6 days ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
I don't get it: why can't Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons?
The truth is that the arguments used to justify these weapons at Faslane is spurious. The world was fortunate that the Cuban crisis and the anti-nuclear campaigning throughout the world in the 1960s led to the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. This was of critical importance at the time, otherwise we might now have 40 nuclear weapons states rather than nine. There was other progress later on nuclear testing, on reductions in warhead numbers, on better inter-state communications but we are now in a situation of rapid technological competition to see who can destroy the world faster. No political leaders of substance in the nuclear states show any interest in moving the world back from this spiral.
By not imposing an economic, military and cultural boycott on the aggressor state, Israel, as we have done on Russia, western hypocrisy has sent a message to many states who must be thinking why shouldn't we have nuclear weapons too since you have them and tell us it keeps you safe. Until it doesn't.
Isobel Lindsay, Biggar.
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Nuclear energy is essential
J Pountain (Letters, June 16) asks a question regarding nuclear and renewable energy and refers to Rebecca McQuillan's article ('Should Scotland blindly follow England down the nuclear power path?', The Herald, June 16). Your correspondent's main question was understanding how hydro power and nuclear power are equivalent in how they supply electricity to the grid? The answer is, they are not equivalent.
Pumped hydro along with wind and solar energy provide intermittent supplies which require back-up from gas-fired generation and nuclear as base load. More recently more pumped hydro and battery farms are being built to back-up intermittent renewable sources of energy but these will only provide short periods, hours or half day, and total back-up is needed from gas fired plants and nuclear plants. These will provide the greatest amount of back-up along with some inter-connector supply from Europe.
The Grid is a Great Britain electricity supply and it is now recognised that nuclear energy is essential for security of supply, keeping the price of electricity as low as possible and playing a big part in achieving net zero in the energy sector. The Scottish Government would do well to reconsider its objection to nuclear energy. Nuclear plants have been designed in the past to provide base load but new plants can be designed to provide flexible output similar to gas-fired plants and which they could eventually replace. The solution to the energy crisis requires an engineering solution, not a political one.
Charles Scott, Edinburgh.
Beware threat to our liberty
Neil Cowan of Amnesty International writes that the blind acceptance of live facial recognition systems by the state will violate our individual rights to privacy, freedom of movement, expression and lawful assembly ("We need to guard against the rise of mass surveillance", The Herald, June16). Of course it will. That is what the state wants – control. But Mr Cowan didn't go far enough in outlining the threats to our civil liberties.
In his astonishingly prescient 1969 novel, Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner predicted that an algorithm-driven worldwide surveillance system would track every citizen at all times using the power of "intelligent computers" as he called them then, or AI, as we seem to be calling them today. Artificial, certainly, but intelligent? No, not now and not ever. They are machines and however sophisticated the programs which drive them, they can only follow instructions which humans give them.
To trust our civil liberties to the people who write these instructions is madness. There will come a time when it will be argued by governments and the IT billionaires that we would all be safer if we were chipped like our dogs and cats and that time is coming sooner than you might think. Our mobile phones and everything we do on them is already tracked.
Who you are, where you are and what you are doing and why, is nobody's business but your own, unless it can be proved, by corroborated evidence, that you are breaking the law.
Are you prepared to give up that freedom to further the profits of Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, or the political aims of Trump, Farage and the Chinese Communist Party?
AJ Clarence, Prestwick.
A handle on Walter Scott
In saying that Handel was first and foremost an opera composer Linda Hoskins (Letters, June 14) shows that she has kept abreast of musicological conductor Christopher Hogwood has remarked on the belated heightened awareness of the quality of Handel's operas.
Yet his former immense popularity derived mainly from his oratorios, harpsichord suites etc, and how do these compare with Bach's?
Regarding the question of the true worth of Scott's novels, it would be interesting to know what proportion of the reading public actually read Scott back in the days of his putative popularity. I can't prove it, but suspect that even in the 19th century, if anyone mentioned such names as Dandie Dinmont, Lucy Ashon, James Deans etc, almost any Scot would be prompted to think of paddle steamers rather than characters in Waverley novels.
Robin Dow, Rothesay.
• To add to the defence of Scott by Linda Hoskins, Sir Walter has the distinction that his novels influenced more operas than any other author.
Robert F Gibson, Milngavie.
Sir Walter Scott (Image: National Galleries of Scotland/Getty)
Unexpected tonic for sales of Cola
Congratulations to Aldi: you report that its own-brand gin from Scotland has just been named the world's best ("Aldi's gin named best in the world", The Herald, June 14). I see its name is Còmhla, Gaelic for "Together". There is a danger, though, that this could be mispronounced as "Cola". Being sent to the shops to stock up with supplies could have unfortunate consequences.
Gilbert MacKay, Newton Mearns.
