Sir, – A protest camp is set up outside the Scottish Parliament and wads of cash are deployed to remove it.
It is public cash of course. The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body is taking swift legal action to evict pro-independence activists from a camp near the main entrance.
The SPCB will not say how much it is spending on legal fees but it has confirmed it will seek to recover the costs from the campers.
Not that long ago, when Alex Salmond ran Scotland, the Scottish Parliament signalled a soft approach to dealing with illegal camp sites.
That, of course, was when these camps were not in sight of the parliament. It is easy to be tolerant when you don’t have to tolerate upset and inconvenience. I don’t agree with these activists’politics but they have every right to protest and should at least have support from the SNP MSPs.
Bob Ferguson. North Muirton, Perth.
What if Scotland votes to quit?
Sir, – One has to ponder that if English, Welsh and Northern Irish voters vote yes and Scottish voters say no at the EU referendum, will this be a democratic outrage to Nicola Sturgeon?
Gerry Marshall. Thistle Cottage, Main Street, Kinnesswood.
What was wrong with Scots name?
Sir, – When I discovered that the SNP Government has named the new mega windfarm development off the Fife coast Neart na Gaoithe, I decided to look over the German ocean for the nearest word to cobbler(s) to discover that it is schuster, which sounds suspiciously like the old Scots word for cobbler, which is soutar.
So with apologies to one of the SNP’s main benefactors, soutars to them all. Old Scots for me, Gaelic mo bahoochie.
Andrew Duncan. Upper Largo.
Thin edge of the wedge
Sir, – The Scottish Parliament has dismissed a petition calling for the legalisation of incest.
It rejected arguments that the sexual love of any two consenting adults should be accepted and respected.
MSPs disagreed with the notion that mutual love alone serves to validate a sexual relationship.
Is this the same parliament that introduced same-sex marriage, accepting as unanswerable arguments such as these?
We are at an early stage, but we are on the road to legalisation and societal acceptance of incest.
Secular liberal thinking fails to mount successful arguments against it, and the ever-progressive media has already started nibbling at the boundaries of the taboo.
The incestuous sex in Game of Thrones is not an isolated example. Pornography websites already report high traffic for portrayals of intergenerational sex within families.
While our society presents a facade of hysterical panic about protecting children, it is unable to maintain one of the most fundamental elements of this: protecting children from sexual abuse in the family home.
Once sex between a 21-year-old daughter and her father or stepfather is legal, how much more vulnerable to abuse will she be aged 16?
How will it change the father’s attitude to his sexually maturing daughter?
How will daughters interpret their fathers’ efforts to form a close relationship?
Currently there are three powerful reasons to oppose incest: moral revulsion, genetic risk, and protection from sexual abuse within families.
In a culture that regards moral revulsion as mere subjective emotion, and sex as unrelated to reproduction, that just leaves the protection of vulnerable individuals in families.
Once television starts showing warm documentaries about happy incestuous couples, the desire to protect children growing up in the family home will be outweighed by progressive sentimentality.
Richard Lucas. 11 Broomyknowe, Colinton, Edinburgh.
Compensate home owner
Sir, – I see Aberdeenshire Council is now leaning towards retrospective approval of the Travellers’ site at St Cyrus. There is an existing property beside this illegal development which is a bed-and-breakfast plus a home.
It now has little or no value as a business and is possibly not a sellable home. Any planning approval needs to include 100% compensation for the existing owners of this property.
The travellers’ development, built without permission, would devalue any private home or business.
George Sangster. Woodlands, Logie, Craigo, Montrose.
Our youth have gone soft
Sir, – It has come full circle with the grandchildren of rebellious 1960s students demanding politically correct campuses where staff provide parental guidance instead of academic rigour.
Students cite emotional “trauma” if exposed to ideas they do not like and demand challenging legal topics or major works of literature be “cleansed” before they are taught.
In America, the department of education is partly to blame for this ludicrous state of affairs as it has allowed student angst to morph into a tyranny that has lecturers running scared.
Its office of civil rights introduced over-arching professional misconduct policies which have allowed students to engineer the sacking of staff for the most trivial of offences.
In the UK, lecturers vainly seek to comprehend this 9/11 generation made up of molly-coddled teenagers apparently devoid of any sense of audacious independence.
Brought up in a security-saturated era, perhaps it is only to be expected that they speak the language of emotional protection and demand safe rooms equipped with cuddly toys.
But this places severe restrictions on freedom of speech and if students want a rounded education to prepare them for the world they should leave such nonsense at home.
Rev Dr John Cameron. 10 Howard Place, St Andrews.
UK changed for worse
Sir, – At the age of 70 and after a fully employed lifetime of working in the construction industry in every sort of environment, in almost every part of the United Kingdom, I think I can genuinely say I have been around the houses many times.
I was born as the Second World War was finishing and both my parents had been in uniform for its entirety, defending what was our way of life, our values and our beliefs.
But in recent times, I have seen political correctness going from mild madness to sheer insanity and anyone who says anything that someone decides is not being politically correct is immediately branded phobic.
In recent years we have seen people who have worn a crucifix around their neck threatened with dismissal because someone may be offended.
We have seen the creep of forced marriage, female genital mutilation, so-called honour killings and the formation of Sharia Law courts.
Some areas of the United Kingdom are developing into non-English speaking ghettos, all in the name of multiculturism.
The massed bands of the politically correct tub thumpers went into overdrive at comments made by US presidential candidate Donald Trump a few weeks ago.
But Mr Trump summed up the frustration felt by many when he asked: “What the hell is going on?”
Colin Cookson. Hatton Green, Stenton, Glenrothes.
Long history of Apostles’ Creed
Sir, – Malcolm Burley (February 15) is wrong to state that the Apostles’ Creed originated 400 years after the apostles’ time.
We have an early version of it being used in the 2nd Century and all the beliefs within it are found in the apostolic writings of the New Testament.
Of course, there are secondary issues on which Christians disagree, but then unlike, it appears, some secularist fundamentalists, we allow diversity.
Mr Burley also asks what I mean by Christian education.
Every school has to have an ethos and a philosophical and value system.
Although they like to claim differently, secular schools are not neutral.
A Christian school is one in which the ethos and value system is that of Jesus Christ and includes the values of equality, diversity and tolerance.
The Scottish education system was based upon those Christian values.
It is only as we have moved away from these that we are beginning to see such a dumbing down of the nation, and a growing inequality in education between rich and poor.
David Robertson. St Peter’s Free Church, 4 St Peter Street, Dundee.