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The Herald Scotland

Bob Vylan right to express rage against the IDF. Bob Dylan would agree

I'll follow your casket By the pale afternoon And I'll watch while you're lowered Down to your deathbed And I'll stand over your grave 'Til I'm sure that you're dead'. So stated the 2016 Nobel Laureate for Literature, Bob Dylan, over 50 years ago without any of the media frenzy and faux outrage being spouted by our political 'leaders' who should be more concerned about the little-reported slaughter of hundreds of innocent women and children by the IDF in the past week alone. The rage Bob Vylan expresses about our complicity in the continuing genocide in Palestine ("Anti-IDF chants by punk duo at Glastonbury 'crossed a line'", The Herald, June 30) is understandable and shared by many. It is reassuring that minstrelsy is still afforded a platform for the expression of such concerns. Charlie Shaw, Rutherglen. Read more letters Hypocrisy of the PM Much as I deplore the recent anti-IDF demonstration at Glastonbury, and indeed the reasons for it, I do think it ill-becomes a Prime Minister to accuse other person of "hate speech" ("Starmer says 'death to IDF' chants at Glastonbury were 'appalling hate speech'", heraldscotland, June 29) when he himself has appeared in the media (LBC interview, October 11, 2023) agreeing, when asked, that it was "a proportional response" to deny Palestinian mothers and children in besieged Gaza food, water and electricity, and stating that "Israel does have that right". I could hardly believe my eyes and ears. Such a response is beneath contempt and will never be forgotten. It made me ashamed to be a UK citizen, and very glad that I moved to Scotland. John Gosling, Oban. Support the IDF The real scandal at Glastonbury is not the behaviour of Bob Vylan but the complete lack of awareness and empathy of their well-off audience, which allowed them to join in the antisemitic chants of "Death to the IDF". Over 300 young people were murdered at the Super Nova music festival on October 7, 2023. Many were gang-raped and mutilated first. Then both the living and the dead were abducted to Gaza. Those atrocities and the many hundreds of civilians murdered in their own homes in the kibbutzim that day are why the Israeli Defence Force is having to fight this war. All decent people should wish them a speedy and thorough victory. Otto Inglis, Crossgates, Fife. Hitting the wrong note What could have been a very interesting column on the Glastonbury music festival by Brian Beacom, was unfortunately let down by his very lazy comparison of the venue to one of the horrendous First World War battlefields with its many fatalities ("Glastonbury festival is basically Passchendaele reimagined", Herald Magazine, June 28). This reference, both in the headline and in the penultimate paragraph, absolutely has no place in this article. Eileen Michael, Paisley. Stand firm against nuclear Last week, the notorious nuclear lobby seemed to monopolise your pages ("The Future of Torness", The Herald, June 27-29). Along with the current Labour administration in London, it has begun to sound truly hysterical as it continues to shriek that our Scottish Government must allow it to impose more nuclear reactors on Scotland. We need to ask why. At the same moment, EDF has just been given permission, by that same Labour administration, to continue operating its nuclear reactor at Torness for another five years, despite the fact that it now has the same number of cracks in its graphite core that finally forced the closure of the Hunterston AGR on safety grounds. The potential consequences and environmental and health risks to surrounding communities of cracks in any part of a nuclear reactor are obviously very serious. For this reason, this careless attitude of the Labour Party, which has governmental responsibility for safety, is very worrying. Again, we need to ask why. Meanwhile, in France, after two years of huge problems with corrosion and shutdowns in most of their nuclear reactors, the Civaux 2 reactor, recently "repaired", has just been shut down again, to "repair the repairs", while new corrosion is investigated. We should surely urgently ask why corrosion and cracks at Torness are ignored, while the French nuclear inspectorate demands action for safety. The answer to all these questions, in my opinion, is very simply that Westminster requires Scotland, which produces more sustainable, clean electricity than we can use, to remain, firstly, a producer of nuclear waste and secondly, to be implicated in the need to secure supplies of uranium for Westminster's very stupid backward lunge towards nuclear fission. I hope the Scottish Government stands firm: we are reliving a horrible history. I was 25 when a London Labour government nominated Galloway as the UK high-level nuclear waste dump and Orkney as the UK national uranium mine. Fifty years later, having, apparently, despite Chernobyl and Fukushima, learned nothing about the pointlessness of distance from nuclear disasters and pollution, it is coming at poor old " remote and expendable" Scotland again. Frances McKie, Evanton. Torness is Scotland's sole operational nuclear power plant (Image: Getty) A hitch for Jeff Bezos Ian Smith (Letters, June 30) is right; Jeff Bezos's wedding was "obscenely lavish". But it could rebound on his fortune, with people opting to boycott Amazon and shop online elsewhere. George Morton, Rosyth. • The National Debt recently touched £2.9 trillion. In 2010 it was £1.17tr, and the UK Government is adding around £100 billion to it each and every year. So, every decade now adds £1tr. This debt is underwritten by cash-rich individuals and countries such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, China etc. The interest on the debt last year was £168bn. What moral right do we have for punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation? If anything merits a national referendum the national debt most surely does. Doug Clark, Currie. Problem with hedge funds I fear Mark Smith ('Don't believe the moaning about our private schools', The Herald, June 30) may have underestimated the effect of VAT on school fees. Driving on Calder Street just last week, I noticed that the boundary hedge of Hutcheson's Grammar annexe was extremely overgrown and in need of a good trimming. As fees rise, clearly some things are cut, whilst others are not. Stuart Brennan, Glasgow.