Readers' Letters: Don't tell me I can't go to Skye any time I like

In response to Margaret Campbell’s suggestion that too much tourism in Skye should result in applications being made to visit (Letters, 5 September), the last time I looked we live in a free country and are free to travel wherever and whenever we like.

The people who complain about too many campervans and tourists have been happily raking in the money for years from visitors. Accommodation is expensive and if you like to move around it can be hard to find in all the areas you wish to visit, so people are right to take their own vehicle.

What is the endgame for those who advocate restrictions on their own people? We can see it also in the visitor charge in Edinburgh, where indigenous people also have to pay a tourist tax. This is all just a scheme and scam to rip people off.

Cuillin Hills from above Carbost, Isle of Skye, is one of the more popular tourist spots

I for one will go where I please and don’t need someone telling me I have to pay extra for the privilege.

Andrew Thorpe, Oakley, Fife

Voting ideas

Last Saturday’s editorial was a surprise, but very welcome. It is simple, basic democracy that the Scottish people, through the Scottish Parliament, have the power of self-determination through another independence referendum.

Your writer proposed a higher than 50 per cent +1 threshold for “Yes” to win and suggested above 60 per cent but, crucially, did not refer to turnout. Turnout is an important factor if the intention is a high threshold of support for independence. The recent Westminster general election had only 60 per cent turnout. If this was repeated in a referendum, the vote to secure independence would require only 36 per cent of the total electorate. Of course, we might expect a much higher turnout – the 2014 referendum was 84 per cent – but this can’t be guaranteed. I suggest a more reasonable threshold is that “Yes” gets support from 45 per cent of the total electorate. That requires over 300,000 more “Yes” votes than 2014.

Also, if the intention is to ensure strong support into the future, I’d suggest the under-55s vote is crucial; perhaps a 60 per cent threshold of votes cast could apply to that demographic.

So, three conditions might be agreed, all, I think, within reach of the independence movement: 50 per cent +1 of the total vote; 45 per cent of the total electorate; 60 per cent of the under-55 vote.

As to frequency of referenda, please can we bury for good the futile attempts to define a “generation”? If a seven-year minimum is agreed for Northern Ireland, why not Scotland? This allows for certainly one, preferably two, Holyrood elections before another referendum.

Simply having a power does not mean it is used – the Scottish people could vote into Holyrood the usual unionist parties who have no intention of using the power, therefore no referendum. It’s as simple, and democratic, as that.

Robert Farquharson, Edinburgh

Tory-lite Labour

Labour promised “Change” but their first instinct is to remove the Winter Fuel Payment from pensioners to help “balance the books” and help pay for the £22 billion shortfall which allegedly they discovered only on entering office.

Firstly, all Opposition personnel are briefed by civil servants prior to election.

Secondly, the SNP, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and others repeatedly told them before 4 July about the deficit.

Thirdly, the UK Government, as a currency issuer, cannot “run out of money” – taking away a 27-year benefit is a political choice.

Fourthly, there are many other easier options for saving money. For example, limiting the Bank of England's interest payments to commercial banks. The sums which could be saved are an eye watering £55 billion in the next five years.

Austerity is austerity no matter which colour of government is in Westminster. It doesn't work.Fourteen years of Tory government should tell us all that. A shockingly bad start for a Labour government which is already looking more Tory-lite by the day.

Anne Meikle, Edinburgh

Blurred vision

Does John Swinney need glasses? He says his government is focused upon eliminating child poverty but this has been its goal for years. Is this really his focus?

What about independence, net zero, gender reform, closing the attainment gap and so on? It seems throughout Mr Swinney's time as a major figure in the SNP the focus has not only been all over the place but none of these ideals have been achieved. Should Mr Swinney have gone to a well-known High Street store?

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Take the power

After decades of tax and spending cuts, privatisation and deregulation, the UK is in a tailspin. The economy is moribund. Inequality is epic. The middle class is disappearing. Poverty is soaring. Employment is precarious. Pensions are miserly. Housing is unaffordable. Public health is worsening. Children are miserable. Life expectancy is falling.

Markets don’t self-regulate; deregulation hasn’t resulted in more competition or efficiency, but in monopoly power. Corporate monopolies have captured the political elites and regulatory agencies who make more rules that emasculate the state. Government has outsourced its responsibility to provide people with basic necessities – healthcare, housing, education, transport, energy – to corporations whose only motive is profit.

Keir Starmer is right – things can only get worse. He and Chancellor Rachel Reeves repeatedly signalled they had no intention of changing course despite their slogan.

Scotland’s devolved administration claims it has no choice but to go along with Westminster. That’s wrong. Holyrood could enact the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by the UK in 1976, into Scots law, giving the Scottish people political rights with which to exercise their sovereign power.

The Scotland Act 1998 allows Holyrood to choose how to implement and protect international human rights obligations to which the UK is a party. At the recent SNP conference the First Minister said that “taking decisions in Scotland for Scotland... is the key to unlocking a better future for the people who choose to live here.” If he’s serious, he’d enact ICCPR.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh

Fair enough

It is interesting that two regular contributors to these pages who live in England, Brian Barbour and Doug Morrison (Letters, 5 September), are persistently scathing of the SNP Scottish Government yet rarely provide directly comparable statistics from England (or, more informatively, from Wales, which is also subjected to a highly restrictive devolution settlement).

It's understandable that living in England and perhaps not being dependent on government welfare support, neither of these gentlemen seem to appreciate the relative benefits of living in Scotland today, but this does not excuse making sweeping and often misleading statements. To claim that there are “fewer experienced police officers” without mentioning the cut of 10,000 police officers by the Tory Government in Westminster, which had direct consequences for the Scottish Government, is not useful.

Whether Scotland or Wales is “stronger” under UK devolution is a question which could foster much debate but to make out that a UK country that uniquely provides baby boxes, supplementary child payments, free early learning and childcare, free school meals to most primary school pupils and free university and college education, along with free prescriptions and discretionary housing payments to mitigate the effects of the bedroom tax and the benefit cap, is not “fairer” is simply wrong. On most metrics the devolved SNP Scottish Government is performing better than the devolved Labour Welsh Government as the UK, in comparison with our European neighbours, continues to slide on fundamental measures, such as child poverty, welfare, education and economic growth.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Lose Holyrood

Perhaps it is time to start considering the dissolution of the Scottish Parliament and return administration to the Scottish Secretary. The money saved on the non-jobs in Parliament could go towards the initial reduction of the Scottish National Debt. An early indication of what lay ahead was the cost of the new Parliament building – £400 million – and it has gone skyward since then.

How many readers of this page can remember financial woes of this magnitude during the previous administration? Really, it is an unnecessary level of administration – town and city councils in consultation with the Scottish Office seemed to do remarkably good work.

C Lowson, Fareham, Hants

Unfair attack

Rebecca Machin (Letters, 5 September) plays the woman, not the ball. She attacks me (Letters, 3 September), but not what I actually say. Rather she deflects onto popular reactions to the SNP’s baby box and then accuses me of being “comfortable with… coercive control, gaslighting and restricting the financial flow to a supposedly equal partner” just because I showed that the SNP had made claims about the baby box’s benefits and safety accreditation that were not true.

I understand her anger, as a Scottish separatist, at my daring to expose the SNP’s mendaciousness. But her accusations about my personal attitudes to women are as unbecoming as they are inaccurate.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

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