We need to respect our councillors and pay them MSP wages

Don't get me wrong, I loved being a councillor. I felt that it was the most fulfilling work that I could do, being at the front line of politics, helping people face to face in a way that few other politicians do. But the lack of recognition, particularly seen in the lack of remuneration, was shocking. I saw this most closely when the multi-member wards were being set up, and questions were being raised in Holyrood about this (I know, I was there). It was mooted that council leaders should, in general, be paid on a scale similar to MSPs. I went further at the time, suggesting that leaders should be equivalent to a minister, as the role of a council leader is more akin to that job. As you can tell, that proposal was not accepted. The idea that a backbench MSP's responsibilities are equivalent to twice that of a council leader is laughable, if it were not so sad.

We need to respect our councillors (well, mostly), we need to pay them properly, and then we need to ensure that they are fulfilling their duties. I cannot understand how a councillor can do a full-time job and be even an ordinary councillor, but many need to, in order to make ends meet at home. Most councillors give of themselves, working hard, giving up all leisure time and often family time, to help to support their constituents. Please, start thinking about what they do, in comparison with an MSP or minister, and start paying them properly and giving them the respect they deserve.

(Former councillor) Eileen McCartin, Paisley.

• MARISSA MacWhirter's article tells us nearly all we need to know, in two figures, about the poor state of our local government. On the front line, as Marissa says, are our councillors, whose job is on the line every four years, who get all the flak that we, the public, can throw at them, for an annual salary of £21,345 (the first figure). These are the people who are called to account and are expected to be able to answer all our concerns, yet we think that it is only a part-time job?

However, behind our councillors is an army of people, faceless people who are paid up to, or over the second figure of £200,000 per annum. Yet who are these people and who holds them to account? Do they answer to us when there are questions to be answered about potholes, about bins being emptied, about the state of our schools and so on? No, it's the politicians who are expected to answer. Never having been paid a salary of anything approaching that second figure, yet having in my career worked long hours at all times of the day and night, many of them outside, not in a cosy office, I can't understand why salaries of that level are offered.

Surely, we have it the wrong way round? The people carrying the responsibility for big budgets and big decisions should be rewarded at a higher level than those who, while doing necessary and often complex work, hide behind them?

Patricia Fort, Glasgow.

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Why indy must be prioritised

CHARLES Bannerman's letter (August 17) poses the question: is spending on independence-related matters more important than education? Leaving aside that such questions, in one form or another, are a regular feature of unionist supporters' letters, the core question implied is "how do governments prioritise their objectives?".

That is a complex subject that can't be addressed fully in a letter, but let me offer the essentials in this case.

A government has many priorities dependent on its core beliefs and values, from day-to-day matters of policy to major overarching fundamental political beliefs, as expressed in the manifesto that put it in office. In a settled state (when there is such an entity) the nature of its constitutional government is not one of them.

The state of the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is manifestly not such a settled constitutional state and has not been for a very long time. The Union is a failed conglomerate, the sad and confused remainder of a lost Empire, with citizens in every one of its four component parts in various degrees of challenge to its existence. The devolutionary structure has failed it, with catastrophic results epitomised by the14 wasted and lethal years of Tory Government, ones which won't be remedied by the feeble pale Tory replacement for it: the Starmer Government.

The Scottish devolved government was elected on a mandate to free the Scottish nation from that suffocating, disintegrating Union.

The independence question is therefore the overarching objective and priority of the Scottish Government, since no other priority of government, for example education, can ever be delivered fully while Scotland remains in that Union. But it does not preclude it governing as effectively as it can within the temporary limitations of the Union.

What's left of the Union is beyond any reform, beyond any remedy.

Peter Curran, Kirkliston.

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John Mason unfit for office

JOHN Mason was quite correct in his assertion that Israel could have killed 10 times as many Gazans as they already have.

A few more 500-pound American bombs dropped on a trapped and defenceless population of mainly women and children and 40,000 deaths could easily have reached 400,000 or more. It may still do: the Gazan civilian population is helpless.

Unfortunately and incomprehensibly, Mr Mason also suggested that the slaughter of 40,000 humans (along with the 100,000 injured and the countless thousands entombed in the rubble) didn’t reach the definition of genocide (by a factor of 10 presumably) ("MSP John Mason says he stands by Israel tweet despite backlash", heraldscotland, August 19). Mr Mason is much more than an "embarrassment" as described by Ian Blackford. He is a disgrace and has proved himself to be morally bankrupt and utterly unfit for public office.

Douglas Simpson, Fortrose.

• JOHN Mason is an avowed Christian with strong views on the sanctity of life, from assisted dying to abortion. He has stood outside clinics in protest while unfortunate women seeking abortions have passed by, in order to preserve the existence of a foetus, an act that many people feel is harassment. He has made his views known on assisted dying, wishing to prolong the lives of people suffering through the final stages of terminal illness, something in which I have a personal interest.

His latest intervention in support of Israel's denial that the killing of people, two-thirds of whom are women and children, is not genocide, and that Israel is well equipped to perform such an act if it saw fit, was at the very least crass. However, I think there is another way of describing it: rank hypocrisy.

John Jamieson, Ayr.

John Mason (Image: Newsquest)

Stifling enterprise

OTTO Inglis’ letter (August 16) caused me to think where had I heard this kind of comment about stifling creative enterprise before. I then realised it was in two books I had read, one relating to the famine in North Korea when some enterprising residents of that country grew enough vegetables to feed themselves and also to sell surplus to their neighbours, but this was violently opposed by the controlling regime.

When later reading an account of a young girl who grew up before and during the Russian revolution a similar occurrence happened during the chaotic conditions after that revolution which was a catalyst for famine. Any enterprising business to emerge independent of the state was indeed, anathema, and immediately suppressed. Down with that sort of thing!

Irene Munro, Conon Bridge.

Few parents have a choice

SANDY Gemmill (Letters, August 19), in his response to Otto Inglis' letter of August 16, makes some very interesting points in regard to why parents may or may not choose private education for their children.

Let us not forget that due to financial circumstances, the vast majority of parents have no such choice.

David Clark, Tarbolton.