Scotland Matters Letters

AS a person raised in a bygone age, I am somewhat bamboozled by much in the modern world. The current festivities for Pride Month have unearthed a strange obsession, with the usual suspects involved. I speak not of Douglas Ross who, perfectly reasonably, questioned the appropriateness of a library in his constituency hosting “Drag Queen Story Time” (“Greens’ anger as Tory leader Ross criticises drag queen story hour for children”, The Herald, June 7). Is this directed at consenting adults who may have an interest in drag queens? Is it a nice social event for residents of care homes? No, it is, extraordinarily, for small children aged 0-6. For his pains, Mr Ross was attacked by the unsavoury Green MSP Ross Greer: “You really are a nasty little bigot. Presumably you’ve never taken your kids to the panto?” The panto, Mr Greer, is entirely make-believe, as are all the characters in it. Presenting a real live drag queen in a real venue – a library – is not comparable. The “performer” is eyebrow raisingly a deputy head teacher. One has to wonder why certain people, including politicians, are so anxious to introduce small children to sexualised characters and material. For example, Maggie Chapman, Green MSP, is on record as saying “many trans people know who they are, sometimes as young as six or seven years old”. She has also accused Mr Ross of having “cast himself as a pantomime villain with his preposterous and narrow-minded attacks on a simple and innocent community event”. Encouraging the youngest in our society to question their sexuality and to be exposed to others of confusing sexuality is at least unwise and possibly a trigger for mental distress. Why are we doing this to our children? Who is driving this, and what are their motives? Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

DOUGLAS Ross is to be congratulated for objecting to his local council booking one of its assistant headmasters to perform a drag act for youngsters under six in a local library. It’s about time other party leaders joined him, although I doubt Patrick Harvie will after Ross Greer called Mr Ross a “nasty little bigot” on ‘Ikvitter. In doing so he also insulted thousands of parents, grandparents and teachers who are outraged at what’s going on in the name of children’s education and support Mr Ross’s stand. Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven.

The disappearance of SNP politician Ian Blackford from the political scene will be viewed with sadness by some and bring joy to others. He was a well-kent figure standing on the floor of the House of Commons pontificating about everything under the sun, bringing a smile to the faces of some of his TV audience while causing others to switch off. His judgment was questionable at times, particularly with the Patrick Grady sexual harassment issue, but when the Nicola Sturgeon era ended it was on the cards that he would return to his “humble” croft. Bob MacDougall, Kippen.

THE postponement of the DRS (“Lobbyists fear DRS could be put on hold for ‘an indefinite time—, The Herald, June 8) raises the question of how the director of Circularity Scotland and his 45 staff will fill their time for the next 27 months. The time would be well spent by tasking the original architect of the DRS (now one of his staff) to liaise with those countries with DRS that are claimed to work well and find out if theirs would fit in with the long established existing recycling systems we’ve had in Scotland over the last two decades. And why not loan out some of his staff to a selection of Scottish councils’ cleansing departments for six months, where they could gain some valuable experience from the people who actually know about successful waste recycling? At least it would lay to rest some of the daft claims made for our current DRS and possibly let them come up with one that would actually work. It’s not as if there aren’t funds available: there must be quite a lot of the £29 million still in Circularity Scotland’s coffers. John F Crawford, Lytham.

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