Readers' Letters: Donald Trump's Act of hostility

Since South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice charging it with genocide the US has ramped up its actions against South Africa.

Trump’s Presidential Order “Addressing the Egregious Actions of South Africa”, promoted the re-settlement of Afrikaners in the US and stated that South Africa had taken aggressive positions towards the United States including “accusing Israel of genocide.”

The Presidential Order added, “The United States cannot support the government of South Africa in its undermining United States foreign policy which poses national security threats to our Nation… and our interests.” It concluded “the United States shall not provide aid or assistance to South Africa.”

It could not be made clearer that if you disagree with US support for Israel’s actions then you will be punished.

In South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past, land distribution was grossly unequal on the basis of race. This remains the case. Whites own 70 per cent of the land while being only 7 per cent of the population.

South Africa in addressing this issue passed the Land Expropriation Act. Land can be expropriated without compensation only in strictly defined circumstances.

The United States intervention, making false claims about the Act and what is happening to white farmers, whilst offering fast-tracked refuge to Afrikaners is a disruptive interference in the affairs of a sovereign country.

The US actions seem designed to destabilise South Africa and stop its support for the Palestinians.

South Africa should be applauded for its humanitarian stance in support of the Palestinians and should also be assisted in its journey to overcome 300 years of colonialism and apartheid.

Brian Filling, Chair, Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA) Scotland

(Successor organisation of the Anti-Apartheid Movement)

For Reform read Trump

I quite agree with William Loneskie (letters, 10th June) that terms like “hate” and “poison” have no place in any political discussion. But Mr Loneskie, after reviewing Reform UK’s manifesto, while denying they are “far right”, suggests that they are simply “common sense”. Quite possibly, it’s he who is in denial.

To see Reform UK’s policies in action, you have only to look across the Atlantic and view Trump’s America. There, you most certainly will find far right policies, which are far from common sense, even down to the doomed DOGE, which Nigel Farage is keen to adopt.

For Trump’s “America first”, read Farage’s “Britain first”, or perhaps more accurately, “England first” with all that that entails, including isolation from the wider world and zero immigration. For “Trump’s Presidency”, read Farage’s “Premiership” and, heaven forbid, quite possibly, dictatorship. That should be cautionary enough.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Indy fatigue

I hope someone in the SNP will tell us when they have pressed the “independence button” they keep threatening to activate. Otherwise, I think for the vast majority of Scots, including many SNP sympathisers, there will not be an iota of difference to what we have suffered for the last few decades; the button must be stuck in the independence selection.

How about a “Truth Button” instead?

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Workers want more

I suppose that we can only expect John Swinney to attempt to take crumbs of comfort from whatever he can in last week's election. However, neither the SNP, nor Labour were exactly impressive.

The Conservatives especially were the clear victims of Reform's approaching steamroller. As Reform UK lists a number of policies which are left-wing (eg nationalisation) with fairly right-wing ones, they appeal to the average man and, indeed the average woman in the street. The public is fed up of parties who tax and spend to no visible effect. Both the SNP and Labour typify this.

The tyranny of the liberal-lefty/lefty-separatist regimes which have ruled the UK and Scotland for the past three decades represent the yahoos who demonstrate on the streets in such numbers. They do not, however, represent the average adult who has to budget for a mortgage and often for feeding and clothing children, but who want to enjoy the benefit of some of their own hard-earned income.

The failure to understand that people are motivated by a wish to see their children in a better world than they grew up in is the problem in a post-industrial world.

When the horizons are covered with Chinese-built wind turbines and the pay-packet is taxed more highly than the rest of the UK, is it any surprise that Scottish voters are sick fed up with a party which takes their money from them and which allows foreigners to vote?

When Scots are struggling to pay their bills, is it any surprise that people are livid when illegal economic migrants who are overwhelmingly fit young men who come from perfectly peaceful countries are put up in hotels and fed at our expense?

John Fraser, Glasgow

Winter gruel

The UK rules regarding right to winter fuel allowance are clear i.e. earnings of £35 thousand or less being cut off point.

The Scottish Government have decided on three categories a) £200 for those on pension credit, knowing that a huge number of pensioners miss out on that benefit due to small works pensions b) £100 those not on pension credit c) those “wealthy” people who can opt out of their £100.

Why does the Scottish Government always have to be different? They know we pay more tax than the rest of the UK but will receive less winter fuel allowance. They also know we are colder longer over the winter than the rest of the UK.

Let us hope that once they get the extra Barnet Formula money that they increase the payment rather sidetrack the money for something else.

Elizabeth Hands, Armadale

Something fishy

Recently Keir Starmer sucker-punched our fishermen by gifting EU vessels a 12-year licence to rape and loot UK fishing grounds – as they have done with their own.

Shockingly, when he was questioned about this Starmer responded by claiming that this is a “win for our fishing industry because of Scottish salmon exports” – a response which is not only contemptuous of fisher folk but reveals his total ignorance of the modus operandi of the fishing industry.

Few would describe keeping unhealthy salmon densely packed in cages and feeding them highly processed food, as fishing. Let us be honest, the reason Starmer and crew gets away with this, and with record numbers of migrants channel-crossing, a failed NHS, a failed railway system and a desperate housing shortage etc etc is due to our own negligent burnout – because we let him.

Doug Clark, Currie

Keep the lights on

Recent threats of serious blackouts in late May and lately the blackout in Exeter raises concerns of more impending blackouts and electrical emergencies.

All this from the perilous, unstable and un-modernised state of UK’s National Grid, unable to cope with intermittent renewable power.

Some might conclude the UK needs either a change in Net Zero renewable energy policy or a change in government, for it is a given that no government can prevail if it cannot keep the lights on.

For surely Net Zero renewable energy political fantasies cannot continue unsustainably hiking UK electricity to between four and six times European prices, economically crippling both industries and households.

Yet UK electricity demand is expected to double in the short term to service the banks of computers needed for the new artificial intelligence industry and potentially millions of new electric vehicles.

Expensive imports of gas and electricity will not solve the economic issues. Yet the UK could build, service and have operational in less than three years reliable British designed gas combined cycle power stations using its UK’s own gas resources. All this at a fraction of the cost of nuclear plant.

So-how long will this government take to smell the coffee? Will it indeed be too late when the Whitehall lights go out and the coffee percolators fail?

Elizabeth Marshall, Edinburgh

Nuclear target

Just how stupid can our government be?

In the same week that the “powers that be” said that expenditure on our armed forces should rise from about 2 per cent to nearer 5 per cent, they decide to spend £14.2 billion on a new Sizewell C power station.

While no-one knows when or why some future war will start, we can currently see Russia attempting to systematically destroy Ukraine’s power stations.

It will only take one guided missile to knock out this proposed new UK power station and rob several million people of power for a very long time!

Why not spend that money on building many smaller and more localised power stations? One mammoth power station will just be “crying out” to be destroyed in any future conflict.

Archibald A. Lawrie, Kingskettle, Fife

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