Readers' Letters: No surprise that crucial Covid WhatsApp messages were deleted

It is reported that National Clinical Director Jason Leitch’s WhatsApp messages cannot be handed to the Covid inquiries as they were deleted every day (your report, 27 October).

Scottish Clinical Director Jason Leitch with then Health Secretary Humza Yousaf during the pandemic in 2021 (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/ POOL /AFP)

​Why is everyone surprised that there are no notes kept by a member of the SNP Covid group? The leader at that time was Nicola Sturgeon and we know, from the Alex Salmond inquiry, neither she nor whomever she spoke to re: Mr Salmond kept notes. So, can we assume there are other crucial decision-making processes that have no traceable notes?

Elizabeth Hands, Armadale, West Lothian

Shameful

Should anyone have a scintilla of doubt left as to how the SNP-led Scottish Government operated furtively and in a clandestine fashion, then surely that is dispelled by the shocking claim about WhatsApp messages being deleted on a daily basis during the Covid pandemic. It should be noted that the questions of this shameful Government, headed at the time by then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, are not being led by Opposition parties but by an esteemed KC, Jamie Dawson, who is lead counsel for the UK Covid inquiry’s module on Scotland.

Further, Mr Dawson notes that “subject to one exception”, no WhatsApp or other informal messaging material has been received. To those many people who lost loved ones during Covid and without being able to see them, these disclosures are distressing. Should the cabal that operated during Covid of Sturgeon, Jeane Freeman and Jason Leitch avoid the real scrutiny they deserve due to these WhatsApp deletions, it would be a disgrace to any claims of transparency in Government and will not be forgotten.

Richard Allison, Edinburgh

Different kettle

There is a very relevant distinction that is never made in the assertion that support for Scottish independence is pretty evenly split amongst the Scottish population and that is that what is supported is the “idea” of independence, which is a totally different kettle of fish from supporting a vote for “actual” independence. No one in their right mind would vote for “actual” independence without a full analysis being available of what it actually entails beyond all the fantasy literature that the SNP peddle.

Michael Officer, Bridge of Earn, Perthshire

No reform

Joyce McMillan claims what is needed is “a fundamental rethink, which looks towards the richer and more multi-layered local government landscape of some of our north European neighbours” (Perspective, 27 October). Dial back to just prior to the May 2021 election and every political party at Holyrood pledged to back the plan by the then Green MSP Andy Wightman to give a raft of new powers and protection for local councils. In addition, these changes, matching the European Charter of Local Self-Government, would be incorporate into Scots law.

The principal reason for the refusal of the SNP/Green Parties to implement the legislation in the current session at Holyrood is that such a move would require a cut to the numbers of MSPs at Holyrood as there would be insufficient legislation for the Edinburgh Parliament to warrant 129 MSPs when so many tasks would now be implemented at a local level. Joyce McMillan will never see any reform of local government in Scotland as Holyrood MSPs would never countenance a reduction in numbers!

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway

Devolution failed

I don't normally agree with Joyce McMillan about anything, but she does have a point about the poor state of local councils. Devolution was supposed to bring government closer to the people, and to provide better government, yet we are in the bizarre situation where our local councils were better run by Westminster, before devolution!

William Ballantine, Bo'ness, West Lothian

Flagging Sarwar

Anas Sarwar is back to Square One. I would have expected a degree of insight to have kicked in by now, but no, it hasn't. Mr Sarwar doesn't seem to realise that people vote for Labour because it is a unionist party. They aren't voting for a sort-of Nat party. So, when he says he feels more Scottish than British, just whose game does he think he is playing?

You cannot out-Nat the Nats. If you want Scots to vote Labour, as the main unionist party, don't try to hide the Union Flag. It is one of the symbols of our identity. By all means, use the Saltire too, but remember we have made our decision to stay in the Union. Don't try to water it down. The SNP is a busted flush.

The Union Flag includes the Saltire, because it symbolises the Union, for which Labour stands, so use both, but do not ignore our Union Flag. If you don't like it, stand down.

Peter Hopkins, Edinburgh

No atheist

If Mark Boyle and Eric J Scott (Letters, 26 October) think that murderous Communist regimes are not religious because they are atheistic, they are mistaken. Communism has many attributes of a religious faith. It is a doctrinal ideology with its holy book Das Kapital and great prophets Marx, Engels and Mao. An omnipotent state takes the role of omnipotent god, dissent is not tolerated, children are indoctrinated, and other ideologies declared false. The adoration of dead “saints” is like an act of worship – witness the mummified corpses of Lenin and Kim Il Sung in their grand mausoleums. It even has schisms (Maoism, Leninism, Trotskyism …). Communism has much more in common with religion than with freethinking atheism.

It is telling that the only examples of murderous atheists Boyle and Scott could produce are Communists. Perhaps to avoid this Boyle peddles the lie that Hitler was a “born-again atheist”. How odd, then, that the Fuhrer repeatedly referred to “the Creator” and “providence” in Mein Kampf and his speeches, and one of his first acts on coming to power in 1933 was to close the German Freethinkers League, confiscate its assets, hand its HQ to the church, then give a speech in which he declared that he had stamped out the atheist movement. Whatever his theological views, Hitler was no atheist.

(Dr) Stephen Moreton, Great Sankey, Cheshire

Moral authority?

As a Sikh who supports Ross County, my friend is unsure which side he should take in the Hamas-Israel conflict. Can anyone help? Otherwise, I'll have to explain to him that moral questions should be approached from the standpoint of disinterested moral reasoning, not irrelevant tribal allegiance.

Richard Lucas, Scottish Family Party, Glasgow

Renewed cheek

A report from Net Zero Watch has revealed that RWE Renewables, the UK's biggest energy generator, has just told the UK Government that its subsidy “strike price” must rise by 70 per cent or no more wind farms would be built. For years the wind industry has been conning politicians and the public into believing that wind electricity was the cheapest form of electricity generation. Wind companies signed “Contracts for Difference” (CfDs) to provide electricity at extraordinarily low prices but then refused to activate the contracts. They could legally do this because the contract start date was set to be within a two-year timescale.

The result was that they made hundreds of millions in windfall profits because the market rate was far higher than the strike price. The Government closed this loophole and that is why the wind companies are desperately demanding the 70 per cent price rise for their electricity.

Why do we need more wind turbines? There are already 11,479 in the UK which produced 30.2 per cent of our electricity in the last year. How many more are needed to provide 100 per cent? Another 25,000? Wrong – if the wind doesn’t blow all 36,000 would be useless and gas and nuclear would keep the lights on.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Lunar light

The report on the findings of scientists analysing rock samples brought back from the moon in 1972 represents another step forward in our understanding of the history of planet Earth (“Apollo crystals show Moon 40 million years older than thought”, 24 October). It sounds like a minor adjustment, dating the Moon a few million years older than previously thought, but in fact the revision is much more important than that because it lends more weight to the Giant Impact Hypothesis.

This hypothesis was first advanced by Professor of Geology Reginald Daly in 1946. He proposed that certain features of the Earth and of the Moon could be best explained by a planetary collision some 4 billion years ago. A planet now called Theia smashed into the Earth and caused a massive ejection of molten rock which went into orbit round the Earth and then cooled to form the Moon. The collision split open the old crust of the Earth and set in motion the tectonic movement of large continental slabs, creating the land masses, ocean trenches and mountain ranges we see today. It was also the probable source of the wobble in Earth’s rotation.

Daly’s theory was a bold imaginative leap of great explanatory power, but it was treated as idle speculation for many decades. It is heartening to see the actual landings on the Moon long after his time have confirmed his theory and persuaded the majority of scientists he was right all along. Credit where credit is due!

Les Reid, Edinburgh

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