Sir, – Ruth Davidson hopes her pregnancy will normalise the deliberate production of fatherless children. She implies that kids don’t need a dad, and not a single MSP demurs.
In an age obsessed with children’s rights, their basic need for a mum and a dad is trumped by the desire of adults to form relationships and family structures as they wish. However, Mum and Dad are not indistinguishable and interchangeable Parent A and Parent B. Male and female role models in the home are important. Despite the best efforts of the liberal sociology establishment to obscure the facts, the negative outcomes associated with same-sex parenting should give cause for concern.
Connection to one’s natural family is a powerful force, and the yearnings of those brought up in the absence of one genetic parent can be overwhelming as a young person matures.
Ms Davidson had planned to commit to her partner in the solemn legal and public pledges of lifelong faithfulness, care and love that constitute marriage, but they decided to pay vets’ bills instead. It seems her understanding of marriage is more focused on an expensive day than its deep meaning and power to sustain a relationship. Marriage preceding child birth is a strong predictor of good outcomes for children. That’s the sort of traditional wisdom that a “Conservative” Party might seek to promote. But Ms Davidson’s party is anything but conservative.
Our virtue-signalling political elite are predictably enthusiastic, while condemning as a homophobic bigot anyone claiming that kids should, ideally, have a mum and a dad.
“Listening to young people” is a routine refrain in Holyrood, but how does one reply when they say that they really wish they had had a mum and a dad?
Richard Lucas,
Scottish Family Party leader.
Bath Street,
Glasgow.
Help for parents must be priority
Sir, – I listened to a radio phone-in about Ruth Davidson’s happy news and the issues faced by couples who want to start a family.
Many talked about the stress. Responses ranged from “ they should have thought about that in the first place” to “we have no choice, we both need to work to pay the bills”.
Some couples keep working in order to continue their lifestyle, but most are prepared to make sacrifices so their partnership can include children.
This was always the case but now, with the average rent or mortgage on a three bedroom house at £900 a month, full-time child care £200 a week per child and average take-home pay £1,600 a month, one spouse is effectively working to pay the mortgage, and grandparents are increasingly involved in childminding.
Scotland’s future depends on more children born to decent parents, and ideally one of them should be at home before children go to school.
I wish Ms Davidson all the best and hope that if she has any spare time she will give a thought to policies that reduce the cost of housing and childcare, including grants for parents to stay at home with their children. This was mooted by Labour several years ago and is the basis of Angela Merkel’s Betreuungsgeld proposals.
Allan Sutherland.
Willow Row,
Stonehaven.
Keepers have a role to play
Sir, – SNH are to be commended for allowing a cull of ravens up in Strathbraan to protect lambs, curlew and other vulnerable species.
Duncan Orr-Ewing of the RSPB is quoted as being very concerned about this. If he was to look north towards Aberfeldy he would observe the giant wind turbines and note the havoc that they can create to our resident and migrant birds, especially raptors.
On Loch Leven, the RSPB’s Vane Farm reserve employs a retired gamekeeper with the latest night sights on his rifle to shoot foxes.
Down south on the RSPB’s Berney Marshes reserve, lapwings, redshank and snipe have staged a remarkable recovery due to the strict culling of foxes, corvids and rats.
If the UK’s nature reserves were all to employ a gamekeeper to control vermin then soon our silent countryside would be filled with birdsong.
A pair of binoculars just doesn’t do the job.
Michael C Smith.
Threapmuir Farm,
Cleish.
Poor pavements are a hazard
Sir, – I write to remark on the disrepair of the pavements in and around central Dundee.
In a lot of cases these flagstones are uneven and in many instances hazardous.
I myself have fallen heavily on two occasions. I have contacted my MSP on this matter and await a reply.
Surely something can be done to alleviate this matter before someone is gravely injured.
Perhaps this is a case again for the enigma of budgets, this being common in a great many disputes these days.
Optimistically I hope something can be worked out to conclude this concern.
Peter Hastie.
Fleming Gardens,
Dundee.
A New approach to how we live
Sir, – My wife and I recently returned from a six-week tour of New Zealand, and found it to be a different country to ours in several ways.
New Zealand is almost completely litter-free. Places of interest, scenic locations and laybys rarely have bins, merely a polite request to take your litter home. And that is what people do.
Here it is almost impossible to walk down a street without hearing swearing. There it was possible to count the number of occasions on the fingers on one hand.
We have here a lack of public conveniences. In New Zealand, in villages, towns and cities, there are ample conveniences. And in the duration of our trip, we only encountered one that was dirty.
Our news has an almost daily report of murder or rape. In six weeks, there was only one report of a previous murder being reinvestigated.
Even before the beast from the east, there was an abundance of potholes on our roads. New Zealand’s roads are excellent with a minimum of potholes, even on those which are not tarred.
We mainly stayed in Airbnbs and half of the property owners were not there at the times we arrived, but arrangements had been made for our arrival. Namely, a key in the door, or the door left open and the key on the table inside. There is a belief that you can trust people until they prove otherwise. How different to this country.
Why are these differences so pronounced? Scotland and the United Kingdom seem now to believe that anti-social behaviour is a part of life which cannot be reversed. Facilities for the public are being removed in all areas as services disintegrate.
Where is the trust in others, the willingness of people to take responsibility for their actions? There are lessons we can learn from Down Under, but first there must be a desire to do so. I fear that that desire at present is not there.
Neil P Robertson.
Church Place,
Freuchie.
Holes in Swiss comparison
Sir, – The biggest mistakes in our recent history were entering the 20th Century’s two “world” wars, follies into which we were misled by that classic Tory renegade Winston Churchill. In the 21st Century his snake-oil successors sold us Brexit.
I see they’re now promoting Switzerland as a model for post-Brexit Britain. Exactly how its borderless state of dependency represents a suitable destiny for an “independent” UK is not immediately clear but I suppose it may limit the damage.
In the 2016 referendum we were offered a deceptively binary choice. When the grisly details of the Brexit deal are known we should be allowed one last chance to reject this lunacy before such unparliamentarily devices are banned for good.
Rev Dr John Cameron.
Howard Place,
St Andrews.
Respect other road users
Sir, – I see in your motoring section that Volvo are boasting there hasn’t been a single fatality inside one of their XC90 models since its launch in 2002.
It seems very insensitive, however, given that the XC90 is one of the largest cars on the road and there have doubtless been fatalities among the motorists who came up against such a behemoth in a road traffic collision.
Volvo’s advertising department might think to run their campaigns by the PR department before making capital out of such unfortunate circumstances.
Brian Anderson.
Cloanden Place,
Kirkcaldy.
