A MONTH and two days before the latest chapter of the Palestinian catastrophe erupted, a certain Michael Shanks was elected as the new MP for the Rutherglen and Hamilton West constituency. This spineless individual had been imposed on a supine constituency Labour party by the Starmer clique currently in control of the so-called “people’s party’.
His selection and subsequent election were enthusiastically applauded by Starmer, his deputy Angela Raynor and by the current leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, Anas Sarwar MSP.
In his electioneering materials, the “Shanker”, as he’s now frequently cried in Cumslang, was routinely described as an “educator”. Following several failed attempts to become a professional politician, the disappointed Shanks worked intermittently for a few short years as a supply teacher in schools in the Glasgow area.
Although hundreds of thousands of children, teenagers, and young adults in Gaza have been denied one single day’s education since October 7, this great educator continues to refuse to support the United Nations resolution for an immediate ceasefire to put an end to the slaughter of the Palestinian people and to allow the massive humanitarian aid that the people of Gaza so desperately need.
Well in excess of 5000 children have now been killed or buried alive under rubble and many thousands more have been left permanently maimed in body and in mind. Yet the “Shanker” is unmoved. For the oppressed Palestinians and their children must be taught a bloody lesson!
All those “deid fae the neck up” who signed the recall petition for the by-election which resulted in Shanks’s election should now be calling for his resignation. The failings of Mr Shanks’s much-maligned predecessor are “but moon-cast shadows” in comparison to his complicity in ethnic-cleansing, mass murder and genocide.
There’s a wider political lesson for us all here. “We should a’ be gey careful o’ whit we wish fur”!
Robert Ross
Cambuslang
EVEN with a few days’ ceasefire in Gaza, pain and misery stalks the land where three great religions began. With the tragic madness of the Russian invasion and continuing war in Ukraine, the present Middle East war sadly compounds mankind’s insensitivity, little having been learned in millennia on beautiful planet Earth.
Israel’s war on Hamas has become a blatant aggression on Palestinian civilians that threatens to engulf the entire region. In never forgetting the horrendous Hamas war crimes, it is now the Israeli military that is committing further war crimes by continuing to besiege Gaza, cutting off power, food and water, medicine and fuel.
In the words of the old song: “When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?”
Cutting through the fanatical minority on both sides, the only obvious solution for the majority is to work towards the establishment of a free and independent Palestinian state, which recognises the reality of the state of Israel. Only then will peace and respect prevail and age-old hatreds cease, between two ancient Arab peoples.
Grant Frazer
Newtonmore
WAS anyone actually surprised that Angus Robertson SNP MSP was caught with his hand in the windy cookie jar, stating Scotland’s wind capacity percentage in the EU was massively higher than it actually was?
For many years SNP politicians have claimed that Scotland has 25% of Europe’s offshore wind capacity. It is apparently less than 7%. That’s quite a difference.
In 2012 former First Minister Alex Salmond was caught bang to rights grossly exaggerating “green” jobs by thousands. We have now come to expect flowery embellishments of benefits of colossal wind turbines speared into our land and seascapes whether we, the affected communities, want them or not.
Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and Ian Blackford, to name just a few, have said that Scotland has produced enough wind generation for our needs. With no guaranteed purchasers of Scottish wind, why on earth would the Scottish Government back further deployment of multiple turbines if they believed what they were actually saying?
Whether these comments are corrected or not, the damage is done and people may believe what they originally heard and continue to support further environmentally destructive wind development because of it.
This regular “bigging up” of the potential jobs, contribution and potential of wind generation appears to be deliberate and must be stopped.
It is certainly not for the benefit of the paying public or wind-targeted communities. Can it be to boost the wind industry’s image, and a shameful propaganda exercise by our own government to aid Big Energy’s invasion and colonisation of our natural environment against the wishes of Scotland’s distraught rural citizens?
Lyndsey Ward
Spokeswoman for Communities B4 Power Companies
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