Unfair attack

For the last few years, I have (with difficulty) restrained myself from writing to your newspaper in response to Lesley Riddoch’s constant self-assumed (and frequently unjustified) moral superiority and clichéd denigration and categorisation of those who dare not to share her “vision” of an independent Scotland, but her column (Perspective, 3 August) has caused me to break the habit of a lifetime.

In a piece ostensibly about the Labour Party leadership contest, Ms Riddoch yet again takes the opportunity to go off the topic to sing the SNP anthem and to insult the No voters as “high-paid Scots, who voted No in case equality struck” or “older voters with pensions who irrationally fear Reds under the bed”. I am a pensioner, who, like most Scottish people, quite rationally does not subscribe to the independence mantra.

I wish I was a “high-paid Scot”, but am not; simply someone who from humble beginnings who has tried to improve the lot of my family and those around me in society, although Ms Riddoch does not seem able to attribute finer feelings to anyone who does not agree with her.

The actual reason I voted No was simple. At the root it was nothing to do with economics or love of “the Westminster elite”, who have hardly covered themselves with glory recently, but because I feel proud to be Scottish (just as proud as any seeker of independence) and also to be British, although Ms Riddoch and her adherents seem to think that this is a philosophical and emotional impossibility.

While, as I have said, my original decision was not based on economics nor on “the Vow”, which to any rational person was a non-event, the abysmal performance of the SNP government on most of the practicalities and essentials of everyday Scottish life has simply reinforced the view which I formed on other grounds.

Perhaps Ms Riddoch could use her undoubted talents to investigate forensically the Scottish Government’s performance on matters of real importance to the Scottish people.

John Donald

Essex Road

Edinburgh