MICHAEL Fry is always very honest in his columns and he was so again yesterday in his piece on the Chinese diet (The coronavirus and what a trip to China taught me about food culture, February 18). He didn’t seem over-impressed with the food on offer when he visited China, but he does now have a head start on the rest of us.

We will all have some catching up to do once our supermarket shelves here are stocked with low-grade food. This will follow the PM’s emergency trade deal with the US, following his inability to sign a deal with the EU or anyone else before January 31 next year. The US is waiting in the wings to make us “an offer we can’t refuse”, requiring us to replace our food standards with theirs.

If Michael is repelled by the thought of eating snake, wait till he tries food contaminated with maggots, fly eggs and rat hairs, just a few of the delicacies permitted by US food standards and which will be forced on us as part of a US/UK deal.

Alan Anderson
Portlethen

READ MORE: Coronavirus and what a trip to China taught me about food culture​

A 101-YEAR-OLD Italian man, Giovanni Palmiero, had to apply for settled status in the UK despite being here for 52 years. The Home Office forces all elderly people from the EU to apply for settled status, forcing a terrible burden and worry on them at an advanced stage of their lives. This is cruel and unnecessary.

On Tuesday of last week an aircraft flew out of the UK, forcing people who had lived here since early childhood to live in a foreign country, Jamaica, and we were told they had committed serious violent crimes. It turns out some of the crimes were not violent, with one man deported after serving a year in prison for burglary. These men have been separated from their partners and children in a barbaric way, left to fend for themselves with little or no clothes on their backs despite the report on the Windrush generation scandal recommending that prisoners who arrived in Britain from the West Indies before the age of 13 should not be deported from the UK.

The above actions of the Johnson government in its early stages indicates a leader and government who do not care about human rights and dignity where the state can trample all over the life of a human being, ruining that life.

This government appears to be that of the bully, the beginning of authoritarian rule.

Sean Clerkin
Barrhead

KATE Forbes’s appointment as Finance Secretary is very welcome. You report the support received from Rob Gibson and Tommy Sheppard MP (Forbes’s promotion broadly welcomed but some concerns over LGBT views, February 18). The National should not, however, accept anonymous briefings from “other figures”, based on their views of fellow Party members’ religious beliefs. There must be no place in the SNP for religious intolerance. Leave that to the Orange Order. If there is a “party within the party” ignoring the constitution, the National Secretary has to bring forward disciplinary action.

Malcolm Kerr
Brodick, Isle of Arran

I HAVE just read your article in yesterdays’ edition ‘Thousands “miss out on learning pipes”.’ You claim “30,000 youngsters are denied the chance to learn traditional music” but this claim is somewhat off the mark and in my opinion misleading.

As Pipe Major of our local band in Kilsyth, my problem is not giving youngsters the opportunity to learn to play bagpipes – we provide that service in total and for free, from practice instruments to music to providing instruments, including bagpipes and drums. Our problem is competing with the likes of North Lanarkshire Council schools, who are funded by various education budgets to teach pupils as part of their music lessons.

Our pipe band provide all tuition for free because ever-increasing financial constraints do not enable many families to stretch their already limited finances to include learning to play bagpipes or drums.

The reality for me is that I must compete for pupils who are brought to a level of piping by their highly paid tutors, paid for out of the public purse, while bands such as ours struggle to survive on handouts.

Any grants we apply for prohibit the purchase of uniforms. We don’t have heavily subsidised uniforms to hand out in order that a band can parade at competitions. It’s not a level playing field in many respects.

Jim Todd
Cumbernauld

THE inshore fishermen’s protestations against Brexit have largely been ignored as they face an uncertain future. They have been overlooked by the media, which gives preference to the xenophobic pelagic fishermen. The shellfish market is particularly vulnerable to a No Deal exit, potentially blighting many small coastal towns and fishing villages. It is of little comfort for them to know that they are not the only prawns in the game.

Mike Herd
Highland