Readers Letters: A9 safety is a question of decisions on how to spend money

Fifteen people have died and almost 200 have been injured on single carriageway parts of the A9 over the past four years – more than double the number for sections which have been dualled

The disparity in casualty figures between the dualled and undualled parts of the arterial A9 between Perth and Inverness is alarming (your report, 17 June).

With the dualling project being delayed by up to ten years, one must ask how many more road users have needlessly died or been injured by the Scottish Government's failure to progress this essential road scheme. Nicola Sturgeon may well have “apologised” for the lack of progress and I am sure Covid, Brexit, Westminster and the man on the moon have all played their part on the SNP's “excuse” list.

Yet money could be found for non-essential matters such as hiring multiple spin doctors and employing numerous civil servants to compile the futile reports on “independence” now gathering dust on government shelves. The Highlands have long claimed to have been neglected by the SNP government in favour of the vote-catching Central Belt and I think the A9 dualling project failures add credence to this point of view.

Bob MacDougall, Kippen, Stirlingshire

Farage Trumped

The Reform Party seems to be doing well in the polls just now, ever since Nigel Farage became leader. However, they do seem to be a bit of a one man band – there is little to the party apart from him. Charismatic he may be, but anyone who supports Donald Trump, as he does, is not to be trusted!

William Ballantine, Bo'ness, West Lothian

Funds needed

Many of our schools are in a terrible state due to classroom violence and general disrespect for teachers and authority. The teaching unions are calling for more support in the form of increased staffing, more classroom assistants and more facilities to rehabilitate disruptive pupils. However, First Minister John Swinney says he does not have the funds for such measures. So teacher numbers will continue to fall and bad behaviour by pupils will continue to rise.

Part of the reason we are short of funds is that the SNP Government has squandered so much. As a typical example, we have the team of civil servants seconded from their work at a cost of £1 million per year to produce speculative papers on an imaginary independent Scotland.

But that is peanuts compared to the forest of quangos that has sprung up during the years of SNP maladministration. The recent survey conducted by The Scotsman (“Inside Scotland's Quangos”) has shown us how lavish salaries and expensive offices drain millions from the public purse every year. The survey only investigated the top 117 quangos, there are many more organisations, some with only one or two people in an office, but they too rely on funding from the Government. It all adds up.

And let's not forget our overseas offices, some installed inside UK embassies, which cost millions too – the Brussels office, for example, costs £2.5 million per year to run.

Public funds are being squandered on all fronts, so that we end up with no money to pay for the essential services so many people depend on. It was against this background that the SNP Government declared a council tax freeze. Very nice for the middle-class voters who own their homes and pay fair amounts of council tax. In fact, it is so nice it could be seen as a bribe intended to buy votes. But it is not so nice for the less well-off who find the council cannot afford the facilities and services, such as care homes, home helps, schools, teaching assistants and waste disposal, without which people's lives are limited and restricted. This council tax freeze was a cheap stunt to win votes.

We must get rid of this spendthrift SNP government. The Barnett formula ensures Scotland receives more money per capita than England does, but bad spending decisions by the SNP have ensured that we do not enjoy the better services that we should receive.

The Council tax freeze should be scrapped at once. Councils should be free to raise the funds they need to maintain a good standard of services. The SNP Government has centralised power for themselves and weakened local councils. Given its track record of incompetence, their power grab and their indifference to the consequences are outrageous.

Les Reid, Edinburgh

New name please

I was interested to read the article by Euan McColm on Friday. When I was a boy, my mother told me that my parents were changing their council vote because the then Progressive party had changed its name to the Conservative Party, who were not well thought of in Scotland.

The article suggests the Tories should form a new Scottish political party. I suggest they also change their name and stop the obsession they have with the Union, as they sound like a branch of the DUP.

Sandy Philip, Edinburgh

Spinning Starmer

Beware the small print. Every Labour pledge comes with the warning “if conditions allow”. This strongly suggests a Labour government will simply adopt the SNP tactic of blaming someone else – in this case the Conservatives – for their inability to live up to the pre-election hype. “Everything is fully costed”, except that it won’t be. I suspect the Tory claim that taxes will rise by £2,000 per head will be an understatement. Labour make government sound easy so expect years of excuses and disappointment. Keir Starmer is not the saviour, but a very naughty boy spinning a story.

Ken Currie, Edinburgh

Views spoiled

Getting electricity from wind is not the fresh and clean joy many imagine. It is an industry, and comes with industrial downsides aplenty. Overhead cables, pylons and sub-stations. Plus earthworks, concrete and access roads. The windmills themselves are just part of the package. Country landscapes ruined.

Is it a coincidence that those who support wind power tend to live in towns, where they will never see or have to live with the destruction of our beautiful country?

Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Perth and Kinross

Energy future

The general election campaign in Scotland occasionally focuses on the evasive, vague plans of Labour and the SNP on how quickly they will shut down the oil industry. But there are two other energy sideshows: the recent devastating analysis by nuclear industry experts of the implications for Scotland of no nuclear energy, and the scandalous looking the other way by all parties on the closure of Grangemouth.

The only party in favour of the first two is the Conservatives and their reward could be winning Aberdeen South, where in 2019 Labour got 4,000 votes, SNP 20,000 and the Conservatives 16,000, making them the best bet for tactical voters hoping to unseat the SNP’s Stephen Flynn.

Then there's Grangemouth, whose death warrant Nicola Sturgeon signed eight years ago when she banned Ineos from evaluating and exploiting the shale and methane gas deposits underneath the complex. Now Alba, the ragged inheritors of “it's oor oil”, are running a no-hope campaign to save it. The only bright spot is the prospect of the SNP arguing a case for separation that includes cutting a deal for a base electricity supply when the wind doesn't blow, we've no gas or nuclear generation and the fantasy hydrogen industry didn't emerge.

Very soon a 5-1 gubbing by Germany will be the least of our worries

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Own goal?

ITV omitted to tell us the helpline for those affected by the issues raised by Friday’s Scotland performance.

John V Lloyd, Inverkeithing, Fife

Finances silence

Brian Monteith, in his Perspective article of 17 June, outlines a claim of silence over Covid decisions taken by politicians at both Holyrood and Westminster.

However, there is a deafening silence by both politicians and the media over the impact of the claim, made in a paper by the Office for Budget Responsibility, that the UK national debt will spiral to three times the size of the UK budget by the end of the century.

That indicates a UK debt of around £9 trillion and, assuming the Scottish share is 10 per cent, a Holyrood debt of about £900 billion. Why the lack of debate in the current election as to how such a sum can be repaid ?

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway

Dictating writing

I read Rosie Heptonstall’s letter “Writers have a moral obligation to protest against injustice” (5 June), with interest.

Her interpretation of the “good writer” being purely dependent on a specified content and opinion is concerning. To dictate “what writers were born to do, what they are morally obliged to do, what they should live to do”, is a concept most likely to be found in countries under state control where free thinking is not allowed or suppressed. We should celebrate that writers in this country have freedom of expression.

They should be free to write about what moves them, fiction or non fiction, and people can choose to read it or not, according to their own interests. It goes without saying that hate speech, defined by Scottish Government as abusive or threatening material, is the exception.

Diversity of culture, opinion and expression are what makes for a healthy society and no-one should be told what they should live to do. That is surely a personal quest for each one of us to discover.

Rona McCall, Gairloch, Wester Ross

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