My three wishes: to see Douglas Ross booted out of all of his jobs

If for some reason I were granted three wishes it would be easy: no Douglas Ross at Westminster, Holyrood or on the sidelines of a football match.

Please, north-east voters, help me.

Andy Stenton, Glasgow.

• IT is indeed a jolly sight to see that Douglas Ross is not yet ready to give up the Westminster gravy train.

Indeed during a cost of living crisis it’s responsible for a man like Mr Ross who has done so much to make life miserable and harder than it could be for ordinary people that he keeps a good salary coming in and of course all the pension and expenses benefits that go with it.

Of course Mr Ross heroically gives his Holyrood salary to charity while claiming Holyrood expenses and of course the lucrative MSP pension and he does this all with a straight face while jumping up and down over an £110,000 iPad bill which has already been paid back.

Yes Mr Ross is a true gravy train hero. Keep up the good personal financial work, Douglas, while the rest of us continue to struggle through the mess yourself and Liz Truss plunged up into.

Alexander Lunn, Edinburgh.

The SNP has lost the plot

FIRST we have Fiona Hyslop abolishing CMAL and CalMac and morphing it into some new-fangled government organisation fronted and managed by the same people who have taken the current system into crisis ("Future of ferry service structure in spotlight", The Herald, June 5).

Then we have Jenny Gilruth morphing the SQA into a new organisation made up of the same people who have decimated our once-venerated education system ("Exams body ‘will be replaced’", The Herald, June 6).

Then we have Kate Forbes telling us that the SNP "never said no to new oil and gas licences" ("SNP ‘never said no’ to new oil and gas licences, claims Deputy First Minister", The Herald, June 6).

What is going on in SNP land? Is it a full moon? Has a crow flown away from the Tower of London? Has a new bridge been built over the River Ness?

This Scottish Government has now lost the plot completely. 2026 cannot come soon enough.

Peter Wright, West Kilbride.

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READ MORE: Take off the blinkers: how can anyone vote for the SNP?

Why is Brexit being ignored?

THE EU funding issue is far more complex than portrayed by Brian Wilson ("What is really 'cutting through'", The Herald, June 6) and the European Regional Development Fund: Annual Implementation Reports, updated in December 2023, showed that the UK spend for England was still waiting for 30 per cent of the EU funding to be spent.

The current five-year funding period covered Brexit negotiations which added uncertainty and the Covid pandemic that put many projects on hold. Also, final expenditure figures will not be known until 2025, when the programmes formally close and it works by the Scottish Government paying partners and then claiming reimbursement from the European Commission, so the idea of "handing back" is nonsense ("FMQs: Kate Forbes quizzed 'over £450m unspent EU funds'", heraldscotland, June 6).

However, the sums involved can’t match the billions lost to Scotland through being outwith the EU. Brexit, which is supported by all the London parties, and the resultant austerity, is not being discussed during the General Election campaign. As Labour is committed to adopting the Tories' fiscal rules and prolonging austerity by promising not to raise the main taxes, this means cutting public services by £18 billion in order to balance the books.

What should be cutting through is Labour’s myth that Great British Energy is a generation company capable of reducing domestic bills as claimed by Anas Sarwar during the STV leaders debate last week rather than a private investment vehicle competing with existing energy companies for a profit as espoused by Keir Starmer and more likely to result in 300 office jobs than the claimed 69,000 jobs merely transferring from oil and gas into renewables.

Fraser Grant, Edinburgh.

Scotland is being robbed

ON Tuesday night’s Leaders’ Debate, neither man mentioned Scotland, underscoring how we are viewed within this faux Union. Yet all three English parties are desperate to hold onto us and will do everything in their power to keep us imprisoned. Remember Michael Gove’s Cabinet paper where he said the UK’s primary concern during the pandemic was the risk of Scottish independence? He recommended the UK Government should politicise its response in Scotland by strengthening the case for the Union.

Without Scotland’s wealth and resources, this Union is toast. Scotland has buttressed the UK economy not only since the discovery of North Sea oil, but for well over 120 years.

From 1900-1921, the UK Government produced accounts, Revenue and Expenditure for England (including Wales), Scotland and Ireland (available at the National Library of Scotland). During this period, Scotland provided the UK Treasury with £762.3 million and received back just £211m, or 27.7%. Converted from 1911 prices, this is equivalent to £2.5 billion a year, more than the £1.5bn oil-rich Scotland sent to Westminster between 1979 and 1997.

The UK Government ceased publication when Ireland became independent, not wanting Scotland to get any ideas.

The UK Establishment, including Keir Starmer’s English Labour, is keen to keep Scots in the dark about their wealth and how it’s keeping a sinking UK above the water line. It’s time we opened our eyes. We’re being robbed blind.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh.

Fiona Hyslop (Image: PA)

What's the plan if Scotland stays?

COLIN Montgomery (Letters, June 5) asserts that independence supporters promise some kind of "world of wonder", with no attempt to answer the real questions over a post-independence Scotland.

If only he'd read some of my past letters. He is constructing a bit of a straw man to make his point.

I will repeat. A successful post-independent Scotland strategy would involve capital investment to develop an under-developed country, which would encourage high-tax-paying individuals and business into the country. It worked for London (which has had well over double the level of average UK capital investment per capita over the last 50 years). The downside of my vision? Well, there are no guarantees. We may invest badly. To get the opportunity to succeed means getting the opportunity to fail.

What is the UK plan if Scotland stays? To continue to use Scotland's wealth to invest in London and use the extra tax revenue it generates to put a sticking plaster over the most regionally unequal state in Europe?

No thanks. I'll take my chances.

Iain Cope, Glasgow.

We must use our vote

THE most radical thing people can do is vote as far as vested interests and the current power imbalance goes.

It’s why so much cunning and time and effort and money is going into ensuring that does not happen. Including, of course, disenfranchising much of the population of Scotland with a short-notice election in the midst of Scottish school summer holidays.

From the new voter ID rules requiring more hassle to exercise your democratic rights to the ill-informed ratings-obsessed chat shows pushing a lazy "they are all the same" narrative; from corruption, lobbying and incompetence forcing even seasoned political watchers to the edge of "what is the point", the suffocating malaise that you feel is the oppression of anti-democratic pressure.

Do not give in.

It’s tempting to simply retweet or chain yourself to a fence or spray-paint something or go on a demo especially if there is likely to be a celebrity there. All of this combined will have about as much effect as urinating in the sea. And anyhow, the water is already full of sewage.

Vote. Get your family and friends to vote. Make sure people around you know that if they do not vote they have zero right to complain when things turn out only slightly less crap than before, or turn out worse.

Voting is the base line. Both the most ordinary and the most radically effective thing you'll have the chance to do this decade.

Amanda Baker, Edinburgh.