Sir, Almost unnoticed last weekend a girl aged 12 years and three months became our youngest ever mother when she produced a baby girl conceived when she was in primary school.
Her own mother (who herself was a near geriatric primigravida at 15) expressed her admiration for the 13-year-old father who intended to “help bring up his daughter”.
God forbid that I should be judgmental, but allowing your primary school daughter to have sexual relations upstairs with her “boyfriend” is illegal under the Sex Offences Act 1993.
So another cycle of wasted human potential has started and yet more government time and money will be spent supporting Britain’s aggressively anti-social minority.
There is surely an argument that this dysfunctional grouping one could hardly call it a family is so feckless and incompetent that the child be put up for adoption.
Dr John Cameron. 10 Howard Place, St Andrews.
It will be better than this
Sir, Jonathan Brown in his letter (April 16), should really have looked more thoroughly, and a bit more subjectively, at his information.
“1,840 million people in India without sanitation” this is a country that is in receipt of millions of pounds in aid from the British Government and others, yet squanders millions on space rockets.
“57 million children globally with no opportunity to go to primary school” while we in Britain spend millions on education yet still have children leaving primary with very little in the way of literacy.
“One in eight of the 7.1 billion people in the world suffering chronic undernourishment” yet for all we have been ‘better together’ for hundreds of years thousands of families all over Britain are having to depend on food bank handouts since this Tory/Lib Dem coalition came to power and still we are squandering billions on nuclear submarines that will never be used.
If Scots do vote for independence in September it may not result in perfection, but I think it will be a damned sight better than what we are saddled with just now.
Ian Allan. Marchside Court, Sauchie.
Plenty statistics missed point
Sir, The virtual blizzard of statistics provided by your correspondent David Kelly (letters, April 11), on small countries makes interesting reading, but misses the point I was making.
Post-independence large countries like Canada, Australia, USA, Brazil and, yes, India, given that it has to feed 17 % of the world’s population, have prospered.
He quotes the Nordic countries happiness etc. Sweden, one of the largest countries in Europe, has built its prosperity after the receipt of Marshall Plan aid post Second World War.
Norway, another of the largest, found oil and gas offshore, but with a small population, was able to put wealth aside in a sovereign fund for the future whereas the UK had to spread its oil and gas wealth to sustain a population more than 10 times greater with its much larger state benefits bill.
He quoted small Qatar as having the highest GDP per capita in the world. This is not surprising. Owing to a quirk of colonial political engineering it ended up with 5% of the planet’s oil and gas reserves within its territory.
Tiny Brunei is in a similar position with a population smaller than Glasgow’s. With the countries of central Africa now showing the globe’s fastest economic growth going it alone in the face of globalisation would seem foolhardy.
Scandinavian countries have had high tax and spend governments but this model is now wilting under a serious threat from their right wing nationalistic parties. One can’t help but wonder if Scottish voters are being asked to jump aboard the high tax and spend bandwagon just as it is about to be derailed by the power of international capitalism.
Joseph A Peterson. 32 Kilrymont Road, St Andrew.
This is the road to lawlessness
Sir, As a retired police officer I remember having it pointed out to students at the Scottish Police College that only the monarch was above the law. This did not include the monarch’s family.
In view of what has been occurring in parliament re expenses scandals, probationer constables will have to be taught that MPs are also obviously above the law. I have never heard that rules created by any organisation override the Common and Statute Law in Great Britain, which states monetary advantage gained in a criminal pursuit is one or other of theft, deception or fraud.
If the current situation is allowed to continue we will have, in a short period of time, total lawlessness in this nation. Then where will we be? This nonsense must be reined in.
It also reflects badly on honest MPs as the public will end up just tarring them all with same brush.
Allan Murray. 44 Napier Road, Glenrothes.