Readers' Letters: What can Labour’s Douglas Alexander offer Scotland?

Douglas Alexander “sipping a cappuccino on North Berwick High Street” apparently longs to be of “service” (your report, 3 September).

What has he done since the New Labour house of cards collapsed more than a decade ago? Like Ed Balls and many others he has found sanctuary at the Harvard Kennedy School while “advising international companies on net zero”. Presumably he wasn't sailing the Atlantic with Greta Thunberg. Doesn't he see the irony?

As far as the great investments in schools and the health service, yes they were great for the private companies making millions out of the Private Finance Initiative, leaving local authorities and health trusts facing massive debts to those same companies who were and are no better than corporate loan sharks.

While sitting MP Kenny MacAskill has been highlighting the serious cost of living and energy issues faced by his constituents, I hope East Lothian voters don't get suckered into returning Alexander, this paragon of New Labour self-service, back to the Westminster trough.

Douglas Alexander is aiming to capture East Lothian for Labour at the next general election

Marjorie Ellis Thompson, Edinburgh

The way we were

How many members of the younger generation in Scotland are aware that our country was far better governed and did much better economically long before devolution and the present set-up?

How many know that all the jobs being done by today’s ministers at Holyrood – and all their staff with movie star salaries and expenses and hangers-on and offices and overseas trips and the building itself – were part time work for sitting MPs of the governing party at Westminster?

With a handful of civil servants and no Spads they ran our affairs infinitely more efficiently and competently, and certainly much more economically than the present lot. Billions have been spent that could have gone to the poor and our most vulnerable.

The truth is, devolution was a sop for an imagined and greatly exaggerated threat by possibly well-meaning Labour politicians. They thought it would “kill nationalism stone dead”. Instead it has multiplied it. Some Scots politicians – the late Tam Dalyell was one – 25 years ago saw the present situation and chaos as being a certainty, and he was exactly right in every forecast he made.

Devolution may have some point – but not if any nationalists are involved. They are an obsessed group and do not attract the brightest, but merely the biggest, believers and their one-issue-dominated policies have been disastrous for our country.

Can we get back to the way we were?

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

It’s a crime

Police Scotland have been forced into the position of having to announce that minor crimes, such as the theft of garden tools, will not be investigated owing to their lack of resources in dealing with more serious crime in Scotland.

This is a direct consequence of underfunding by the Scottish Government as Police Scotland has been forced to reduce in size, with shoddy, run-down police stations and antiquated police detection technology.

The SNP administration who set up Police Scotland have consistently reduced their funding and increased their workload while expecting a 100 per cent effective police force.

Scotland deserves better.

Dennis Forbes Grattan, Bucksburn, Aberdeen

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