Letters: Surely we are better than the Tories’ recent behaviour?

By contrast the new GERS figures reveal the cost to each person in Scotland of the incompetence of the UK government during the Covid pandemic.

Had Scotland been independent it is quite clear, from the public statements by various officials advising the Scottish Government, that the international borders would have been closed much sooner.

This single action would, New Zealand-style, have allowed us to manage our way through the last 18 months with a much more open economy. This would have helped sustain government income and, as such, borrowing would have been much less.

Add to this our share of the disastrous Test and Trace system, for which there would have been no need in an independent Scotland, and you have huge financial incompetence by the UK Government.

These vast sums could so much better be spent on alleviating the deprivation and lack of opportunity that that in some cases lead people to consider drugs as a way out of their misery.

As such, it is utterly callous of Douglas Ross to make political capital out of the suffering of the Scottish drug deaths when his party’s government in Westminster is not only squandering these billions of pounds “on our behalf” but also refusing to allow the Scottish Government to try different approaches to saving the lives of these very drug users.

Surely we are better than this.

Rab Mungall, Dunfermline.

BLACKFORD, THE SNP AND BIDEN

LIKE a legion of your readers, I am sure, I stand appalled by the unravelling catastrophe in Afghanistan.

I watched much of the parliamentary debate in Westminster on Wednesday last with mounting anger. The government was, correctly, subjected to a cannonade of scrutiny from all sides for its failure to foresee and then struggle to react to events.

Characteristically, the omniscient Ian Blackford was seeking to eviscerate the government and laying blame firmly on the reviled Boris Johnson and the hapless Dominic Raab.

Blackford is the master of the ad hominem strategy of singling out the powerful for personal attack but one figure appeared largely immune from this tactic. As Sherlock Holmes would have it, it was the strange case of the dog that failed to bark. The dog that was less Rottweiler than Pekinese. Its name: Joseph Robinette Biden. The dog that cowered without so much as a whimper.

No wonder Blackford and the SNP avert their eyes from Biden, the author of the tragedy now about to unleash another diaspora of the dispossessed. This is the same Biden that the SNP has been courting as an ally in their insurgency against UK post-Brexit policy on the Irish question.

This is the same Biden with his decision on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that signals over-dependency on Russian energy hegemony. This is the same Biden that promised “America is back” while stabbing Afghanistan in the back.

The SNP will never lose the opportunity to gain every possible political advantage from a crisis and give Blackford a platform for his default stance of choice on every issue – hectoring, sanctimonious, prolix pronouncements on everything, while offering the same old remedy of independence.

However, in cleansing the Augean stables of Westminster political ineptitude and corruption, much presumably remains to be tackled. It is of great comfort to know we all have such a worthy champion. To arms to arms, Mr Blackford!

Prof Douglas Pitt, Newton Mearns.

BIDEN’S MOVE HAS WEAKENED NATO

LORD Robertson, former Nato secretary-general, speaking on Radio 4 yesterday, was perfectly correct to express his regret about what has happened in Afghanistan.

He said that Nato, the US and the west have all been weakened but more importantly said that it was a shameful end to a mission that had achieved much for Afghanistan’s society.

I could not happen to agree more.

Donald Trump was accused of seeking to undermine Nato, even if he did have a point when he urged the west to spend more on collective defence.

Biden’s decision has caused major problems for all concerned and it is difficult at the moment to see where it will all end. Biden can talk about American values and protecting American interests and security, but the unilateral withdrawal of troops is frankly appalling.

M. Kelly, Glasgow.

FOLLY TO EXPECT A NEW DIRECTION

AYE, right. Call me an old cynic, but when Mark Smith informs us that he has doubts as to whether voting No to independence is the right option, I take it all with a large pinch of salt (“I have my doubts about voting No”, August 19).

I agree that, over years, many people can see their views undergo slow and subtle changes.

But Mr Smith may want to revisit his views about Brexit, which he claims hasn’t altered public opinion dramatically: tell that to the lorry drivers, fishermen and fruit farmers.

Covid has perhaps obscured the Brexit picture, but now that the pandemic is under better control, the full damage of Scotland being forced out of the EU will become ever more apparent.

Mr Smith tells us he believes that “Scotland is better off in the Union” but offers not a scintilla of evidence to support that claim.

Does he really believe that getting governments we never voted for, getting Trident weapons of mass destruction we never voted for, getting a Brexit we never voted for, and getting baronesses we never voted for, must make us “better off in the Union”?

I live in hope that his musings over Scotland’s constitutional future will result in a new Mr Smith and a change of direction in his columns.

But sadly, I fear that the end result will be the same old Mr Smith re-hashing the same tired old argument.

Ruth Marr, Stirling.

ALL RIGHT ON THE NIGHT? NOT REALLY

ONCE upon a time Alex Salmond (remember him?) used the GERS figures and the oil price to promote independence.

Later, Derek Mackay denied the GERS accuracy, promising “alternative figures” for an independent Scotland that never materialised, before his own failings were exposed.

Now Kate Forbes ignores the oil-price collapse and simply claims the deficit is a good reason for independence, with all the nationalist logic of killing the patient to cure his cancer.

SNP are clueless as to how to address the fiscal deficit, with no plan other than “vote SNP and it will be all right on the night”.

It won’t work. It is not working now, and will not work in the future while thee main parties with differing policies split their votes while nationalists vote en bloc for the solitary policy of independence.

SNP have made devolution a disaster, but how much longer will their supporters hold Scotland in this moribund limbo while SNP failings are destroying Scotland ?

With the Greens for support, we now have a situation where a minority party helps a minority party to push their questionable minority policies through Holyrood.

The majority, who do not wish another referendum and are to be ignored, now find themselves held hostage to an SNP (vegan) haggis.

It wisnae me who voted SNP.

Allan Thompson, Glasgow.

ENLIGHTENMENT SOUGHT OVER GERS

FOLLOWING the annual GERS stooshie, and after reading Professor Ronald MacDonald’s piece (“GERS report: ‘Sheer folly’ of SNP’s independence plans highlighted”, August 18) I am left puzzled, just as I am every year.

How can it be that after more than 300 years of the Union, and having the benefit of such a generous neighbour, Scotland is such an economic basket-case that it would not be able to manage either its own affairs or the transition to independence?

And how is it that similarly-sized countries in our neighbourhood not only thrive but have greater levels of prosperity by almost any measure, and all without the benefit of being in a Union with England?

Perhaps Professor MacDonald, or someone else, will enlighten me.

John Jamieson, Ayr.

REMEMBERING A GIFTED STORYTELLER

YOUR correspondent Rosemary Goring (“Sir Walter Scott: the ‘forgotten’ wizard who outshone even Harry Potter”, August 18) discusses the decline in the popularity of Sir Walter Scott’s novels despite his continued prominence in a variety of ways all over Scotland.

No such prominence has been accorded to AJ Cronin (1896-1981). He wrote as many novels as Scott did and broke all sales records for a Scottish author.

For example, 150,000 copies of his most famous novel, The Citadel (1937), were sold in the UK in the first three months after publication and 10,000 a week for the rest of that year.

A Gallup poll conducted in 1938 reported that The Citadel (which was regarded as possibly bringing forward the birth of the NHS) had impressed more people than any other book except the Bible.

His book sales were not surpassed until JK Rowling.

The TV series, Dr Finlay’s Casebook, ran for nine years (1962-1971) and there were several hundred complaints to the BBC in 1963 when the programme was replaced in the aftermath of John F Kennedy’s assassination.

Cronin was a captivating and gifted storyteller and he used his medical knowledge to great effect in many of his novels.

He deserves greater recognition among the coterie of great Scottish writers.

At least now there are plaques in his honour in Dumbarton Library and at his alma mater, the University of Glasgow.

Frank Dunn, Lenzie.

CUE A TIMELY QUESTION

SPORT nowadays appears to hold no gender barriers.

The female contribution to the manly skills of rugby, football, cricket and golf is enjoyed by the fair sex – with great success.

Could someone explain to me how the mighty bastions of the snooker world have managed to keep the fair sex at bay?

Norma Wilson, Milngavie.