Readers' Letters: Devolution isn't holding Scotland back, it's the quality of MSPs
In my opinion, political parties are the trouble with Scotland, allowing a gang culture where a few individuals spout false promises and lies to large sections of the country. Devolution is not the problem, it is MSPs in Holyrood, with their lack of experience/competence in anything relevant to the management of a huge enterprise.
I would like to see MSPs elected on the basis of a proven track-record in a relevant profession. They would elect a team of Directors and a CEO, who would appoint six top-class project managers (possibly from the diminishing oil and gas sector), who would be given suitable budgets, employ their own teams of experts, all of whom would be judged on performance. All quangos, and pretend embassies would be closed immediately. MSPs would be subject to recall procedures and project managers would be sacked for failure to achieve targets.
James McConachie, Blairgowrie, Perthshire


In China’s hands?
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Hide AdThe law of unforeseen circumstances is laughing at us all, as illustrated by the zealotry of UK energy secretary David Miliband. He is clearly convinced of impending doom if we don't crack down on anything which emits CO2. The pursuit of net zero will beggar the UK and is already doing that to such economic giants as the German car industry. This is collateral damage.
In similar fashion, the attack on Israel by Hamas has resulted in the near destruction of Gaza, the crushing of Hezbollah and the defeat of Assad's regime and emasculation of Iranian plans for the destruction of Israel. Even Russia is now on the back-foot.
In like fashion, the policies being pursued by Europe's green lobby are causing a force for general good in the world, namely European ideas of freedom of expression and of democracy, however flawed, to be undermined. The cause of freedom is on the back foot when China is flexing its muscles and Labour is kowtowing to them. That is the last thing to do before such regimes. They see it as weakness, which it is.
It is imperative our lily-livered Labour Government get a grip and shrug off policies which will simply weaken us. Mr Miliband must be shown the door and Greta Thunberg policies abandoned before our children end up singing “The East is Red” daily at school.
Peter Hopkins, Edinburgh
Ignoring reality
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Hide AdScottish nationalists should have learned the facts about Scotland’s economy by now, but they insist on peddling the hoary old myths invented by the SNP. Fraser Grant (Letters, 17 December) is one such. The myth about Scotland’s “balance of trade surplus” has been shown repeatedly to be untrue, but then separatists insist on excluding Scotland’s trade with the rest of the UK from their calculations. Recent figures from Statista show that Scotland’s trade balance has been negative since at least 1998, not in “surplus” as Mr Grant claims.
Equally, it is not the case that “based on GDP, Scotland is one of the richest countries in the world”. That was a boast made by the SNP before and during 2014, and was based on a high oil price that no longer obtains. Professor John McLaren wrote that Scotland has “a moderately successful economy akin to the UK in wealth terms” (Perspective, 14 April 2021). He says it “could do better but it is not in bad shape”, and attempts to match the best performing countries – Luxembourg, Norway, Singapore, Qatar – are ‘doomed to failure… [for] non-replicable reasons”.
As for Scotland’s “highly educated population”, Prof McLaren singles out education as one of the “basics” that the Scottish Government needs to concentrate on getting right. Mr Grant says that all that is needed for Scotland to prosper after secession is the right economic policies. It is these policies that separatists, especially the SNP, have not been able to produce.
Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh
Food flashback
Sad to say, SNP parsimonious policies regarding university and college funding are giving them a particularly perilous time, so Fraser Grant's description of us having a highly educated population seems doomed, in time coming, to be only of historical interest, like oil and gas extraction, the biggest booster of our current GDP and export budget, even if it is declining and a rather unfashionable asset to brag about today.
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Hide AdRegarding the Scottish diet, I agree with Mr Grant that we are self-sufficient in neeps and tatties, but as for our agriculture being able to feed the whole population, that would only be possible if we went without sugar, reduced the consumption of wheat products, pork and poultry, and went without oranges, bananas, raisins and spices – no more mince pies. This all sounds just like Second World War rationing, which I am old enough to remember with dislike as a child, but as a medic accept that it was beneficial for public health.
Perhaps Mr Grant's view of Scottish food self-sufficiency after independence is a secret plan to return to the olden days when Christmas celebrations were banned, with the justification that it would tackle the obesity epidemic, which affects the population of Scotland more than those living in all the other UK nations.
Hugh Pennington, Aberdeen
What ecosystem?
When it comes to opposing the construction of new energy infrastructure it would seem that many view the Scottish countryside through rose tinted spectacles. Edward Troughton of Brechin and the Angus Glens writes (Letters, 13 December) that his “backyard" which may have to accommodate giant pylons, is “thousands of acres of ancient and native woodland and every element of biodiversity”. This obviously begs the question, how would he be able to see any pylons through the thick primordial forest?
I was also puzzled as to the existence of this huge ecosystem, as a year ago, when Brechin suffered huge flash flooding, I had looked on online satellite mapping, at the levels of vegetation coverage on the upstream hills. Unsurprisingly the uplands of Angus were, and still are, almost exclusively burnt out, windswept grouse moors, bereft of vegetation and wildlife, with water retention properties similar to that of a drainage board.
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Hide AdI sympathise about the terrible visual impact pylons and windmills can have but they are generally located on hills that are already ruined. We have slowly been conditioned to deludedly call these barren deserts "beautiful” and really need to ask ourselves how we would feel if we saw hills like these in Brazil? The sooner native woodland and biodiversity return to their (not our) horrible hills the better, for many reasons, not just screening pylons and windmills.
Ben Douglas, Galashiels, Scottish Borders
Lights on
Brian Wilson says “Transition to net-zero must take into account reality” (Perspective, 14 December). How true, but reality is not something politicians understand, they prefer wishful thinking. Brian Wilson shows some damning figures for wind electricity recently, but the industry will rush to say that these figures were not indicative.
Well, here are some figures which are indicative and will leave the renewables industry spin doctors speechless. Our UK electricity for the last 12 months was supplied by wind and solar 38.2 per cent, gas 27.6, nuclear 14.7, Interconnectors 12.5 and biomass (wood burning) 7.1 per cent. Guess which sources stopped the lights going out?
Michael Baird, Bonar Bridge, Highland
Super scientists
The Scotsman’s 17 December editorial rightly says that the genius of William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) should be better known. He should be joined by James Clerk Maxwell, Scotland’s other globally outstanding 19th century scientist (albeit Thompson was born in Belfast) whose portrait Albert Einstein kept in his study and, when asked if he himself stood on Isaac Newton’s shoulders, replied, “No, on Maxwell’s”.
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Hide AdInterestingly, Kelvin and Maxwell were good friends during the latter’s sadly short life, and both accepted Christianity, seeing no conflict between religion and science.
John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife
New legend?
Rodney Pinder's Readers’ Gallery picture of the Wallace statue at Dryburgh (17 December) pays due tribute to the pastoral glories of the Scottish Borders. However, as a resident of the area for nearly 40 years I have never heard it said that “when Wallace gets down from his pedestal and drinks from the cup before him, Scotland will be free”.
On the purely pedantic level it is an urn of the ash-bearing type he has before him and not a cup. Moreover, the man behind the statue, David Steuart Erskine, the eleventh Earl of Buchan, while an admirer of Wallace's patriotism and martial spirit and of the general Whiggish idea of liberty, was a stalwart unionist. Indeed, below the statue, by the meandering Tweed, Buchan erected a Temple of the Muses to the Scots-born poet James Thomson, author of the quintessential unionist lyric Rule Britannia.
The Wallace statue was neglected and overrun with vegetation for over 100 years after Buchan’s death in 1829. It seems likely, then, that any notion of Scotland being “free” has been freshly minted in the last decade or so.
John Wood, St Boswells, Scottish Borders
Probably not
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Hide AdAs we approach Christmas, can we please have one week of Scotsman Letters where no mention of Brexit/EU or Independence/Remain UK is permitted? Let peace reign,
Brian Barbour, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland
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