Tories just show their ignorance with Gaelic comments

READ MORE: ‘All Highland schools should go Gaelic-first’, campaigners claim

Has Liz Smith never visited Wales, Switzerland, Iceland, or any number of places where people are bilingual or even trilingual? Has she not heard foreigners on news programmes speaking fluently and intelligently in English, obviously not their native tongue? My own grandson can converse in three languages and he’s just gone three! I also know a young man who is fluent in eight languages and he has a high-level job in Brussels, so where exactly is the “disadvantage”?

For democracy to work, an effective and constructive opposition is needed in Holyrood, but if Conservatives keep displaying their ignorance like this they will soon make the party as irrelevant as Labour.

Richard Walthew
Duns

THANKS, Liz Smith,

People like me, who know a wee bit about education, have had to listen to people like you for years now telling us that Gaelic is of no value, is part of the cult of Nicola Sturgeon and that there is a devious plot by the SNP to force everyone in Scotland to speak it.

READ MORE: FACT CHECK: Claim learning Gaelic first could 'disadvantage' pupils

It turns out you were – and are – wrong. After your pronouncement in Holyrood the other day, it looks as if you know nothing about Gaelic. Gaelic Medium Education (GME) is a well-documented educational development that has been around since about 1985. It started with 25 children and now involves well over 4,000 children and young adults.

I have to ask, if you can’t get the facts right on Gaelic, when they are out there in the public domain, how can you be trusted on other education matters?

The arrival of GME had nothing to do with the SNP. It owes its existence to the efforts of parents and teachers and local politicians in Western Isles, Highland, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Argyll, Edinburgh and quite a few other places.

I might accept your ignorance if you were just a punter but, for heaven’s sake, you are the Scottish Tories’ spokesperson on education.

Jean Nisbet
Glasgow

I HAVE really enjoyed reading your articles on the global connections to our national bard. The article on Bob Dylan was especially interesting, particularly the heritage of his collaborator Robert Hunter, of which I was unaware (The ties that bind Burns and Dylan, January 25). I was surprised, though, that there was no mention of Bob Dylan’s song Highlands, which has always sounded intimately Scottish to me. Bob is undoubtedly an honorary Scot, as testified to by his degree from St Andrews University.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read the mention of Rosa Luxemburg, one of my heroines, in connection to the bard. I wouldn’t expect to read a mention of her at all in the national press of most nations, let alone in a Scottish context.

Rosa was a socialist and aware of the need for radical transformation in society, but she was also an environmentalist way ahead of her time. For those interested, there is a very good article by James Butler titled, What Can We Learn from Rosa Luxemburg?, which is available online. I have visited the spot beside the Landwehr Canal in Berlin, marked by a plaque, where her body was unceremoniously thrown into the canal by her murderers. It seems it has always been dangerous to be a champion of the poor and downtrodden!

Solomon Steinbett
Maryhill, Glasgow

JOHNSON trading Scottish fishing rights for London’s financial services access to Europe was inevitable. While he was busy hurling lies and abuse across the dispatch box towards Ian Blackford, claiming the Scottish Government would hand back fishing rights to the EU, he knew that his government could not take back control of Scottish waters.

Now it has been admitted by senior government ministers that Scotland’s waters are being given away for expediency, where are the interviews with ardent right-wing pro-Unionist, anti-EU fishing leaders like Bertie Armstrong?

As recently as March 2019 Armstrong was quoted as saying: “Leaving the Common Fisheries Policy will enable us to elevate the UK onto the world stage as a sustainable seafood harvesting and marketing nation.” He added that, “coastal state status would allow the UK to introduce more coherent environmental management, enhance food production and create more jobs, that there would be considerable benefits from leaving the CFP.” There will be no trade deals with Europe without access to Scotland’s fishing grounds, and to pretend otherwise was either stupid or deliberately false.

You won’t see any interviews on the BBC or STV asking searching questions from fisheries leaders. As usual we will be fed a sanitised version of events to suit the Unionist agenda or the matter will be ignored entirely. Today it’s the fishermen, tomorrow it will be the farmers.

Mike Herd
Highland