We took action in Kosovo. Why should Gaza be any different?

The Herald Scotland

4 days ago

The UK is threatening more sanctions against [[Israel]] but in reality they have no effect at all. Why would [[Israel]] listen to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer or his Foreign Secretary David Lammy? They have no influence in what is an ongoing genocide.
The UK continues to supply arms, materials and surveillance for Benjamin Netanyahu's regime and instructs the police to arrest anyone who supports Palestinian Action, an activist group calling for an end to the ethnic cleansing and massacres in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel is going even further with raids and attacks on Syria and Lebanon, not to mention Iran.
Why doesn't the UK Government have the guts to call for military action against [[Israel]]?
Roll back to 1999 when Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic attempted to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Kosovar Albanians. There were pictures of tens of thousands fleeing, some with all their belongings piled on the back of tractors.
There was then a massacre at a village called Racak when 43 civilians were killed, prompting Nato to intervene and effectively end the war.
I was there reporting for Reuters and Sky News and saw the victims and knew this was a defining moment.
Why hasn't the same happened in response to Israel's refusal to accept international law in Gaza?
Yes, the attack by Hamas in October 2023 was appalling but since then more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, their homes destroyed, settlers are taking over whole villages, Americans are eyeing up seaside lots, olive groves have been ripped out (by settlers) and fishermen refused access to the waters.
There are dozens of innocent people being killed every day.
Surely it couldn't be anything to do with race or religion could it?
Andy Stenton, Glasgow.
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Corruption in Ukraine
I note that your front-page article on President Zelenskyy's latest olive branch to his Russian counterpart ("Zelenskyy repeats his offer to meet with Putin to negotiate peace deal", The Herald, July 23) makes no mention of the first public protests against him since the war began. These took place in a number of cities after the parliament backed a bill limiting the power of anti-corruption agencies.
With Ukraine already in lowly 105th place on Transparency International's corruption-perceptions index, this bill should be a warning to investors. Unfortunately Keir Starmer has a bombastic 100-year deal with Ukraine.
George Morton, Rosyth.
Take tough action on migrants
I have long argued through the courtesy of your Letters Pages that the only sure way to stop the small boats invasion is to kill off the demand (illegal migrants) which in turn will kill off the supply (the gangs). That could be achieved by legislating that anyone arriving illegally is automatically disqualified from staying, no ifs, no buts. With its huge Westminster majority, the Labour Government should have no problem in passing this legislation and thus fulfilling its stated 'duty" to stop this illegal invasion.
The only question is why are Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper not doing that immediately rather than fiddling about with unrealistic schemes such as ' one in, one out" and grand-sounding but placebo-like 'international co-operation agreements" to 'smash the gangs" which will never stem the demand which fuels the flow across the Channel?
For anyone who doubts the seriousness of the small boats invasion, I commend a report recently on Talk TV (why not our national broadcaster the BBC?) by an investigative journalist with a camera crew (filming apparently covertly) from around the migrant camps near Calais. The report revealed that thousands of mainly young men are camping out there waiting to cross, with these numbers increasing as more and more are brought in daily by large coaches. This illegal invasion of the UK is huge and growing. We don't know who they are and it is high time the Government took the gloves off to deal with it.
Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop.
Our leaders have no idea
It is patently obvious the current Labour Government has no idea how to fix Britain. All it does is to make things worse. People always claim they go into politics to make things better. Surely these same people must realise when they are out of their depth?
Admitting this is never a consideration but it really should be. This argument holds good in Scotland too, when after 18 years of trying, the SNP has achieved precious little. Politicians really must take responsibility for the powers they wield. It seems these days very few do. This should worry us all.
Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.
We must focus on nuclear
David Hay (Letters, July 23) tries to rubbish nuclear power as being unecological.
His figures of Norway generating 85% of its electricity from hydro electric power stations ignores the fact that 90% of Norway's population lives in the near coastal regions, leaving the mountainous valleys available for such schemes. Doing so in Scotland would require Highland clearances on a biblical scale.
The Netherlands might be targeting 2030 for generating 70% of its power by wind but that requires the wind to blow, otherwise the wind turbines are merely sculptures of steel and carbon.
Wind turbine blades have a 'time-life' where they have to be replaced before the fatigue they experience breaks them catastrophically. Originally 25 years, this is now 15 to 20 years because the designers seemed ignorant of the fact that a leading edge doing 300 miles per hour into rain, dust, hailstones and birds causes damage which is escalated by frost. This requires expensive maintenance and downtime as steeplejacks apply sticking plasters for as long as they dare. In the 1920s Tommy Sopwith was putting steel deflectors on the leading edge of his wooden propellers but that information was either not in the designer's computers, was ignored or was treated as an irrelevance.
University studies tell us that right now we are scrapping 200,000 tonnes of time-lifed blades per annum and as a result of the exponential growth in the industry this will be 30 million tonnes by 2030 and 50 million tonnes by 2050. These blades cannot be recycled or put to landfill, they will last millions of years so what part of 'eco' do they fit into? Where are they going to go? In the USA they are being buried in vast tracts of land but even that is a limited resource.
Mr Hay might also be unaware that the replacement carbon fibres and resins require oil as a source for the raw material and concrete for the bases, whose creation is a major producer of CO2.
The waste from a nuclear plant is limited and can be stored safely. Hitachi is currently working on a reactor that will produce waste with a half life of 1,000 years instead of 30,000 years, a big step forward. We are a clever species, we should be working on reducing that further.
We are currently in a situation where overcapacity of wind generation requires generators to be paid to stop generating, sending our hard-earned cash to the overseas corporations that own the windfarms.
This is utter madness. We should also be charging them for their inability to supply in times of low wind speeds and cloudy days because regardless of the eco-qualities we still need a generating capacity to cover the shortfall and that will require gas or nuclear generation. For the last 50 years nuclear power has supplied a steady 40% of our base generation. It should remain so.
Peter Wright, West Kilbride.
The Torness nuclear power station (Image: Getty)
Nationwide alert
I was delighted to read that the CEO of Nationwide Building Society is to earn just over £19,000 per day for her sterling work in helping to run a business ("Nationwide customers angry at 'controversial' decision", heraldscotland, July 21). Obviously she is much more important than nurses, midwives, doctors, and the general female population.
Running a business, to the uneducated, seems a fairly straightforward task, but we all know that without paying these people extraordinary amounts of money the country would collapse. As she laughs her way to the bank, every day, she may well think "ordinary people are so thick that they believe all our nonsense that we must pay indecent amounts of money or life would never be the same again".
B McKenna, Dumbarton.