Independence is a matter of putting dreams before schemes

OK, so where does the independence journey lead to, then? To a future which is "positive, kind, fair and open". Sounds good. But how? What would this actually look like? Who knows?

Two or three years ago I read a novel titled The Imagine Tower. It followed the fortunes of two young recruits to the influence wing of a new populist political party in Scotland. Their job was to use corporate marketing techniques to promote the party as though it was a new form of toothpaste or washing-up liquid. What sticks in the memory was that they were never, ever, to refer to the n-word (nationalism) and were driven by a mantra of "dreams, not schemes". I thought it was very funny, but ultimately very bleak. It would also seem that it was very prescient.

I like Mr Mackay’s writing - he is honest and stimulating - but I would ask him to think long and hard about the schemes that would be necessary, before any of his dreams could ever become a reality.

A Blue, Dundee.

Read more letters

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• Five decades of incompetence: No wonder the UK is dying on its feet

Time to let it go

FOR someone who claims to not be fixated on independence, Neil “I’m not a nationalist” Mackay does seem to spend a lot of time writing about it, even when nobody else is interested. Indeed, even the SNP is barely talking about it at the moment, not really.

He gives himself away with two comments. First, there is his use of the term “British nationalists”. I first became aware of this term during the referendum period. It was coined by Scottish nationalists who felt that “nationalist” as applied to them was derogatory, so they needed to have a unionist equivalent. It helped their cause that the term was only one word away from “British Nationalist Party”. In terms of reality, most people who voted No in 2014 would not define themselves in terms of their politics at all. Like most people, they would define themselves by what they did and where they came from. You have to be pretty committed in your political views to use derogatory terms against them, more than your average “moderate independence supporter”.

Mr Mackay also refers to the “failed” referendum. The referendum was designed to give people a chance to make their views heard, which they did. They decided against it. It only failed if it did not give you the answer you wanted. Not respecting the outcome of a referendum and blaming the process are not the actions of a moderate democrat either.

So, it is time to let it go. For me, the intellectual argument is that if you are always writing about nationalism, even when no-one else is, then you must be, by implication, a fairly committed nationalist, and more so if you are not able to recognise this in yourself.

Victor Clements, Aberfeldy.

Shame on the Scottish media

NEIL Mackay outlines an interesting potted history of his journey to understanding Scottish nationalism from the perspective of someone who grew up in Northern Ireland. However, he lets himself down by saying "back then Scottish nationalists seemed a bunch of weirdos - a bit like the Alba Party today."

His entire explanation around gaining a better understanding of civic nationalism and its desirability as opposed to the ugly face of British/unionist nationalism, its inclusivity, its enlightened European identity and its progressive social policies (from which I would exclude the recent ludicrous and wasteful gender recognition cul de sac) reflects exactly the party it was moulded into by Alex Salmond and those of like mind.

How he can then go on and dismiss Alba as a "bunch of weirdos" is both inconsistent and reflective of a Scottish political media class which is already showing its pathetic need to appease the "Change" Labour agenda, castigating the Scottish Government whilst letting Anas Sarwar slither away unchallenged.

Shame on them.

Marjorie Thompson, just another weirdo, Alba National Executive Committee, Edinburgh.

Proof of a poor devolution deal

JILL Stephenson (Letters, September 3) considers that Scotland's inability to fund the winter heating allowance is proof that Scotland is financially dependent on the UK.

It is nothing of the kind. It is simply proof of a poor devolution settlement, where Scotland, as part of the UK, remains financially dependent on Westminster. This is a settlement deliberately set up to ensure that Scotland cannot diverge significantly from the UK average.

To answer her other point about Scotland and its resources, Scotland is not currently wealthy, even with all its resources, because too much of the money generated from these resources doesn't stay in Scotland. The UK has a lot to do with that state of affairs.

Iain Cope, Glasgow.

• DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accepting both of them.

Jill Stephenson tells us that because our neighbours are too poor to pay their pensioners a winter fuel allowance, Barnett consequences result in Scotland being too poor to pay our own. However Ms Stephenson would have us believe that despite the previous decade of austerity and the promise of more to come, we are better off remaining in the UK.

What next? War is peace?

Alan Carmichael, Glasgow.

Council tax freeze disaster

THEN First Minister Humza Yousaf's unilateral and sudden decision to freeze council tax in October 2023 surely accelerated the present disastrous state of affairs. He caught most of his party and civil service officials off guard.

Presumably he felt a big announcement at the annual conference was needed to grab attention. That his decision would leave Scotland's finances in tatters appears to have never entered his mind; after all, he had sent an off-the-cuff £750,000 to UNRWA without referring to anyone. This largesse and similar accounted for at least some of the wrong choices and misspent millions expended by the SNP on vanity and ''prestige'' projects and referred to in the recent independent Scottish Fiscal Review.

To blame the present crisis on ''UK austerity'' brings brass-necking to a previously unrecorded level. Those who can think know exactly where the cash went.

Now the people have been sent the bill and his party, if it survives at all, is likely to be out of power for a very long time.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh.

The Grenfell Inquiry findings are published today (Image: PA)

The Grenfell metaphor

WE are poised to hear the outcome of the Grenfell Inquiry into the fire that ravaged a tower block in one of London's most wealthy districts seven years ago. My prediction is that there will be some sophisticated obfuscation of blame and no allocation of corporate guilt.

At the time there was some publicity about the numbers of private and public sector buildings across the UK which had similarly flammable panels which required expensive replacement. I suspect many of them have not been replaced, although their annual insurance payments have no doubt rocketed.

There were many contributors to the disaster that was Grenfell: not least the ghost of Margaret Thatcher, whose spirit continues to haunt Westminster political parties of all persuasions. The mantra of "cutting bureaucracy" contributed to the diminution of health and safety inspections and numbers and quality of fire doors and external building panels.

Grenfell has become in my mind a metaphor for a failing, post-imperial Britain that lives high on rhetoric and fails working-class people at every step.

The great days of the the Attlee government of post-war Britain showed what can really be achieved in a short period of time in a bankrupted, war-damaged country. But the ruling class could not allow that to persist and used their strength and invisible power to bring it to an end. What we witness now is a Starmer-led Labour Party that has been almost completely absorbed by Westminster ruling class ideology.

I note that Eton has proposed a rise of £10, 000 a year per pupil to offset Labour Party VAT proposals but I have no doubt that the upper-class parents who cough up these astronomical sums of money will consider it money worth paying for the entry fee to wealthy, corrupt immoral Britain.

What we need is to acknowledge is the extent to which the propaganda machine of imperial Britain has stolen the courage of the political leadership of Scotland's independence movement. This is urgent and requires immediate attention.

Maggie Chetty, Glasgow.