Letter: Sell-off tangles

John McTernan (Comment, 19 October) may scoff at the suggestion that the SNP is now the true standard bearer of the Social Democratic mainstream left in Scottish politics, but the idea that he is in any way a Social Democrat, as he was surely suggesting he considers himself, is betrayed by the litany of sell-offs he listed in his column.

He lambasts what he terms the Scottish political class for being Robin Hood in reverse, but quite how ordinary Scots are to benefit from his proposed privatisation of Network Rail, Scottish Water, the Forestry Commission and British Waterways is not spelt out in his article, most probably because there is no clear case that the people would benefit by such privatisations.

Past sell-offs have invariably benefited the few, not the many, and certainly not the poorest among us.

Most people reading Mr McTernan's polemic would, I think, have found it not to be the writing of an instinctive Social Democrat, rather that of a reactionary Tory. But then, he did work for Tony Blair, didn't he?

Jamie Hepburn MSP

Scottish Parliament

Edinburgh