Readers' letters: The Yemenis deserve our support too

Putin’s intentions towards Ukraine and other satellite and former Soviet countries are rightly condemned, but the West is strangely silent at similar belligerent events in other parts of the globe.

A Yemeni woman sits with a child at a makeshift camp for the internally displaced in the northern Hajjah province, on March 6, 2022. - Yemen's women and girls are bearing the brunt of a seven-year civil war that has robbed many of their freedoms, experts say (Photo by ESSA AHMED / AFP) (Photo by ESSA AHMED/AFP via Getty Images)

Saudi Arabia, equally as totalitarian and oppressive as the regime in Russia, continues to vent its spleen on the populace of Yemen without so much as a raised eyebrow.

Cynics would suggest that perhaps the vested interests of the West are not best served by castigating one of their best customers in relation to arms sales.

Atrocities committed against the Yemeni people are continuous and ongoing. While people are dying in the Ukraine we have not yet reached, nor ever likely to achieve the heinous acts perpetrated against civilians in Yemen.

The Saudis are not intent on annexing or occupying Yemen, their intent is much more insidious than that of Putin, the obliteration of a sovereign state and the annihilation of its population, and the West stands idly and shrugs its shoulders

Acts of aggression by pugnacious countries against their neighbours should be disparaged, sanctions should be imposed and calls for changes in the regimes of those offending nations encouraged.

But there surely has to be an even-handed approach to the policy of denunciation - or could there be an element of imperialism in their thinking? The people in Yemen are not Caucasian.

Cindy Simpson, Edinburgh.

Narrow escape on nuclear power station

I can only assume the writers of letters supporting nuclear power had written them before the nuclear power station at Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine made international headlines for all the wrong reasons. The world had a near miss on March 3. We may not be so lucky this week or next.

John F Robins, Cardross.

How we got the roads we have today

Scott from Duddingston provided an interesting letter on 5 March.

I always thought large scale road building and improvements were mainly during the industrial revolution when in the 1700s Turnpike Trusts were formed. They constructed and improved roads for horses and carts, managing 25,000 miles of roads by the early 19th century. Eventually government took over responsibility with ring-fenced funding from Road Tax in 1909. This tax lasted about 30 years and has eventually morphed into a car tax paid into general taxation.

Motor driven transport has allowed us to travel further and easily move goods, something bicycles cannot manage. If a bicycle were to be invented today it would never get past Health and Safety.

Unlike every other method of transport, the safety aspect of a bike has not improved much since the penny farthing of the 1870s, other than calliper brakes (1876) and smaller wheels (about 1880).

The old boneshaker bikes along with road surfaces benefitted greatly from the invention by Robert Thomson of the air-filled rubber tyre.

Alastair Murray, Edinburgh.

Energy strategy

Our oil and gas reserves were used to paper over cracks rather than establish generational industry. Even our numerous off shore wind turbines are built abroad despite decades of difficult offshore engineering taking place in our surrounding waters.An appropriate energy strategy should develop companies and engineers within our own nation first and foremost.

Tom Walker, Loanhead.

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