ADAM Tomkins' article ("The time is coming for SNP’S young guns to take control", The Herald, December 14) was a brilliant analysis of how the SNP is trapped in its moaning mindset.

I fully agree with his analysis of what the SNP should have done after the referendum – actually start the transformation of Scotland, show what can be done and explain what could be done with independence, then go back to the electorate for permission. But it didn't and in truth the SNP lost its way shortly after the 2011 election, which it won because it appeared to have done better that the previous "B" team Labour/LibDem administration.

But then, having won the right to have a referendum, its leaders realised they wouldn't win it unless they injected some grievance and fairy tales.

Until then I found "independence in Europe" and the concept of pragmatic interdependence with the UK, such as a shared service approach to agencies such as the DVLA and CAA as espoused by Kenny Macaskill and Mike Russell in their books quite attractive. But then newsletters started popping through my letterbox claiming families would be £5,000 better off after a Yes vote, lies were told that the NHS was about to be privatised, Alex Salmond trivialised the currency issue and people started appearing dressed up as William Wallace and Flora MacDonald. They not only lost my vote but incurred my loathing of their approach and idea of "Scottishness".

All this begs the question of who the "we" are that Professor Tomkins refers to that are "increasingly fractious" about the SNP's screw-ups. "We" inhabit a bubble of several hundred thousand people who read the papers and other informed publications and social media, but there's obviously not enough of "us" to vote them out of power. In fact, judging by recent polls, some of us are jumping ship to the SNP.

It is undeniable that the SNP has failed in the tasks it was presumably voted in to execute, but the message isn't getting through to the 1.5m of Scotland's 4.3m voters who don't vote for a pro-Union party or the other 1.2m who don't vote at all.

Perhaps it's because, in the last year, campaigns like Believe in Scotland delivered 2.7m leaflets full of pro-independence, anti-UK and anti-Tory propaganda, and the pro-UK side is not only split, its main parties are underwhelming the electorate.

And Prof Tomkins could be right: a new wave of SNP politician might just be able to discard the grievance baggage and provide an honest, realistic and optimistic vision and, the way things are going, they might even be able to avoid the obligatory spell in opposition to achieve it.

A lot will depend on how lucky Rishi Sunak is with the economic weather, how he presents his policies, and if people are willing to forgive the Tories and Labour for the Johnson-Corbyn years.
Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven

The Labour gravy train

EVERY so often, we are regaled in your pages by the assorted hypocrisies of Labour politicians and their supporters. Today, we hear from Alex Gallagher, formerly a councillor in Ayrshire, suggesting that the removal of Ian Blackford as the SNP leader in the Commons was largely to do with "SNP MPs' fears of losing their jobs and therefore their first-class subsidised seats on the Westminster gravy train" (Letters, December 14). When it comes to gravy trains, he conveniently forgets the 173 Labour peers who loll about in the Lords at taxpayers' expense. Labour values?

And also in today's issue, we have George Foulkes, Baron Foulkes of Cumnock, to give him his grand title, waxing lyrical from his protected seat on the aforesaid gravy train about reshaping the House of Lords ("Gordon Brown’s report on the constitution is a missed opportunity", The Herald, December 14). Aye, right, as they say in these parts. Turkeys and Christmas and all that. Before they venture on to your pages, perhaps we can encourage them all to develop some understanding of irony.
Dr Angus Macmillan, Dumfries

• TO be a Shropshire Lad, like Lord Baron Foulkes, is to have your cake in England and eat it in Scotland. Lord Foulkes thinks it wrong for Scots to have a say in their own futures, apparently forgetting signing up to The Claim of Right, a document which asserts Scotland’s prerogative in choosing its own political destiny.

Lord Foulkes is unelected, unrepresentative, belongs to a separatist, Anglo-British nationalist party and as such has no place in lecturing Scots as to their future sovereignty and democratic rights.
GR Weir, Ochiltree

Another side to the strikes

NO ONE could accuse Guy Stenhouse’s fortnightly column of inconsistency.

It consistently trots out the same tired right-wing views where workers, whether railwaymen, seamen or public service workers in general, are accused of inefficient working practices and getting decent pensions which taxpayers like him have to pay for ("Scottish Government’s job is to work for the taxpayer – not union bosses", The Herald, December 14).

It would be interesting in a future column if he gave his views on zero-hour contracts and on the rail companies which take their British profits to offshore tax havens. If they paid tax here, public service pensions could be less of a drain on his pocket.

Perhaps he could also tell us how a company like P&O could modernise the Calmac fleet’s working practices for the benefit of the taxpayer, albeit a Middle Eastern taxpayer.
Sam Craig, Glasgow

Tax hike will not force exodus

SUSAN Lanford (Letters, December 13) says that young and ambitious people need to get out of Scotland, because they would pay too much tax if they stayed.

Jings, I would love to be paying these higher tax rates, because that would mean I’d be earning a lot more than at present. Maybe I’m neither young enough nor ambitious enough?

I wonder how many with earnings of £43k+ would prefer to move somewhere else to save the difference of a few hundred pounds? Very very few, if any, I’d wager.
George Archibald, West Linton

• I NOTICE that Ruth Marr (Letters, December 14) always refers to prescription charges in England and I would hope that in future she would at least acknowledge that many people south of the Border are exempt from this payment.

I still await the long-made promise by the SNP to revise or replace the council tax.
Alan Barlow, Paisley

Unionists' wishful thinking

PETER A Russell (Letters, December 14) cites a unified Germany as an example of normality. I wonder how he missed the USSR, Yugoslavia and the peaceful separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia?

Rather than present a case for the Union, Mr Russell relies upon the continued refusal of a Section 30 order. Perhaps Michael Gove’s comments about a Cumbrian coal mine helping the balance of payments best illustrates Westminster’s reasoning?

I assume that like Sir Keir Starmer, he believes that a majority of seats south of the Border grants a mandate to ignore Scotland’s voters and we should be content with a few Jobcentres.

Wishful thinking indeed.
Alan Carmichael, Glasgow

Stop chasing school meal debt

I RECENTLY attended an STUC meeting on how disabled workers are coping in this cost of living crisis, and learned that 25 of Scotland’s 32 local authorities are chasing parents for school meal debt. Edinburgh has just stopped this abhorrent practice.

Children receiving financial assistance for school meals are already stigmatised and singled out and now their families, too, are being harassed during this unprecedented economic crisis. Why have local authorities authorised this massively damaging witch-hunt of the poorest members of Scottish society?

The right to food is a human right, protected under international and human rights law. It guarantees the right of all people to live in dignity, free from hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition.

The UK Government and Scottish Governments are legally required under international human rights law to secure the right to adequate food for all citizens. After years of UK Government austerity, malnutrition, hunger and food bank usage have soared, in breach of our international legal obligations.

The Scottish Government is trying to incorporate international human rights treaties into Scotland’s domestic law. However, this won’t happen overnight. Given the experience of the first UN treaty to be incorporated (the Rights of the Child), the UK Supreme Court will tie Scotland’s hands, cementing our de facto colonial status.

Why is the Scottish Government not urgently seeking to enforce the sovereignty of the Scottish people and the restoration of our independence? This is not a cost of living crisis, but a cost of Union crisis, which is why this Union must end.
Alex Thorburn, Lockerbie

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