Gumption please

Fancy a haggis? Come on, Kate!

Dovecot Loan, Edinburgh

In his letter supporting a twoyear delay to the deadline for Brexit negotiations (29 May), Anthony O’donnell cites one reason as being the supposed “lower standards for the UK consumer”.

I assume he has the famed ‘chlorinated chicken’ in mind when he refers to lower standards; however it should be noted that food safety and hygiene are not a one-way street.

The sale of authentic Scottish haggis has been banned in the US for almost 50 years as the sheep lungs that make up a sizeable ingredient of ‘real’ haggis can be contaminated withstomachacidandphlegm during the slaughter process. That’s before we even consider Scottish farmed salmon which, at various points over the last few years, has been the subject of much adverse publicity around it being fatty, reared in unsanitary conditions, high in toxins, contaminated and with the use of artificial colourings, antibiotics and thermolicine, to name just a few of the issues that other countries have with it.

The reality is that any producer will cater to the market to which it is selling and, just as Scottish haggis producers have done, the recipes and processes can be altered to suit the consumers’ expectations in different countries. Given a choice between eating chlorinated chicken, authentic Scottish haggis or Scottish farmed salmon, I would choose the former every time.

ANDREW HAMILTON Forth Street, North Berwick

It is a pity, at a time when we should be drawing together to

fight the economic impact of this virus that Kate Forbes, our finance secretary, has been infected by the usual sense of outrage that is her party’s goto position over anything the government in Westminster does (your report, 29 May). I appreciate that economics was not a strong point of our previous financial secretary and perhaps she has been so busy that she has forgotten that the Scottish people have not just received £52.03 billion in funding from the UK Treasury, they have also received from the UK Treasury vast payments through the furlough payments scheme, which has probably protected hundreds of thousands of Scottish jobs. If she truly needs more money then she should be honest with the Scottish people and ask us, on a temporary basis only, to pay a higher basic rate of tax to see the less well off through the economic impact of this terrible virus.

ALAN BLACK Camus Avenue, Edinburgh

I see that using various places outside schools for classes is being considered (your report, 29 May). At the start of the Second World War primary schools were often requisitioned for military barracks and classes were moved to various places.

One year my (part-time) education took place in the rather ramshackle pavilion of a tennis club. Church halls were widely used, sometimes with more than one class being conducted simultaneously in the same space.

Furnishings consisted, at least initially, of benches for the pupils to sit on, and a blackboard. The spinsters who were our teachers seemed to take it all in their stride, but then, as everyone kept saying, “there’s a war on”.

Later in the war, in secondary, we actually went on a school trip – to the tattie howking in Angus as the usual labour force to bring in the harvest was lacking. It was hard work for us townies but educative in many ways.

S BECK Craigleith Drive, Edinburgh