Letters: 'Honest John' is taking us for fools over Matheson

He is grasping at straws, quoting non-compliant process and that, since all monies had been paid back for the iPad roaming incident, effectively all is okay.

Please Mr Swinney, do not take us for fools. I have good reason to take the view that had Mr Matheson not been rumbled, the taxpayer would have borne the cost. For us to be asked to believe that he didn’t know his sons were watching football and for him to then lie to the press, the public and parliament, is simply unacceptable and contemptuous.

Sadly, this behaviour has been to the fore for the SNP for years and my hope and belief that this would change with “honest John” and Kate Forbes at the helm was simply naivety on my part.
Duncan Sooman, Milngavie.

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Read more: Swinney backing Matheson? He deserves to lose election 

Michael Matheson to learn sanction from Holyrood standards committee

Michael Matheson says he won't resign as an MSP

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Just what were Matheson's mistakes?
HUMZA Yousaf told Parliament that Michael Matheson had “made mistakes”, but failed to elucidate further. John Swinney has repeated this assertion, again without clarification. For information, and in the interests of accuracy, would Mr Swinney now explain what these mistakes were?
D. Macintyre, Greenock.

Falkirk West’s judgement awaits
SO Michael Matheson has the support of his “friend and colleague”, John Swinney, with regard to the sanctions proposed by the Holyrood Standards Procedures and Public Appointments Committee.

There are some who believe it to be inexplicable that Mr Matheson actually remains as an MSP – yet here he is, it would appear, determined to carry on.

He now says that he is prepared to let Parliament decide on the next steps . The SNP may decide to take a party line in relation to the matter in favour of Mr Matheson. If the Greens also decide to support him , he may see himself free of reproof. 

He also contends that he hopes that he would continue as an MSP to represent Falkirk West “for many years to come”. That hope could well be unrealised  in the event of the electorate  in Falkirk applying higher standards to the behaviour of their MSPs when next given the chance to cast their votes in a Holyrood election.
Ian W Thomson, Lenzie.

Drawing a blank over the SNP
WITH an election in the next few months, I started to think back as to what the SNP at Westminster have achieved since the last general election and I’ve come up blank.

Ian Blackford and then Stephen Flynn standing up weekly to face the Prime Minister, asking inane questions, achieves nothing. Deirdre Brock faces Penny Mordaunt on a weekly basis, receiving a lesson she does not want to hear about how badly the SNP are running Scotland.

The SNP MPs are very comfortable sitting on the green seats, claiming to want independence. They have done nothing for further this aim and have only taken salaries that benefit them.
If you believe voting SNP in a General Election will benefit Scotland, you’re wrong.
Jane Lax, Aberlour.

Contempt for Scottish voters
RISHI Sunak calling a general election for July 4, when Scottish schools will be closed, and during the busiest time for Scots to go abroad (presumably including a lot of election officials), demonstrates either a complete disregard for Scottish voters or a deliberate attempt to dilute or influence the vote in Scotland.

I suspect it is the former, because to suggest he actually cares what voters in Scotland do is stretching credulity.

It will, however, be interesting to observe the effect on the vote in Scotland. Will the optics that Westminster cares so little about Scotland boost the SNP vote, stall the Labour recovery and therefore play (probably inadvertently) into Sunak’s hands? 

Will the inevitable Tory collapse in Scotland be exacerbated by the people most likely to vote for them also being the ones most likely to be able to afford to be abroad on holiday at the time of the election? 

What effect will the performance of Scotland (and England) in the Euros have on voting intentions? In the unlikely event that the Tartan Army are still on manoeuvres in Germany, I presume the SNP will lose a few thousand guaranteed votes!

The unusual timing of this election has introduced so many unnecessary variables. I just hope that the thousands of Scots on holiday on July 4 will be easily able, and willing, to register a postal vote as there is a real risk of such a poor turnout as to undermine the democratic process.
Brian Murphy, Glasgow.

Labour can’t deliver change
WHAT a washout. As the rain fell on Rishi Sunak’s parade on Thursday, distracted voters around the UK must have been almost more concerned about the state of his increasingly soggy suit than the dismal prospect of a summer general election. 

While making his statement, the Prime Minister also had to contend with raucous music blaring from a distance, the old song, Things Can Only Get Better, reminding us of another Prime Minister who continues to haunt the Labour Party with memories of his foreign wars, and most especially the death and destruction he inflicted on Iraq.

Did Mr Sunak forget that Scotland’s school holidays begin at the end of June? Holidaymakers will have to vote and send in their postal votes before the end of the campaign, and political activists with holiday plans from all the parties in Scotland will be affected.
But hey, Mr Sunak knows he’ll only get a handful of Scottish votes anyway, so who cares about Scotland?

Sir Keir Starmer, giving his reaction to the news about the general election, insists that Labour has changed. It absolutely has changed from the party of that other Keir, and if Mr Hardie came back today, he certainly wouldn’t recognise the Labour Party. 

Today’s Labour leader is clearly going to talk a lot about change during the campaign, but after all his u-turns, and policy watering down and abandonments, Labour can’t and won’t deliver the change that is required.   
Ruth Marr, Stirling

Don’t lose sight of Sunak’s wealth
I LISTENED to our Prime Minister and his Chancellor explaining that they had steered us out of gross inflation, with some help from the Bank of England after the problems of Covid and Ukraine. There was no mention of Brexit or Truss.

Austerity was regretted, as were the shortages of food, NHS problems, et cetera. (These two wealthy gents did not suffer from these problems). 

At the same time as middle and lower classes are putting up with these hardships and a housing shortage, the numbers of millionaires and billionaires in Britain have increased dramatically, more so than in other countries.

These accumulations of wealth – the Sunak family fortunes in particular – are obscene  at a time when our government claims that there is no money for the NHS, education and housing, and when people still need food banks. I hope that the electorate remember these simple facts, which all occurred in the Cameron-Sunak era, when next voting.
J B Drummond, Kilmarnock.

Misreading that gave Iona its name
GEORGE F Campbell (letters, May 22 and ) theorises that the naming of the island of Iona comes from a Latinisation of the Gaelic word ‘dìonachd’. 

This is highly unlikely, as, if it were true, one would expect the Gaelic name itself to have survived in the same way that the Gaelic names of saints have survived in their non-Latin version through the centuries (Colum Cille, Columba, being a prime example). 

It is much more likely that the name ‘Iona’ is the result of a misreading and subsequent mistranscription of the name ‘Ioua’, the Latinised version of Idhe (Ì Choluim Chille, Columba’s Ioua, to give it its full Gaelic name).  As Iain Taylor’s excellent book, The Placenames of Scotland tells us, this possibly means ‘Yew-tree island’.
Anne Macaulay, Isle of Lewis.

The public tears of Paula Vennells
MANY public inquiries seem to go on forever and rack up huge bills, but the inquiry into the Post Office scandal is proving its worth.

Paula Vennells has been put through the wringer by lethally skilled KCs and even though she was in tears at some points and has tendered apologies it is difficult to feel any sympathy for her. 
Sub-postmasters have been treated appallingly for many years. It is good to see them finally getting a sense of justice in public, in addition to their criminal convictions being quashed.
M. Simpson, Glasgow.

Too stupid to know they’re stupid
I DON’T often agree with Brian Wilson, but I read his opinion columns because he always seems to speak objectively on whatever topic he covers, even if from time to time I wonder where the facts diverge from what I read elsewhere, in pursuit of his own political views. However, his most recent column (‘Ferry farce piles irony upon scandal’, May 23) is one of those ‘hitting the nail on the head’ occasions.

His essay forcibly reminded me of the quotation that I used in a recent letter that you published and I repeat it again as it sums up a lot of our present political policy-making and, according to Brian, the arrogance of the Edinburgh decision implementers who seem to know better than everyone else.

I suggest that ‘the problem that stupid people have is that they don’t know that they are stupid ‘ (from Bonnie Garmus’s book, Lessons in Chemistry) is very applicable, but what can be done if stupid people can’t or won’t see themselves as others see them and at least try to act more objectively? I hope Brian Wilson reads this if you publish it.

With the same quotation in mind, I am almost at the despairing level and very fearful if the lunatics succeed on July 4 and take over the asylum. As Keith Swinley concludes in his letter (‘Sturgeon is like Banquo’s ghost’, May 23), ‘We need a leader’.
Ian Gray, Croftamie.

Norway and independence
I NOTED Robert Johnson’s comments on my letter about Norwegian independence (May 23). I have lived in Sweden and heard the cliches about Norway and Sweden but they were either a bit of heavy-handed humour or were quoted by British people as a snide attack on independence.

Robert Johnson dismissed Norway as a “vassal state” without realising that he confirmed it as a state. Its vassal status explains its desire for independence.
Peter Dryburgh, Edinburgh.