Readers' Letters: Scotland's transport network needs real coordination

The Scottish Green Party is pushing for free bus travel for all, citing other European countries – Luxembourg and Malta. These two countries are very different from Scotland, and it’s a deviation for the Greens – their normal “go to” is the Scandinavian countries.

​While visiting family in Helsinki last month I found there is one app that covers trains, trams, buses and bicycles. The services provided via that app were regular, reliable, had excellent network coverage and interlinked very well.

By contrast, the experience in any Scottish city is one of little or no joined-up coordination across these transport modes – even among bus operators alone. There is also zero commonality in the apps used to access and track your chosen services.

Trams and buses service Edinburgh city centre (Picture: Neil Johnstone)

Subsidising buses to this extent, although well intentioned, is an expensive back-door nationalisation of the bus network, with no explanation as to how it will be funded. This policy will also fail to deliver the “mode switch from car use” often mentioned, when car users fail to get on an overcrowded bus and then have to wait for the next one – when bus service levels have been dropping steadily.

Where is the investigation into the unintended consequences, too? ScotRail fares only cover 30 per cent of the total operating costs – but will fewer people travel by train to take a free bus and so worsen public finances further? Will visitors still be charged, as in Malta? Will bus services run more slowly?

I hope wiser counsel will prevail – public transport is important and should be above gimmickry, and be treated holistically across all modes. A truly green policy would be sustainable. Better the Scottish government do the hard work to see services increase and have their interoperability eased. Only that long-term effort will deliver the desired results.

Iain MacDonald, Broughty Ferry, Dundee

Hell to pay

No sooner has John Swinney announced his new Cabinet than one minister really needs to consider her position.

The SNP deputy first minister and finance secretary, Jenny Gilruth, has boldly stated that she “makes no apology” for Scotland's welfare system and says we are not spending too much.

Ms Gilruth is not spending her money, she is spending taxpayers’ money and her party keeps asking the very same taxpayers for more. Where is the skill in this? You do not need to pay a minister many thousands of pounds to state the obvious. The skill a finance minister needs is to create wealth, not spend other people's money. Here is a suggestion for Ms Gilruth. Cut the bloated pay of the Cabinet, apology not necessary.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

No hoper

Leading up to the Holyrood election John Swinney spoke about hope. Well, Jenny Gilruth responding to questions on Thursday morning, damned that. As she had not done anything in her new job she spoke about actions taken in previous jobs. As Transport Minister she said she was aware country areas needed buses as they did not have access to trains. Funny, in my area I went from a 15-minute service to an hourly service.

As Education Secretary she left headteachers to make up their own minds re: mobile phones. This has meant that if a town has more than one school, parents at school X complain their child is being discriminated against because the rules are different to school Y.

The only hope I am left with is that John Swinney does not become ill and have to leave his deputy in charge

Elizabeth Hands, Armadale, West Lothian

Unimpressed

It's inexplicable! A failed Education Secretary as First Minister and a failed Education Secretary as his deputy!

Niven Kelly, Edinburgh

Reform defended

When Joyce McMillan doesn't like something, I can be sure that, as a sort of negative weather-vane, she is flagging up all the sort of people you wouldn't want to introduce to your mother (Perspective, 22 May).

In her latest invective she describes a thoroughly democratic party which stands for the people and nation of the United Kingdom, supported by 361,994 Scots only a few weeks ago, as “damaging, dangerous or downright disgusting”. Well, forgive me for disagreeing, Ms McMillan, but it is the SNP which ignores the democratic decision by the Scottish people to remain part of the UK and which ignores its own written commitment to honour the outcome of the 2014 Referendum that is “damaging, dangerous and downright disgusting”.

Perhaps she missed the demonstration outside Holyrood by former members of ourarmed forces this week? They were demanding an apology by John Swinney for “doing a deal with the Devil”, namely Sinn Fein, and they were men who lost family and colleagues in the decades-long terrorist campaign by the IRA against our nation. These men are and were our own protectors and many of them are Scots. For the SNP to form an alliance with their political bedfellows beggars description.

In the 2026 Holyrood election, the unionist majority was 43.71 per cent of the entire SNP vote. Hundreds of thousands of us and our kith and kin elsewhere in Britain voted for Reform, because that is what is needed, both south of the Border with Keir Starmer's extreme-left government and north of it with the shameful Scottish Nationalists.

Peter Hopkins, Edinburgh

Landslide, eh?

John Swinney claims to have won the recent election by “a landslide”, which is a fascinating comment to make when the actual figures are taken into account in a comparative way. To put things in context, the SNP, Greens and other separatists collectively won 952,296 votes in 2026 and the unionist parties won 1,335,850. The majority for the unionists was 383,554. Astonishingly enough, the 2014 Referendum majority for the Union was 383,937 a difference of only 383 votes! It also means that the unionist majority alone in 2026 constituted 40.27 per cent of the total separatist vote!

Clearly, the SNP is no further forward in its mindless policy of breaking up our nation than they were 12 years ago. That means that despite the utter lack of interest in Holyrood expressed by a derisory 53 per cent of voters in Scotland actually bothering to put X anywhere, the actual number of people who were sufficiently anti-separatist holds up. There must be a word for their reaction to the constant blitz of SNP verbiage the Scottish people are subjected to compared to the separatists' abject failure to succeed at anything practical. At all. “Natted”, perhaps, as in “I feel totally Natted”?

The Union is clearly in excellent health. In fact, I would go so far as to say that things are clearly getting much, much better if we can muster such a strong vote when the total number of voters as a percentage of the electorate is so reduced.

Eat your heart out, John Swinney.

Andrew HN Gray, Edinburgh

Standards of proof

Ian Waugh (Letters, 21 May) is admirably honest in expressing his preference for a “yes/no” answer to any question in a future Scottish referendum because it is more likely to give him his preferred result rather than a “negative outcome for Scotland’, which, in his view, is the same result as in the 2014 referendum: No to secession.

Mr Waugh thinks that Scotland should have more devolution than that inflicted on us by the Smith Commission. Why? In which devolved areas has the SNP regime shown its competence? Health? Education? Transport? Justice? Policing? The record of devolved governments is at best lacklustre – and he wants more of it? Indeed, he wants the whole package – secession. Judging by the mess Scotland is in financially, that John Swinney and Ivan McKee now have to address, the last thing we need is more devolution.

Mr Waugh blames the “remain/leave” question for the Brexit referendum result. But what allowed that was the “50 per cent plus one vote” majority system Alex Salmond had insisted on in 2014 being reprised in 2016.

In the US, amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in Congress followed by ratification by three-quarters of the federal states. The SNP itself requires a two-thirds majority to amend its constitution. Why did we ever think a simple majority would be good enough for a complex and momentous question? Why is what is good enough for the SNP too good for Scotland?

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Vent away

It is probably time to close out the letters on this page covering the unsavoury conclusion to the Scottish Premier League season. However maybe time for just one last parting shot, and I would include all football fans, clubs and administrators, to bear it in mind.

I have, personally been witness to my own team suffer three last game losses which on each occasion resulted in them losing the league title. However, I am also a supporter of Scottish football and if I cannot get to matches involving my own team I go along to games involving local teams, either in the SPFL or the Highland League.

I also accept that Rangers and Celtic, due to their size and drawing power, will continue to dominate the Scottish footballing scene. However, no team has the “right” to win the league, but I do expect all teams to “get a fair shake” when the chance comes along, and that did not happen this season.

So what do supports such as us do. Do we invade pitches? Do we tear up city centres? No, we just write sarcastic letters to newspapers. Perhaps those that run the game in Scotland should pay some attention to us for a change.

David J Mackenzie, Inverness

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