SIR, – Why can Prime Minister Gordon Brown not answer a question?
Week after week, I watch prime minister's question time on TV. When he has a go at David Cameron, leader of the Opposition, Mr Brown demands an answer to what Tory policy might be on an issue. But when the tables are turned, the prime minister goes off on a tangent, shouting about decisions taken in the days of Margaret Thatcher's premiership.
Surely we, the electorate, who did not get a chance to elect the present PM, should be told what this Labour government plans for our future, or like everything else is it to remain a secret?
Already, under Gordon Brown's wing, our lot over the past few years has not been very encouraging.
Terry Duncan,
27 Greame Road,
Bridlington,
East Yorkshire.
SIR, – Witnessing the weekly tirade between Gordon Brown, our unelected prime minister, and Conservative leader David Cameron at prime minister's question time, I asked myself: “Where do we go from here?”
A barrage of statistics erupted and the finger of blame pointed in so many directions that the viewers were mesmerised.
Meanwhile, our soldiers are dying on a foreign field, and for what?
The Chilcot inquiry took a dramatic turn with the evidence from Clare Short and the revelation by Sir Kevin Tebbit that the then chancellor, Gordon Brown, guillotined £1billion from the Ministry of Defence finances three weeks after the invasion of Iraq.
Denial followed denial as our leaders jostled for political point-scoring.
Since no previous minister for defence would submit to press scrutiny, it appears that, rather than our troops being bunkered, it is actually the politicians who now seek cover from the flak.
Promises are in abundance with an election on the horizon – promises made in the past but jettisoned when reality came home to roost.
The charade continues, yet these politicians expect us to give them due respect by voting for their integrity, prudence and honesty when in fact they have given us nothing but hubris, greed, dishonesty and sleaze.
Where to now, I ask?
In this pervasive climate of freeze and impending cuts, any place but Britain.
George Paterson,
2 Loch Way,
Kemnay.
SIR, – Dr Walter J. MacCulloch is, of course, correct (Letters, February 4): it is a disgrace that 66 years, or five school generations, since the great 1944 Education Act, apparently 20% of Scots are functionally illiterate. This in the country of “a school in every parish" since the 1500s, resulting in the Scots' “invention of the modern world".
In 2007, Channel 4 featured a superb three-part documentary on Monteagle primary school in Dagenham, with a wide multiracial/cultural mix of pupils, which re-adopted phonics under its inspiring head teacher Linna Thompson, despite shortlived opposition from some staff. Within a school year, it reversed the illiteracy, boredom, lack of interest in and fear of learning to read, evidenced by many of its pupils.
Mastering phonics then leads children on to recognising whole words and dealing with groupings such as o-u-g-h more easily and efficiently than expecting them to run before they can even toddle, through “look and say" and “whole sentence" comprehension, in an integrated process.
John Birkett,
12 Horseleys Park,
St Andrews.
SIR, – Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), having been handed everything it asked for from the inquiry Reporter and from the SNP energy minister, now gives the impression that its mitigation measures on the Beauly-Denny power line involve undergrounding substantial sections of line.
In fact, SSE has made no concessions whatsoever as far as the 400kV giant line is concerned, none of which will be undergrounded. The lines they are saying will be undergrounded are quite separate 132kV lines strung on the existing height of pylons. How this amounts to mitigation of the effects of the new line is baffling to anyone of normal rationality.
If these 132kV lines, for the most part nowhere near the route of the giant pylons, are blots on the landscape, and the Balblair wirescape certainly is, they have been so for decades and one wonders why the public-spirited SSE has tolerated them for so long after privatisation.
Incidentally, SSE has published a map proudly featuring lines to be removed, including a length of line in Strathglass which is simply a redundant section of the old line which is being replaced.
Ronald D. MacLean,
Berisay,
Culburnie,
Kiltarlity.
SIR, – If anyone deserves a medal for service in Afghanistan it must be the chef who kept feeding the troops for six whole weeks with Spam as the main course (the Press and Journal, February 4).
Who says the age of invention is dead?
What I find incredible is that, for some reason or another, it was found impossible to renew supplies for that length of time – black marks to the Ministry of Defence, or whoever was responsible. Is this what they all trumpet about; looking after our servicemen and women?
While trapped in the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal during the Israeli/Egyptian conflict in 1979, we had supplies of Australian Tom Piper stew served up occasionally, and that was bad enough. Six straight weeks of it? Ugh.
Jim Stewart,
23 West Street,
Johnshaven.