Readers' Letters: A week is an awfully long time in SNP politics

The mishandling of the Lochaber FOI claiming not to have paperwork that the SNP Scottish Government did have, the impact of transferring our elderly into care homes as Covid was rife, the census that one quarter of our households have chosen not to fill in (and I doubt it has anything to do with Ukraine or the cost of living), the ongoing ferry saga and the concerns about the financial guarantee given to Sanjeev Gupta in return for the creation of 2,000 jobs, of which only 50 have materialised?

And that is just in this week. What will next week bring?

I can only hope that it is the electorate waking up and realising that the SNP are not stronger for Scotland.

They have tainted the love I have for my country with their nationalism. They have destroyed our education system, our NHS and our streets both on a national and a local level. The sooner people realise that the “freebies” that they enjoy come at a cost to other areas of government, the better.

The Scottish Government's involvement with businessman Sanjeev Gupta buy-up of the Lochaber smelter has raised eyebrows (Picture: BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images)

I’m sure you’ll get letters telling me how bad things are in England but I don’t live there. I want Scotland to be a country we can be proud of, not one that has a government that is more interested in comparing us to the rest of the UK in the hope that we’ll be satisfied.

Jane Lax, Aberlour

Discharging truth

Can you see a difference between the following statements? “There is no statistical evidence that hospital discharges of any kind were associated with care home outbreaks” and “The discharges were consistent with a causal relationship between discharges and outbreaks”?

The first, published in a report by Public Health Scotland (PHS), is the one Nicola Sturgeon quoted in parliament last year to try to exonerate herself and the SNP from blame.

The second, issued by the Office for Statistics Regulation after dismissing Ms Sturgeon's statement, is the truth. PHS were forced by the Regulator's intervention to issue a new report in which they stated that a link “could not be ruled out” – certainly closer to the truth but still phrased euphemistically. Yet once more Ms Sturgeon quotes the same untruth at First Minister's Questions this week (Scotsman, 29 April)!

Anas Sarwar and Daniel Johnson are making a good fist of taking her to task for her culture of secrecy but they really should not be allowing her to continue to spread disinformation to the Scottish people. Indeed, should not the Presiding Officer be intervening in such cases of repeated blatant evasion of the truth? Fat chance!

Colin Hamilton, Edinburgh

It’s obvious, really

Angus Robertson MSP has blamed “recent world events” for more than a quarter of Scottish households not returning their census forms. Yes, Angus, that’ll be it! Did anyone else have a Russian Spetsnaz trooper rappel into their home, scream “nyet, nyet” when you go to type the first few letters of census.gov.scot into Google before swan diving through a window... or was that just me?

David Bone, Girvan, South Ayrshire

Bad old days

May I add my name to Andrew HN Gray’s letter in The Scotsman of 29 April in which he is castigating a fellow writer’s missives on the wonders of nationalisation?Perhaps he could have mentioned 25 per cent inflation, 15 per cent mortgage rate and a Chancellor who sold off a large amount of the nation’s gold reserves... and of course, that wonderful time when we had to go the the IMF to bail us out.Theory and practice always comes to grief when political dreams are put into action.

C Lowson, Fareham, Hants

Some welcome

I was disgusted to read in Tuesday’s Scotsman that the so-called Welcome Hub for refugees from Ukraine had been left unstaffed.

When one considers the experiences refugees have had, plus the trauma of leaving their much-loved homeland, the very least they can expect is a welcoming party providing assistance, support and reassurance.

The Scottish Government has broadcast how welcoming Scotland and the Scots will be to refugees from Ukraine yet the local council and Refugee Council can't seem to appreciate the anguish and trauma the refugees have experienced since the war began.

Even if the council individuals manning the Hub had been asked to volunteer over a weekend, such as happened last Saturday, surely, in the wake of the much-vaunted support by the Government to refugees, there would have been a minimum of say, ten staff to look after the Hub, that is, two staff to accompany a single family to accommodation and several staff in a zoned-off area in the airport to look after families who had arrived and were waiting for staff to accompany them to their accommodation, hopefully with refreshments and toys available.

Even if the council staff do not speak the refugees’ language, they could still assist by showing them a crib sheet with FAQs in English and Ukrainian/Russian such as we had in Perth & Kinross schools in order to communicate with Polish and Romanian children.

The Scottish Refugee Council and Renfrewshire Council need to organise themselves more effectively.

Joan Reed, Berwick-upon-Tweed

Turbine terror

With the recent prolonged drought, The Scotsman article “Tinderbox Scotland” highlights the risk of Muirburn and raging wildfires on peat-covered moorland (29 April).

What politicians, planners and local councillors seem to be blissfully unaware of is that wind turbines pose a significant, deadly, and growing threat to wildlife and human habitation.

Our once beautiful countryside is now littered with giant industrial wind turbines. Hundreds have been built in forests, or on fragile, peat-covered moorland, in reality a tinder-dry touch paper at the moment.

Because of poor maintenance, oil leaks and extremely high gear ratios, wind turbines pose an increasing risk of spontaneous combustion and collapse. This is happening alarmingly often, particularly in Germany where they are now known as “Tickenden Zeitbomben” – the all too graphic translation, “Ticking Time Bombs”.

If one or more of these giant turbines bursts into flames, scattering burning debris and sparks, they can start a rapidly-spreading, raging inferno because they are proving impossible to extinguish at such a height.

I have tried to raise this previously before without response, but surely it must be urgently raised with Government and local authorities?

It must be asked: What country-wide, specialist equipment is available, at a moment’s notice, to extinguish fires at such a height?

Will the ever-so-green wind industry pay for this potential disaster and clean-up costs?

George Herraghty, Lhanbryde, Moray

Kirk conscience

It seems that The Kirk could be set to approve same-sex weddings in its churches after a majority indicated their support.

The 25 per cent of presbyteries who oppose it include that of the Revd Mike Goss of Barry Parish Church who says there are “still folk who stand by the Bible”, and The Christian Institute’s Scotland Officer Nigel Kenny, who said, “This is a very sad development” and is a victory of “Culture rather than Christ”.

Despite the anachronistic views of some, we have to applaud the extent to which churches are improving their attitude… if only for the gay people who choose to become/find themselves involved in religion, and maybe this is a private matter for them.

There is, however, to be a “conscience clause” in the legislation, exempting disapproving ministers.

Could it be argued that if churches are licensed to solemnise marriages recognised by the state, all should respect the law of the land and its associated equality legislation?

Neil Barber, Edinburgh Secular Society

E for ‘error’

Grant Shapps, Minister for Transport, intends to make e-scooters legal on our roads very soon, saying trials were successful. Successful? Obviously he did not consult the public or listen to road safety groups and charities advocating for protection of people with sensory difficulties. He ignores that many towns and cities in England stopped the e-scooter trial after numerous complaints. He ignores that ambulance call-outs in England since January 2020 exceed 840 incidents involving e-scooters. However, this could be over 2,000 since only a third of ambulance trusts provided data. He has ignored the 11 deaths and thousands of injuries to pedestrians. He ignores that the London Fire Brigade has already attended 98 fires caused by the lithium batteries on e-scooters and e-bikes. London Transport has banned e-scooters from all its network. Criminals using e-scooters are running rings around the police.

Grant Shapps must be held responsible for future deaths and injuries since the e-scooter brigade thinks that pavements and shopping malls are for their exclusive use and yet the police have done nothing. The Scottish Government should declare that these lethal machines will never be allowed on Scottish roads and pavements. Now that would show Independence.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Census silliness

The claim by Angus Robertson that the reason for the abysmal return of completed Census questionnaires in Scotland was the war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic simply beggars belief. That may be the best excuse his spinners can dream up but somehow or other it did not seem to affect anywhere but Scotland. To dismiss the fact that it was deliberately put back a year at tremendous cost simply to differentiate Scotland from the rest of the UK compounds the latest fiasco. Or to imply that the intrusive questioning, seemingly more interested in considered nationality and gender than anything else, was not a factor in people being turned off, is ridiculous.

To compound this trend in Scottish affairs, we now are asked whether we are Scottish or British when giving blood; as with the census, as if it was somehow impossible to be both at the same time. Invasive nationalism, pure and simple, and the worst kind of nationalism at that, is at the core of these recurring self-inflicted problems for this SNP/Green administration.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

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