YOUR VIEWS

HAVING retired to a beautiful sunny little island in the Mediterranean the last thing I expected to have to put up with in the local press is an outdated apologist for any sort of terrorist – namely Mr Ray Fleming.

However, having lived through the awfulness of the IRA bombing campaigns in London (and a media half in love with the IRA), I cannot pass over his simplistic, distorted opinion re the Saville Report.

He is clearly ignorant of the long history of discrimination against Roman Catholics in both England and more especially Scotland.
(I can remember in my lifetime the public outcry when the headmaster of a Scottish state school tried to appoint a Roman Catholic as head of religious education).

Yet Scotland did not take to the bomb and the gun.
But of course I have come to recognise that, as far as Mr Fleming is concerned, any terrorist, funded by who knows what criminal activity, has a halo and wings.

Thank goodness we have at last got academics in World Development whose studies demonstrate that most terrorist “freedom fighter” organisations are either as bad or worse than the regimes they seek to overthrow (Think Mugabe?).

Ray Fleming should learn to quietly enjoy his retirement from “something senior in the civil service” and recognise that a new generation of thinkers and doers has taken over and his heyday of pale pink lefty liberalism is over.

Yours faithfully
Jean Howard
Portals Nous