SIR Billy Connolly is now a cantankerous auld git, here breaking the first rule of historical analysis – judging the standards of the past by the standards of the present (Connolly: Rob Roy was a criminal, not a folk hero, Nov 5). Rob Roy was a man of his time, involved in all sorts of affairs and ventures, and a great man by those standards. The activities which he engaged in were no less rambunctious and loaded with skullduggery than those of his contemporaries.
Clan MacGregor were outlawed and persecuted by the treacherous Campbell chiefs who were lapdogs of England. The clan’s very name itself was proscribed, and Rob Roy’s kinsfolk were hunted down and destroyed like vermin by bloodhounds trained from birth on the scent of MacGregor blood. Sir Billy Connolly makes no mention of this, but he is a knight of the British empire after all.
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Sir Billy Connolly should just stick to comedy, something he was once very good at, and the occasional cameo movie role in his final years, and stop making a mockery of himself and his country. He should not have accepted a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth I – that was an absolute disgraceful thing to do. In a hundred years or less, future commentators will be aptly describing him as a sell-out, an establishment character who has the blood of the British empire on his hands, the suffering of the millions by British colonialism and who profiteered with a title bestowed by the racist British state – once we are through the other side of London rule, Scotland is an independent socialist republic and the British state is widely recognised as an abominable, shameful episode of the distant past.
Neil Mackay
via email
BILLY Connolly’s take on Rob Roy is interesting, and some of his theories may even be true.
For a more thoughtful, nuanced look at that Highlander, I can recommend the late WH Murray’s biography, Rob Roy MacGregor – His Life and Times. It’s a must-read for those interested in the complex history of our country.
Murray lived in Scotland all his days, did not rubbish the independence cause and was fervent in his work to protect Scotland’s natural environment ... which is a lot more than can be said for Billy Connolly.
Jim Butchart
via email
MR Tim Hopkins accuses me of unspoken prejudice and Mr Derek Ball accuses me of unspoken dogmatism (Letters, Nov 2). Both allegations are untrue, but I think it will be difficult for them to accept that as in failing to refute Richard Walker’s doctrine of subjective truth both Mr Hopkins are Mr Ball are left with no philosophical criteria to measure truth and untruth, except what they themselves passionately believe to be true. That is not truth, but faith.
I do indeed believe in the immutability of sex characteristics, as do my gay and lesbian friends and colleagues who cited this in the debate in the chamber as reasons for supporting the Labour motion that the recommendations of the Cass Report should be implemented in Scotland. Ad hominem assumptions about people who advocate the need for scientific rigour around the issue of self-identification is a very lazy defence from Mr Hopkins, his chief problem being that the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community, like any large social community, is itself divided on self-identification, a reality which Mr Hopkins conveniently ignores.
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Until my recent retirement my working background for the last 20 years has been in addictions support work, in the course of which I have helped numerous people with drug and alcohol problems to realise their sexuality and to come out as gay or lesbian. As well as having gay and lesbian friends I have sat at the bedsides of older gay men dying of alcohol abuse, and have tried to walk with them in their struggle. So Mr Ball’s assumptions about me are wrong, although he does make false arguments in that while there are human hermaphrodites and fish who can change sex, the former are born in that state and do not transform as do the fish.
Further, Mr Ball completely misinterprets the core of the debate here, as he erroneously claims that “the recognition of transwomen” is what some gay, lesbian, and bisexual people feel concerned about, when the reality is that transwomen have been recognised in law for the last 20 years. The main target for demonisation, as far as I can see, are the many gender-critical feminists, critical of the implications of self-ID, who for decades have been staunch allies of the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community.
Cllr Andy Doig (Independent)
Renfrewshire Council
REGARDING your front page of November 5 with the wording “keep our unis free”, tertiary education isn’t “free”, it’s financed by taxpayers. And this particular taxpayer doesn’t see why he should be forced to finance it, preferring to dispose of his money in other ways.
The scattergun socialism of the SNP, SSP, Greens and Alba is by no means a must in the fight for independence.
George Morton
Rosyth
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