HAVING just watched First Minister's Questions, it has occurred to me that Nicola Sturgeon would rather we thank her for saving 300 jobs than hold her to account for making life for the island communities difficult and poorer in so many ways. As an example, the island of Arran has a population of approximately 5,000. How many islanders have had to pay to stay on the mainland for medical treatment due to the unreliability of the current ferries? How much has it cost the tourism industry?

How many jobs on the islands have been lost, how many businesses have closed and how many businesses have failed to prosper and create more jobs due to the SNP decision to save 300 jobs? It was an abomination that the contract was entered into without the full refund guarantee, not even taking into account the failure to have an agreed design before starting production.

How many jobs could have been created with the taxpayers’ money that has had to be spent on trying to get these ferries into service? How many more jobs could have been created by private businesses if they had been served better by this SNP Government?

The cost of this fiasco is more than the cost of building the ferries and adapting the harbours to take these ships. It runs to more than we will ever know.

Jane Lax, Aberlour.

BIGGER SHAMBLES AT WESTMINSTER

BRIAN Chrystal (Letters, March 31) writes that “the incompetence (and possibly worse) of some parts of the Westminster Government is undeniable but so is the case of the ferries” and for good measure and emphasis, “other aspects of delivering public services”.

The previous day, John Shanks (Letters, March 31) made much the same point when he claimed that “faced with examples of SNP incompetence at Holyrood” independence supporters typically point to “something the Conservatives at Westminster did wrong”.

However, both miss the critical point of scale. The ferries fiasco – and that is the correct description, for it is a fiasco – has to date a cost overrun of £250 million, but that is expected to rise before the ships see service. So, let's put a contingency of another 25 per cent on, so £300m. Not a project to put at the top – or anywhere near – your CV.

However, as both Messrs Crystal and Shanks have mentioned Westminster, let’s look at a couple of instances from there.

First up is that some 20% of PPE contracts, awarded between the beginning of the pandemic and November 2020, have been identified as possibly corrupt, at a cost to the taxpayer estimated at £3.7 billion.

Second is that £4.3bn has just been written off by HM Treasury for fraudulent loans made during the height of the Covid epidemic. In addition it is estimated that loans that will have to be written off (for example, because the business cannot repay) could amount to anything up to £20bn.

All in all, just these two shambles have cost the UK taxpayer anything up to £28bn. The ferry fiasco has cost 1.5% of that.

No, the ferry fiasco is not something to be praised, but then again, the above considerations do appear to confirm that Westminster does do at least one thing better than Holyrood.

Alasdair Galloway, Dumbarton.

TOXIC CULTURE BLAME LIES WITH SNP

THE First Minister is correct in saying that our political culture is more toxic now. I would also agree about the role of social media, which is akin to an unconstructive digital chasm ("Scotland, we need to talk about sexism", The Herald, March 31).

However, surely some blame for this must lie at her own party's door. Before 2014 I was largely comfortable in my identity; I was Scottish and British. I expect many felt the same, moving along a continuum. In 2014 it was open to attack for the first time. Was I Scottish enough? How Scottish did I need to be? Was I "quisling" for wanting to vote No?

The SNP has used every election, local and national to campaign for another independence referendum where not only your political views are questioned, but your sense of identity as well. The opposition parties dutifully and necessarily have to follow suit with this.

Nicola Sturgeon has the power to put the clock back to the post-2014 world, yet obviously chooses to exist in this "polarised and toxic" Scotland that she bemoans.

David Bone, Girvan.

FREEBIES HAVE TO BE PAID FOR

RUTH Marr (Letters, March 31) again gushes about all the "free" goodies her wonderful SNP Government provides ­– the usual suspects of baby boxes, prescription charges, university education, personal care and on and on.

As I have pointed out before, the obvious flaw in her argument is that all these "free" things are actually paid for from our taxes and of course income tax here in Scotland is the highest in the whole of the UK.

Ms Marr then provides another open goal by raising the Borders Railway, soon to be run by the Scottish Government, whose record with Prestwick Airport, Ferguson Marine et al speaks for itself. What could possibly go wrong?

James Martin, Bearsden.

SCOTS' SHOCKING DEAL ON ENERGY

THIS April, every household in the Irish Republic will have £150 automatically credited to their domestic electricity accounts while businesses and domestic consumers in Scotland will be suffering even higher bills than their English counterparts thanks to the UK’s energy policies.

The daily standing charge set by the UK Government-influenced body Ofgem is going up by 100 per cent in parts of Scotland to 47p or 48p while in London consumers will pay just 31p per day. Part of the hike will go to fill the hole left by the collapse of energy firms; taxpayers are already on the hook for the £2 billion bail-out of Bulb energy.

Scotland’s consumers also suffer from the discriminatory National Grid charges set by Ofgem whereby our renewables industries pay the highest connection charges in Europe at £7.36 per megawatt hour, which is more than double that of our nearest competitors in Yorkshire and Humberside which have attracted most of the recent investment.

Astonishingly, Norway can feed energy into our National Grid at a cost of £1.36 per megawatt hour. France pays 17p per megawatt hour while Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg pay nothing to feed into our grid.

To make matters worse, the National Grid sold a 60% stake in Britain’s gas pipeline infrastructure to Australian investment firms for more than £4bn. They will be looking to increase profits from UK consumers.

As energy is reserved to Westminster, there is little chance of things improving prior to independence.

Fraser Grant, Edinburgh.

* IN February 2019 Scottish Power CEO Keith Anderson said energy prices would fall “in a few years” due to the expansion of renewables. However, in his article on renewables today ("Renewables revolution needs to power ahead",The Herald, March 31) he doesn't mention cost.

My per-unit price for electricity has just risen from 20p to 27p overnight, and the daily charge has gone up from 27p to 50p. In what year will our bills come down, Mr Anderson?

Geoff Moore, Alness.

WHEN WILL NORTH BE ON TRACK?

THANK you for today’s essays on Scotland’s future railways ("Scotland's Future: The national debate", The Herald, 31 March). All three contributors made many interesting suggestions, but with little reference to the need to properly connect Inverness and Aberdeen.

The billions spent on “creating a genuinely world class railway system across central Scotland” [Iain Docherty] and the introduction of Scotland’s Inter7City trains to “offer competitive journey times on most routes” [John McCormick] are really welcome. However, this still leaves the cities of Perth, Inverness and Aberdeen out in the cold for journey times and line capacity. As far back as April 2016, the CEO of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce observed that “single-track sections of the railways linking Inverness, Aberdeen and the Central Belt are unacceptable in the 21st century.”

Talk of a “three-hour London-Glasgow/Edinburgh rail journey target time” is surely premature when this same target set for Inverness-Glasgow/Edinburgh by the then First Minister in August 2008 for completion by 2012 is nowhere near being achieved. Indeed the Edinburgh-Inverness average journey time looks set to increase by another few minutes to three hours 37 minutes with the May 2022 timetable.

Three hours by rail was Priority 3 in the 2008 Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR) to follow the Queensferry Crossing and the Edinburgh-Glasgow Rail Improvement Projects (EGIP), both of which were completed long ago. Will STPR2 live up to the Strategic in its name and expedite this so that the Moray Firth, Moray and Aberdeen economies can soon get the freight and passenger connectivity which they sorely need?

RJ Ardern, Inverness.

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