Readers’ Letters: Swinney's wrecking the Christmas card landscape he’s so proud of

This Christmas, the First Minister has chosen to send his greetings with an image of an unspoilt Highland landscape – a scene of peace and natural wonder. The irony is stark. While he uses the beauty of Scotland’s hills for seasonal wishes, his government presides over policies that threaten to industrialise those very landscapes with pylons, battery storage, substations and wind turbines.

Mr Swinney waxes lyrical about our “uniquely beautiful natural environment” and encourages us to get out into it for “our physical and mental well-being.”

It certainly is a gift from nature – yet the presents his government delivers to rural communities are a tsunami of Big Energy industrial junk and broken promises. The mental suffering among those forced to live beside the concrete-and-steel roadshow he champions cannot be dismissed, especially when support services for mental health are virtually nonexistent. These communities have been abandoned and long forgotten by central government.

This photograph of Loch Ossian in winter, taken in 2024 by John Swinney, features on the First Minister's 2025 Christmas cards (Picture: John Swinney/Scottish Government/PA)

The Highlands are not just a backdrop for greeting cards – they are living communities whose hopes and futures are being stolen by the administration he leads.

If the First Minister truly valued the Highland landscape, he wouldn’t be handing it over to developers all tied up with a bow to colonise for profit.

To celebrate the Highlands in a Christmas card while industrialising them in policy is pure hypocrisy wrapped in seasonal paper – and then dumped beside one of the millions of hacked-down trees Big Energy has felled. The Highlands don’t need festive platitudes – they need protection. And until this government provides it, no Christmas greeting can hide the damage he has done.

Lyndsey Ward Communities B4 Power Companies, Beauly, Highland

Playing hardball

As reported in your editorial (20 December), BBC Russia editor Steve Rosenberg asked President Putin if he intended further special military operations. “There won’t be any operations if you treat us with respect” Putin shot back, accusing Europe of fueling Ukrainian aggression against Russia. He continues to drive a wedge between Europe and the US, not that he needs to as Donald Trump has distanced Europe with the help of envoy Steve Witkoff who has overplayed respecting Putin and achieved nothing.

By reiterating that he wants peace on his terms, Putin is playing hardball and is still railing against Nato expansion that happened more than 20 years ago. Despite reports of an ailing economy, if anything Russia is ramping up military strikes, apparently advancing on all fronts, Ukraine having been weakened by the withdrawal of US support. A diplomatically relevant Europe needs unity and strength. Failure to agree to use frozen Russian assets makes Europe look weak despite a €90bn loan so that Ukraine maintains a weakened resistance.

Given their collective lack of military power European leaders, including Keir Starmer, need to put Russia under more economic pressure including halting over €20bn a year of Russian fossil fuel imports and also iron and steel imports. Astonishingly Russia’s share of EU fertiliser imports have risen to 34 per cent. Sanctions are not working and until Russia is completely isolated peace will remain illusory. Putin needs to earn European respect and that will not happen until he is truly “ready and willing” to make peace. Europe can make him through strength not weakness.

Neil Anderson, Edinburgh

Save the date

As I was attempting to buy a 2026 CalMac calendar there were two differing messages on their website. One said “2026 calendar has been cancelled due to technical issues”. The other (which has now disappeared) read “Coming soon!” Sounds a bit like their ferries.

M Blair, Greenock, Inverclyde

Star power

I was most surprised that your music critic (Scotsman, 20 December) only gave Robert Plant & Saving Grace a four-star review. If his “vocals remain a thing of wonder” and that “it was over too soon”, what did he and the band have to do to earn that extra star he most thoroughly deserved?

Ian Macdonald, Edinburgh

No alternatives

Have the opposition parties in Scotland ever thought of reasons to vote for them, apart from the fact they are not the “failing” (in their opinion) SNP?

As an employee of Royal Mail, I am not about to vote for political parties that decided it was a good idea to sell off Royal Mail.

Similarly, I am not about to vote for parties that supplied ministers who believed Paula Vennells and Post Office bosses. Why would I? If they don’t have enough gumption to understand that subpostmasters are the bedrock of most communities then I seriously wonder why I should support them.

However, surely the most damning indictment is the complete failure to deliver any of the change promised by the Better Together campaign such as electoral reform, House of Lords reform or even federalism as an alternative to independence.

In what decade or century can we expect that to be delivered, if ever? What is the point of replacing the Tories with what are in effect Red Tories who seem to want outdo Reform UK in how nasty they can be?

Who was it that thought it was a good idea to promise the best way to stay in the EU was to stay in the Union? How did that all work out?

Maybe they should stop blaming the SNP for the own failures to convince the electorate they would be a better government than the SNP and actually started to deliver some of that so-called charge they promised to win the referendum in 2014.

Peter Ovenstone, Peterhead, Aberdeenshire

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