IN the Westminster Parliament we have the incompetents of David Davis, Liam Fox and others trying to negotiate a Brexit deal where our team is so out of its depth it is embarrassing and the end result does not bare thinking about. We have a lame duck Prime Minister lacking any authority who allows our Foreign Secretary to endanger a British citizen in Iraq, and we had another minister, Piri Patel to have meetings with the Israelis without informing the PM (“Patel wanted to give aid cash to Israeli army in occupied Syria”, The Herald, November 8). As if this was not enough we have the Paradise Papers revelations, all apparently legal.

Whilst all this goes on our First Minister does not consider the crises in health, police, education of our young, care of the elderly or chronic underfunding of our local government as important as apologising to gay men for historical injustices ... you couldn't make it up.

How on earth did we end up with this standard of politician in office?

James Martin,

43 Thomson Drive, Bearsden.

THREE things Teresa May could do now to improve the perception of Westminster: 1, Stop the stupid practice of calling each other "The Honourable" or "The Right Honourable"; 2, Close all eight bars; 3, Forbid all the baying and shouting during Prime Minister's Questions.

This may not solve all the problems but it will make us elector and taxpayers feel a lot better and is a vast improvement on their just wringing their hands and making vague promises.

Murray Gowie,

4 Elm Gardens, Troon.

WELL ahead of next week’s debate in the House of Commons on the curiously worded motion “Another Scottish independence referendum should not be allowed to happen” I have emailed my SNP MP (Ms Deidre Brock) saying that while I do not seriously expect her to vote in favour, I am entitled to expect her to make a positive case for a referendum.

In making her case, I have asked her to address two points. Firstly, that her party undertook to respect the outcome of the 2014 referendum, and there was no clause in the undertaking that it would be invalidated by subsequent “changes of circumstances”.

Secondly, in the light of the Brexit referendum and the aftermath, she should demonstrate how it is good government to reduce a massively complex matter to a binary IN/OUT question on the ballot paper before the implications can be assessed.

She (and her party) is obliged to make the case, for inspection and challenge. Simply to assert that holding a referendum is a “right”, or it would be “the voice of the people” is no more than rhetoric.

If she or other speakers in the debate cannot make a case, we are entitled to take it that there is none.

Tim Bell,

11 Madeira Place, Edinburgh.

HAVING just returned from Madrid, I wish to put on the record that I did not meet the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to discuss the political situation in Catalonia.

Jim McSheffrey,

61 Merryvale Avenie, Giffnock.