Wednesday’s scribes focus on changes to Scottish football, global warming and the self-defeating nature of recent student protests.
Football should look to two-league solution Sir,-All the recent talk of a review of the SPL is pointing to some clubs wanting two top leagues of 10 teams.
Other options would be play-offs between the top teams to decide which club is eventually crowned as champions.
Surely, the idea of a league structure of any kind is to reward the club who have performed the best and the most consistently throughout the season.
Two leagues of 10 would make the top end of Scottish football very stagnant, while play-offs at the top would mean that the winners might not be the best team throughout the season.
Why not divide the Scottish game between two league tables, with three promotion and relegation places and another two being decided by play-offs.
More clubs would get the Old Firm dollar and there would be less familiarity between teams.
It seems to me that all that our football clubs are doing is chasing the best option to bring in as much cash as they can and that can only be to the detriment of the standard of football played and to the Scottish game in general.
Stephen Caldwell.31 Bankton Park,Kingskettle.
Record-breaking year for weather
Sir,-I thank Dr A’Brook (December 20) for his lesson on statistics.
However, he too must have noticed that just before the recent cold spell hit us, and just before the United Nations-sponsored Cancun jamboree (where the attendees were meeting to decide how to control the world’s climate), the Met Office was loudly proclaiming that 2010 was “amongst the hottest on record.”
(Dr) G. M. Lindsay.Whinfield Gardens,Kinross.
Nor room for complacency
Sir,-Clark Cross (December 17) made the extraordinary accusation that I am comforted by scientists warning of environmental disaster and, by implication, that I would welcome disaster as a “green zealot.”
I wish only the best for future generations.
I pray that the likes of Mr Cross and Dr Lindsay (who confuses climate and weather, December 16) are right but optimism is no substitute for science.
Sadly, Mr Cross is wrong or misleading on every point he made.
The Arctic Sea ice is retreating and polar bears are threatened.
The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking and, if this continues, the rise in sea levels would be disastrous.
NASA has refuted his claim that global warming stopped in the 1990s.
Global warming continues unabated.
Globally, every year of the 21st century has been warmer than every year except one of the 20th and that exception was 1998.
The only point Mr Clark got right was that the Himalayan glaciers are expected to survive longer than 25 years but they really are melting away.
The glaciers act as massive reservoirs regulating the flow of water to billions of people and their disappearance would have catastrophic consequences no cause for complacency there.
As for wind energy, its effectiveness is irrelevant to climate science and that is a different debate.
James Christie.2 Dryburgh Crescent,Perth.
Violence is self-defeating
Sir,-What future for student protest after the disgraceful scenes at the demonstration against tuition fees earlier this month?
Your journalist, Stefan Morkis, gave an interesting view on those troubles (Friday Forum, December 17).
It cannot be acceptable for an individual to be hospitalised due to over-enthusiastic use of truncheons by the police.
But, equally, acrobatics on the cenotaph or abuse hurled at Prince Charles and Camilla in their outdated car cannot be excused either.
The public can quickly be turned off a decent cause because of tactics that are crude, violent and intimidatory.
The student movement needs to realise that it is important to keep public opinion on their side.
That is best done by effective organisation of marches, skilled use of the media and a mature approach to getting to the people who actually make the decisions.
Some people may think that a protest has not served its purpose if it does not end in a set-piece clash with the police. They are wrong.
There is a challenge for the student movement to ensure that all who join marches to support their case against a rise in tuition fees are there for that purpose alone.
The main purpose of demo is not to outwit the authorities and then make an attack on a symbol of authority.
It is to sway public opinion round to the strength of your argument.
When student dissent simply becomes a byword for violence and chaos, moderate opinion will turn against it and their case will be lost.
Bob Taylor.24 Shiel Court,Glenrothes.
Suffering in silence
Sir,-We are aware and have great sympathy for all the people innocently caught in the great snow fiasco. It has been a miracle that no-one to date has been seriously injured or has lost their life and I pray that that will continue to be so.
However, thousands of senior citizens who endeavour to live independent lives are prisoners in their homes because there has been little or no effort by our councils to clear pavements to allow them access to shops and bus stops.
R. H. L. Mulheron.28 Cowgate,Tayport.
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