Readers' Letters: Why was Yousaf so slow to see XL bully dogs threat?

A government needs to be on the ball or it makes mistakes. The case of the XL Bully dogs is illuminating.

The Scottish Government is alarmed at an ‘influx’ of XL bully dogs from south of the Border (Picture: Adobe)

Surely no-one in the Scottish Government could have been surprised by the influx of these dogs here given their banned status in England and yet it appears they were. Humza Yousaf had no sooner defended his community safety minister, Siobhian Brown's, decision not to follow England's example when second thoughts crept in. Any attack by this dog would be front page news.

In a puzzling attempt to get it right with his voters Humza Yousaf thinks an independent Scotland will be a land of milk and honey, but not now, somewhat later.

How many believe this will be made very apparent this election year. It looks more like sackcloth and ashes is in the lead right now.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Forbes revolution

There is growing speculation that while the pro-UK parties seem incapable of inflicting a wipe-out on the SNP in the general election, the electorate will deliver a clear "get knotted " verdict on their Indy campaign, Humza Yousaf will resign and – shades of Truss-Sunak – Kate Forbes will become leader.

This could herald a new era of common sense, imaginative politics and policy in Scotland. If Forbes is as genuinely popular with the wider electorate as I expect, she may just do enough before the Holyrood elections to start a debate that may force the other parties to unleash their “inner Kate” and come up with their own policies, or even work together to develop agreed, workable solutions.

I think I'm right about Kate Forbes. I'm not so sure about her opponents' abilities to smell the coffee, but I sincerely hope they do.

Perhaps one way to achieve much needed cross-party support and efforts would be to put Indy on the back-burner for ten years, or until an agreed set of benchmarks on how well the country was being run were met.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Same old

Kate Forbes seems to be pushing herself a lot these days, perhaps as a challenge to Humza Yousaf. She may be a better salesperson than he is, but the message is still the same, house built on sand!

William Ballantine, Bo'ness, West Lothian

Blame Westminster

Les Reid (Letters, 7 January) blames Scotland’s woes on bad spending decisions by the SNP government. He misses the big picture.

As a devolved UK nation, Scotland must subsist on its Westminster block grant, which has been shrinking in proportion to UK benefit and public service cuts. This block grant is a portion of the money Scotland turns over to the UK Treasury. The UK retains nearly half, including money Scots pay for VAT, and most of what Westminster keeps isn’t spent in Scotland. Add to that a 27 per cent increase in food prices in the last two years and the result is huge pressure to protect the most vulnerable on a finite budget that must be balanced annually because Scotland has no central bank.

Also, the UK Government gets the inflation windfall from increased VAT revenues and fuel duties, as much as £30 billion last year, but doesn’t share this with the devolved nations. If it did, the Scottish Government’s budget problems would vanish. Scotland pays an “inflation penalty” for being a UK region. As Labour has vowed to continue the UK’s plundering of Scotland, the only way to end the suffering is for the Scottish people to end the failing union and take back their nation.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh

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