Letters: Pleased to see pension pot council chief’s OBE binned

Published on 11/09/2012 12:00

I am sure I am not the only one who was pleased to see that the OBE given to the former East Lothian Council chief executive, John Lindsay, had been cancelled and annulled (News, September 10).

It was reported in the press that he was instrumental in increasing the local authorities redundancy terms to an extremely generous level.

Councillors agreed these new terms whereupon Mr Lindsay suggested his position could be covered by others so he would be redundant and eligible for the new package worth £149,000.

Such was the deluge of complaints to Audit Scotland that they decided to investigate immediately and not leave until year-end accounts were available

The Chartered Institute of Public Finance ruled that Mr Lindsay had acted for personal gain and not in the interests of the council and taxpayers and fined him £7000.

Americans bloggers were also furious when it was alleged that Mr Lindsay had said that he had been treated worse than the Virginia Tech mass murderer Seung-Hui Cho who murdered 32 people.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow

Do not adjust our TV, Mr Salmond

The SNP policy to get rid of the BBC will hit us in the pocket as well as on the screen. Currently 60 million people across the UK pay the BBC licence fee – and for that we get five TV channels and six radio stations.

Under the nationalists’ plans we will get two TV stations, plus one radio station and one Gaelic TV station.

What we don’t know is if the licence fee will be doubled to pay for this. Or whether it will be the same amount but with adverts throughout every programme as in Ireland.

Either way we are about to pay more for a lot less.

Michelle Smythe, Dalry Road, Edinburgh

Losing MPs will save us a fortune

Your report on MPs’ expenses (News, September 7) highlights the scandal that Scottish Westminster MPs are costing the taxpayer more than ever despite having much less responsibility since devolution.

Local MPs are spending most of their time on devolved issues such as health, education, crime, planning or parking issues which are properly the remit of Holyrood MSPs.

It seems that the only way to resolve this expensive duplication is to go for independence which will save us £50 million every year by getting rid of Westminster.

Calum Stewart, Montague Street, Edinburgh

Scots would still be EU citizens

REports that the EU citizenship of people in Scotland may be up for negotiation post independence require clarification. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has suggested that in the event of a secession of part of a European Union member state, the solution to the issue of EU citizenship would have to be “found and negotiated within the international legal order”.

Under international law, as a successor state to the United Kingdom, an independent Scotland would continue in membership under the terms of Article 34 of the Vienna Convention on State Succession in respect of Treaties, which provides that: 
“when a part or parts of a state separate to form one or more states, whether or not the predecessor state continues to exist any Treaty in force at the date of the succession of states in respect of the entire territory of the predecessor state continues in force in respect of each successor state so formed”.

An independent Scotland would remain an integral part of the EU, and nothing in this answer suggests otherwise.

As many experts have confirmed, and under international law, Scotland is part of the territory of the European Union and the people of Scotland are citizens of the EU.

There is no provision for either of these circumstances to change upon independence.

Alex Orr, Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh

Pushing the boat out for charity

Once again I read in the News about people having to be rescued from Cramond island by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (News, September 7).

I sincerely hope the 11 people rescued this time from the island make a substantial donation to the RNLI.

James Nisbet, Rannoch Road, Edinburgh