This is our First Minister’s latest attempt to divert attention away from his own serious lack of judgment at home concerning pressing issues of the day, amongst them our rail, ferry, healthcare, child poverty, education and most recently defending the indefensible Fife Health Board. From nowhere we note that our under-fire FM is now apparently offering to bring in wounded and maimed children from [[Gaza]] into our already stretched and failing health care system for expensive, long-term treatments. But this humanitarian “offer” is apparently dependent on Keir Starmer’s agreement and backing from Westminster?
Surely no clear-thinking, sentient person will not have been sickened, disgusted and outraged by the footage and newsreels coming out of [[Gaza]] on a daily basis featuring the IDF’s barbaric treatment of the indigenous population… but for John Swinney to pretend for one minute that airlifting a handful of injured and damaged children and bringing them to our shores is going to make an iota of difference to the overall carnage that is daily being perpetrated on the inhabitants of [[Gaza]], is preposterous.
At best this is yet another poorly-thought-through impractical proposition: who decides which injured children should benefit? What will happen to them once they have been treated? Who will accompany them? Will they (and their relatives/carers) be allowed to remain in the UK afterwards?
At worst it could be construed as an indirect way of trapping Westminster into refusing to cooperate with the SNP (again) and probably denying treatment to these poor unfortunate souls.
If our FM genuinely wants to help, and I’ve no doubt he sincerely does, he should be calling out the perpetrators from the rooftops (the Israeli government and the IDF) of these heinous crimes against innocent children. He should be making representations to any and every organisation that could and should be intervening to help, using any means possible at his disposal.
But of course, he already has his hands full with his own self-inflicted problems. So why the pointless virtue-signalling, First Minister?
Ruth Gilbert’s article on rent controls (“‘Time to protect tenants’: Are landlords trying to water down Scottish rent controls?”, July 20) wrongly blames Scotland’s housing crisis on private landlords, ignoring systemic failures and the unintended consequences of punitive government policies.
Over 94% of Scottish landlords own fewer than five properties, often relying on rental income to supplement pensions. Since 2016, interventions like the Additional Dwelling Supplement, reduced mortgage interest relief, and stricter regulations have crushed margins, far outpacing post-Covid inflation’s already steep 20%-plus rise in maintenance and compliance costs. Scottish Land & Estates reports 15% of landlords sold up in 2023, with more exiting in 2024, shrinking rental stock. Edinburgh’s 12% drop in listings year-on-year has intensified competition, driving rents higher. Why did Ms Gilbert overlook this critical driver, focusing instead on landlord greed?
Rent controls will amplify this exodus, deterring investment. Despite £1 billion UK-wide build-to-rent investment in late 2024, developers now call Scotland’s regulatory climate “uniquely hostile”, stalling projects. Rent controls will accelerate this exodus, deterring investment. A prime example is the stalled BTR project at Buchanan Wharf in Glasgow, where Legal & General paused plans for 500-plus units in 2024 due to regulatory uncertainty and rising costs, as reported by Rettie. The mid-market sector, pitched as affordable for low- to middle-income tenants, is a flawed compromise – often unaffordable and diverting resources from social housing.
Vilifying small landlords – often individuals who’ve invested life savings in a property – is misguided. Cumulative government interventions have made their businesses unviable, and rent controls will accelerate exits, worsening the crisis. Ms Gilbert’s failure to acknowledge this suggests a one-sided narrative. Rent controls won’t build homes. Scotland needs a balanced approach: streamlining development, encouraging investment, and supporting tenants without demonising landlords, who are part of the solution.
Long before an ITV drama highlighted the failings the Post Office’s Horizon IT system, I had followed the in-plain-sight scandal for many years, and much of the reporting of it filled me with rage. No computer system is fool-proof; participants acted in good faith; checks and balances did their best in challenging circumstances; how were communities to know better than our courts? Refreshingly, Andrew Tickell’s column (“Despair as Post Office inquiry details scandal’s human cost”, July 13) indulged no such excuses. The surplus sentencing of, and hopelessly inadequate redress available to, postmasters was laid bare.
“Even if you honestly believed these postmasters were guilty as charged, it was still you who stigmatised these people, still you who played an indispensable part of the great harm done to them”, Andrew wrote.
It is a scandal that keeps on giving. Prior to Horizon, the Post Office used the Capture IT system, and it was just as polluted with “bugs and errors”. When Patricia Owen was charged with theft for a £6,000 shortfall at her branch under Capture, IT specialist Adrian Montagu turned up at her trial to testify to the fact that the earlier software too was “totally discredited”. But, for reasons unknown, he was not called by Ms Owen’s barrister, and the court was denied the opportunity of hearing that Capture was “an accident waiting to happen” .
Ms Owen was convicted in 1998 and received a suspended jail sentence; she died in 2003. Her family assert that the conviction “wrecked” her life. However, the newly discovered specialist IT report commissioned for Ms Owen’s defence could help quash the convictions of other postmasters.
I am pleased to say that I can finally say that I agree with George Morton (Letters, July 20). Britain and Russia are effectively at war. Russia had been murdering people on British soil and staging cyber-attacks on our infrastructure long before it attacked Ukraine.
Berwick on Tweed has apparently been at war with it since about 1855, having never made peace after the Crimean War. This situation is clearly a grave cause for concern and vigilance, but I do not think that giving in to Putin is the way forward. We tried to appease Hitler in the 1930s and when we eventually had to fight him, he was stronger, and we were weaker.
We must continue to do everything possible to support Ukraine. We should have done more earlier.
If there is any comfort for Western European democracies in this horrible situation it is that Ukraine has come close to destroying Russia’s war machine and they won’t be ready for another big adventure for at least five years. Britain and three EU countries have bigger GDPs than Russia so should be able to outperform Russia in the flow of munitions and firepower. There are plenty of better things to spend the money on, but we dare not leave the eastern border of the EU poorly defended.
Russians may learn to prefer butter to guns but Putin is unlikely to give them the choice, or us.
I agree with much of what Susan Egelstaff says in her excellent column (“Why do we know so little about Glasgow 2026 with only a year to go?”, July 20).
However, I was disappointed that Susan is one of many sports journalists who failed to pursue my earlier request to report the exclusion of the Marathon from the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games.
It is now well over six months since I first raised this matter. I have sought support from various bodies, including Team Scotland, the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) and even the King, in his position as Patron of the Commonwealth Games. In some cases I have experienced great difficulty in getting a response, particularly in the case of the CGF.
I understand the financial constraints faced by Glasgow 2026 but, in my last letter to the CGF, I suggested that the Marathon could be self-financing if it were a mass participation event, financed by sponsorship and entry fees from the mass participants, as distinct from the elite athletes representing their countries. The latter could start, say, 20 minutes before the former. Thousands of runners could be willing to pay a substantial entry fee to participate in such a prestigious event, which would also help to showcase the city of Glasgow to a multi-million international TV audience.
In my latest letter to the chief executive of the CGF I suggested that, if she and her team are incapable of organising such a Marathon for Glasgow 2026, they should investigate the possibility of hiring the organisers of the London Marathon or the Edinburgh Marathon or the Great Scottish Run. Three weeks later, I am still waiting on a reply or even an acknowledgement. Perhaps I should not be surprised, as it took her 14 weeks to reply to my previous letter.
So far I detect a lamentable lack of efficiency, ambition and initiative on the part of the CGF. If they fail to raise their game, I fear that, in the longer term, the Commonwealth Games will be faced with an existential crisis.
Your Big Read article on ScotRail (“The great Scottish train robbery”, July 20) quotes an Aslef official who states that “all that the travelling public want is clean, safe, reliable and affordable trains. That’s what the [[pub]]lic are pushing for”. This is an incomplete list. We also want the opaque pricing of tickets to end.
Last week I bought a return ticket from Glasgow to Dundee on a senior railcard. The price at the ticket machine was £33.00. But when I went to the ticket office I was offered a split ticket option: a ticket from Glasgow to Perth (£13.85) and a ticket from Perth to [[Dundee]] (£7.45) costing a total of £21.30. And without the need to change trains. [[ScotRail]]: please explain this ludicrous pricing.
