Sir, – Both Richard Lucas and Les Mackay (Thursday’s Letters) are correct that the Westminster harassment furore shows low personal standards of conduct. However, the parliamentary abuses just mirror the decline in our own morality and probity as a society.
It is notable, for instance, that no critics of these politicians or film industry figures have remarked on the harassers’ betrayal of their marriage vows.
To air that specific criticism would be seen as far too old hat in our increasingly dystopian and debased society.
I do not imagine that the Scottish Parliament is one jot better, though, than the House of Commons for personal probity and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will win few friends among the electorate when she simplistically blames men for the whole sorry episode.
So far Ms Sturgeon has alienated the Spanish government, the White House and now she blames men in the round for our society’s moral collapse.
I suspect that our First Minister will no longer be in place by the time of the next Holyrood elections for she is already well on her way to becoming an electoral liability for her own party with this ill thought-out nonsense.
Gus Logan.
2 York Road,
North Berwick.
Society reaping what it sows
Sir, – The collective moral panic that is now gripping the chattering classes is becoming ever more shrill and irrational.
Alex Bell (Thursday’s Courier) tells us that all men in all trades and professions are the problem. While this sounds very humble, it is just simply not true.
It is not the case that it is all men who are to blame, nor is the abuse of sex and power reserved just to men – although the majority is.
In the past year in England and Wales, there were 31,886 sexual assaults of women and 4,635 of men.
Women can be as guilty of men in terms of using power to abuse.
In the simplistic narrative which says that it’s just a male problem, there is a danger that we miss the elephant in the room.
We reap what we sow. When our society desacralised sex – removed it from any connection with marriage, family and children – and thought that we could have what we want, when we want, without consequences, what did we expect would happen?
Did no one foresee the increase in sexually transmitted diseases, the broken homes and the sexual abuse of power?
The idea that by just passing laws or making pompous, virtue-signalling, self-righteous comments we will solve this problem is a dangerous and delusional fantasy.
When will we wake up to the fact that if we have rejected the roots of Christianity on which our society was founded, we cannot long expect to retain the fruits? Repentance is an old-fashioned word but it’s a concept and practice that is sorely needed in modern Britain.
David Robertson.
St Peter’s Free Church,
4 St Peter Street,
Dundee.
Beware gender stereotyping
Sir, – The 19th Century historian Lord Macaulay rightly wrote: “We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.”
The Weinstein farrago has led to a plethora of witch hunts where clumsy encounters are seen as dangerous sex crimes and awkward flirtation as brutish harassment.
Yet the febrile indignation of snowflakery portraying men as predatory beasts and women as anxious wallflowers undermines decades of female empowerment.
Portraying the workplace as a cauldron of fear, conflict and depravity where female employees are at permanent risk promotes the worst kind of gender stereotyping.
The inescapable logic is that women, for their protection, should stay at home or be segregated at work, just as misogynists advocate.
And it does women another terrible disservice in trivialising genuine abuse.
If the clumsy knee-toucher is put on the same level as the vicious rapist, the cause of female emancipation is lost.
Rev Dr John Cameron.
10 Howard Place,
St Andrews.
Nuanced take on immigration
Sir, – Former Labour politician Alistair Darling raises the concern over Scotland’s long-term demographics and suggests a differentiated immigration system for Scotland as a possible solution.
Yet surely the risk of undermining the integrity of the United Kingdom should be avoided?
The SNP would argue for such additional powers but without care for how their use might impact on the rest of the UK.
The answer needs to be a more nuanced approach across the whole of the United Kingdom, where genuine evidence of sectors requiring skilled employees from overseas can be satisfied by a range of temporary and long-term work visas with an eventual route to citizenship for those meeting appropriate criteria.
It might very well be that such a system of immigration targeting where the need is greatest would see Scotland taking a much higher proportion of immigrants than elsewhere in the United Kingdom, but that would depend on suitable job opportunities existing. Meanwhile, it would avoid creating unnecessary differences across the UK in how businesses fill their vacancies.
Keith Howell.
White Moss,
West Linton.
Is bridge really completed?
Sir, – The magnificent Queensferry Crossing is still under construction.
Lanes are coned off, work continues on approach roads and there are rush-hour delays in spite of Cabinet Secretary Keith Brown’s assurances in early September that all would be well in a fortnight.
Perhaps it should have been opened in 2018, when it could actually have been ready for use.
Malcolm Parkin.
15 Gamekeepers Road,
Kinnesswood,
Kinross.
