Readers' Letters: Not all 16 year olds are too young to wed

Marriages featuring 16 year olds are quite rare, but I believe that it should remain an option. Sixteen-year-olds are permitted to leave school. and now vote, so why should they not be allowed to marry? During my ministry, I had the privilege of conducting not far short of 2,000 weddings, a considerable number of which were of 16-year olds, featuring pregnant brides. I well remember being astonished by how many of these marriages survived, and indeed, thrived.

Sixteen year olds should be allowed to choose to marry. Some 16 year olds are considerably more mature than others.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Sanity coming?

So the minimum age for marriage in Scotland could rise to 18. Good heavens, has common sense at last begun to take over in the Scottish Government? Will the minimum age for voting follow suit, and for driving on public roads – and will some NHS trusts stop asking patients to choose between 12 genders?

John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife

End times table

I came across some intriguing new AI-related facts in a recent copy of The Economist. Wycliffe, the leading UK-based Bible translator, estimates there are around 7,400 language groups in the world. Bible translation has been completed for over 700 of these; work is ongoing for several thousand more.

In 2022, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, launched an open AI translation model, largely for Africa and Asia.

IlluminNations, an international partnership of Bible-translation agencies – including Wycliffe – believes this model can be adapted. Specialist linguists would still be needed for spell-checking, grammar syntax, theological congruence etc, but such an AI model is felt to have the potential to turbo-charge translation speeds, so breaking the back of international Bible translation work possibly by as soon as 2033.

This timescale has possible implications for the interpretation of the teaching in the Gospels on “the end times of history”. Such implications will be lost on many, understandably so in our largely post-Christian culture, but are likely to be of more than passing interest for many Biblical scholars, theologians and churches across the denominational divide.

Ewen Peters, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire

Trouble ahead

The year 2025 brought lots of potential examples of a “two-tier” Labour government but perhaps the most blatant has been reserved for December? Labour is currently vigorously defending its decision not to remove the recently granted citizenship of Alaa Abd El-Fattah over inappropriate tweets. This is the same government that cracked down on similar behaviour from the “hard Right” at the time of the Southport riots.

Can't Labour see its approach is unbalanced? Is this the politics we are to expect? Even in Scotland as the next Holyrood election looms in 2026 there is going to be a tussle between Left and Right as the divisive topics of independence and immigration rear their heads again. Expect a difficult year.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Coalition needed

Brian Wilson asks “could Scotland do better or will we settle for more of the same?” (Perspective, 27 December). It’s been a year of no progress, only disillusionment, as the SNP continues to firefight its failures on multiple fronts, and Labour continues to struggle to achieve economic growth, reverting back to socialist principles. All this plays into the hands of Reform, whose leader Nigel Farage did most to take the UK out of Europe.

If Holyrood polling is correct about 20 per cent of voters are prepared to vote Reform, meaning the party could potentially come second. YouGov polling showed the SNP as the most popular party and John Swinney as the most popular leader, even if more than half disapproved of his leadership and only 25 per cent approved of the SNP’s record in office. While reducing child poverty has been successful, that has been achieved on the back of failure on the health, education, cost of living and housing crises. So why vote SNP?

Another four years of SNP continuity politics will achieve little unless you are a child from a deprived background, and even then your education and healthcare will be among the worst in Western Europe, while your life expectancy is already the worst. Scotland’s children could do so much better.

I disagree with Mr Wilson that Labour can win outright. Unionist parties must be prepared to form a coalition to provide any hope of halting the SNP and spark progress for all Scots.

Neil Anderson, Edinburgh

Cheery church

In a Scotsman article (26 December) the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Rt Reverend Rosemary Frew, says she “gets angry about all the doom and gloom stories about the church”. Church of Scotland attendances have been falling for a long time, in spite of the best efforts of Ms Frew. It is a verifiable fact that in this 21st century, fewer people believe in an invisible God. Nor do they believe in the bread and fishes feeding the 5,000, or walking on water.

Here and in Europe, polls indicate that 70 per cent of young people are not religious. Britain is now a secular nation. Regardless of Ms Frew’s personal feelings, one can only construe from current events that the Christian churches across the religious divide are just about surviving on congregations of between 15 and 20 people.

In England there are at least 6,000 empty churches, yet the Church of England is worth £11 billion. Comparatively speaking, the Church of Scotland’s value is just under £80 million. I would say the new Moderator has a great deal to be angry about.

Doug Morrison, Tenterden, Kent

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