REGARDING kids left "heartbroken" after vandals torched their garden project, another example of the moral degeneration to which we have sunk. If these swine are caught then what, a supervision order? It makes you wonder what we are doing here.

Jim Sinclair, posted online

FUNNY how my my kids would never commit crimes like this, then mine where brought up right. Bad parenting causes this kind of behaviour. Their parents should forced to clean up the mess and pay for the damage and then be made to go to parenting classes. Sticking their faces on a billboard naming and shaming them would be good too.

Carol Daly, posted online

SINCE I was a wee girl 70 years ago and watching Flash Gordon there have been Scientists insisting that there is life beyond earth and a planet like ours that could sustain humans . So far they have sent up into space monkeys and dogs a few guys have bounced around in space suits, weightless on the Moon, but nobody is building houses there, then they went further out sending satellites and wee robots to various other planets to no avail, they then decided to research the “God” particle and spent zillions in doing so. Now we are told there is water on Mars so what? Do we put our names down for a the first fortnight in August? I would like to know apart from the useful inventions that have come out of the space race just what they have achieved as far as colonising other planets and at what costs so far I have to think that the money wasted on this enterprise has gone to infinity and beyond.

Rosemary Keery, Glasgow, via email

ON the comments that Scotland and Catalonia are different circumstances Sturgeon cautions, Catalonia is at present a region of Spain, just as Scotland is a region of England...sorry, the YooKay. Both as rich in natural resources and pay in to central government in Madrid and London more than they receive back, it makes sense to cut the bonds that tie our two countries to our neighbours.

Jay Beer, posted online