TUESDAY saw another great edition of the National. Michael Donnelly managed another great exposé in his Long Letter. Labour must not be allowed to get away with its fit-ups and plots to badmouth the SNP’s new administration for its own past years of criminal neglect – in this instance the direct-asset stripping of the People’s Palace, to the extent of the health and safety of its very structure.
Labour also tried to blame the SNP for its own years of downright opposition to equal pay for women. The current union official leading the strike happens to be a Labour candidate more interested in attacking and blaming the SNP for her party’s own failures. Where has she been all these years when the SNP fought for equal pay and is trying to find the money to do so?
Once again, Hamish MacPherson delivered an excellent addition to his series of articles on our sabotaged and stolen history. This week his coverage of the 1719 Rebellion reiterated the anti-Union side of the Jacobites so conveniently ignored.
Other readers’ letters yesterday supported Carolyn Leckie’s column for exposing Brian “Scotland is British” Wilson’s Labour Weakly column in the failed anti-Scotsman newspaper.
I never thocht I would see a paper backing Scottish independence, and Unionist Brit Nat bastions getting their comeuppance, in my lifetime.
Unlike the last referendum, the much-awaited next one has the smell of victory in the air and the smell of fear in the Unionist camps as their creatures scurry to their bolt holes with their Judas money packed in the carpet bags, singing like canaries and stool pigeons.
All the way to their patriotic non-dom isles.
Donald Anderson
Glasgow
WELL done Michael Donnelly for revealing the detailed extent of the decline of the People’s Palace in Glasgow. Sadly, these days it’s hard to be surprised at the low value set on any kind of Scottish cultural narrative.
The struggle against the “cringe” goes on!
Douglas Hunter
Ancrum, Roxburghshire
I HAVE some sympathy with the views of the anonymous writer of the letter titled “It is naive to think that the self-ID system wouldn’t be abused” (Letters, October 23), but not so much with their claim to be too afraid to append their name to their letter.
I come at this from a slightly different angle. I was the partner of a transwoman who never did have the courage to live her day-to-day life in her correct gender. Jean was not afraid of a few insults or a bit of robust debate – that was part of her day job.
She was afraid of losing her job and never finding another one; of being disowned by her family; of being beaten up in the street or on her stair, all of which had happened to transwomen of our acquaintance.
I remember her distress on discovering, at a preliminary meeting for Pride, that transwomen would not be allowed to access the women-only safe space after the march. She never felt safe enough to go to Pride again. As a transwoman she felt exactly the same about predatory or violent men as ciswomen do. Only much more so.
My solution? I don’t know that I have one, except to go on debating and discussing and listening and being honest and kind and courageous. This is not a straightforward issue and we shouldn’t treat it as if it were. Willingness to listen, and to see who is vulnerable and who isn’t might prevent more transwomen like Jean dying much too young.
Incidentally, I’m also an employee of Edinburgh University; out, loud and proud and most definitely not afraid.
Max Marnau
Selkirk
HAVING met him, I was sad to hear the news of the death of Joachim Ronneberg, the leader of the attack on the Vermork hydro-electric plant in Norway, at which the German forces were manufacturing heavy water in the Second World War, the story popularised through the film The Heroes of Telemark.
He was trained in various locations in Lochaber and Badenoch but mainly based at Swordland on Loch Morar, near Mallaig. He visited Fort William in 1997 after the big Rotary International Convention in Glasgow, while en route to his former training locations. He spoke to Lochaber Rotary Club and I hosted his talk in Lochaber House, the Highland Council Chambers, for the benefit of the wider community including some expat Norwegians.
His detailed account of the raid was inspiring, especially on realising he was only 23 at the time. Contrary to the film account, of which he was dismissive, not a shot was fired. Despite his fame he seemed a modest character. He was tall and lithe but his visual resemblance to Clint Eastwood was striking!
John C Hutchison
Fort William
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