs through its investment in local trades and services. These facts should be at the forefront of people's minds when they seek high office in this council area. Country houses are, as the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton wrote, an endless source of expenditure and employment, providing a renewable pattern of redistribution. They are the greatest ecological achievements of our race. So it was with dismay that I read of comments made by a candidate, Marie Robertson of the SNP, standing in a forthcoming East Ayrshire council by-election, who called King Charles "inbred" and "intellectually challenged" on social media. Some years ago, the then Prince Charles wondered what had happened to our country that public language had arrived at such a dismal wasteland of banality, cliché and casual obscenity. How prescient.

That the house exists today is largely thanks to King Charles. It will be obvious to anyone who visits that the whole team there work exceptionally hard to ensure that visitors, not only from the local area but from far and wide, leave, not only appreciating a little more of Scotland's heritage, but perhaps like the house itself, a little regenerated. His last-minute intervention and his commitment to the long-term survival of this magnificent project of regeneration is, or should be, a cause for celebration and gratitude.

Graeme Arnott, Stewarton.

The King did great work with Dumfries House (Image: PA)

A pointless exercise

THE 29th United Nations conference, COP29, will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan from November 11-22.

Despite 28 years of climate promises we are told that the world will reach the much-feared 1.5C tipping point between 2026 and 2042. One can only surmise that the delegates enjoyed themselves at all 28 COP conferences and then went home and did nothing.

Amnesty International has said that between 40,000 and 50,000 delegates will attend COP29. The majority will fly in, creating the greenhouse gases they are trying to curb. That makes nearly a million attendees over 29 years creating additional greenhouse gases.

However, developing countries are going to Baku to fight for change and it is not loose change. They want developed countries to pay them at least $1 trillion every year to compensate for the destruction they claim has been done to their countries by the greenhouse gases emitted by the industrialised world over the past 200 years. Never mind, they can ask again at COP30 in Brazil in the Amazonian city of Belem do Para.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow.