Why should we cave in to Patrick Harvie's blackmail?

David J Crawford, Glasgow.

Greens are ruling the roost

NEIL Mackay's article ("Desperate SNP, naive Greens. Something will have to give", The Herald, August 15) neatly sums up the conundrum facing poor Humza Yousaf as leader of the SNP.

Sadly the current Greens leadership duo are now the tail wagging the dog for the party. If Lorna Slater had asked any other country which already runs a deposit return scheme how it worked - if even she had considered consulting with colleagues in England and Wales - she might, just might have pulled off a UK nationwide first and have gained kudos and praise for her ingenuity. But no, consultation is not in her playbook. She feels she must race to outdo Westminster at every turn, so when blindingly obvious objections and possible pitfalls are pointed out she can jump on the SNP grievance bandwagon and whine.

And Patrick Harvie's latest wheeze - no more solar panel cash unless you install a heat pump or suchlike - is more pie in the sky.

Nobody disagrees that climate change is happening, the evidence is worldwide, but Mr Hardie and Ms Slater need to remember the old adage that you can take a horse to the water but you can't make it drink.

Celia Judge, Ayr.

Read more: Patrick Harvie cuts funding for solar to push heat pumps strategy

THE Green/SNP response to the outcry about the roughly £15k cost of installing a heat pump has been to highlight government grants of around £7,500. They are funded from our taxes. There are around 2.5m households in Scotland. If two million of these homes applied for £75,00 grants that would cost £15 billion from Scotland's 2.8m income tax payers, a rough average of £5,000 each.
Many of these taxpayers are living together, so, after a £7.5k grant some households may end up paying £17.5k for their £15k heat pump.
Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven.

Census cost is shameful

WHEN future historians look back on the present period of Scottish political life, there will be many, many disasters to contemplate. Gross misuse of taxpayer money has become the norm under the SNP and has reached at times gargantuan scales. However, one faux pas outweighs all the others, although it cost a relatively measly £140 million. It is the outrage of the Census ("Delay to census ‘cost £140m’", The Herald, August 15). That was obsessed and unhealthy Scottish nationalism at its extreme.

Supervised by Angus Robertson and clearly from the outset determined primarily to be different from the hated UK, at any cost, it was put back a year. It meant Scotland missed out on all the UK-wide publicity and in the end the numbers of Scots recorded as completing the 10-year survey were as low as ever has been and less than needed to register meaningful population statistics. But Mr Robertson must have been reassured that we were nevertheless different and for the first time in 200 years were out of step with everyone else on these islands and that would have brought cheers and champagne no doubt.

All this was revealed by the National Records of Scotland and the final cost will be at least £140m. That would have paid for a few more overseas jollies and pretend embassies for Mr Robertson and his entourages to open or visit no doubt, but money seems no object to the SNP.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh.

Hypocrisy from a Blair minister

BRIAN Wilson makes a plea for a return by politicians to a willingness to engage with the public, and to listen to their concerns in open meetings which "should be in the lifeblood of accountable, well-informed politics" ("Forget Edinburgh schmooze-ins and bring back public meetings", The Herald, August 14).

I agree with him there, though I suspect these days are gone, through the swamping and trivialising of discourse – if that's what it is – by social media, and all the attendant security problems of public appearances. What I find really offensive about his column is to have a former member of Tony Blair's government, of all people, preaching to us about "accountability" and "well-informed politics". Where was he when millions of people – ordinary people – marched and protested about the looming invasion of Iraq, and the imaginary weapons of mass destruction? Who in government was listening then to their concerns?

One can speculate at the extent to which Blair's actions accelerated the distrust in politicians in general, along with the expectation that politicians will regularly lie. There may have been a time when socialist politicians may have been expected to be more closely aligned to the wishes, needs and concerns of ordinary people, and to have felt more accountable to them. I fear these days are long gone too – not only is it hard to establish who the "socialists" are, but it is also very rare these days to encounter "socialism" and "Labour" in the same sentence.

Dr Angus Macmillan, Dumfries.

Read more: Why are we kind to Ukrainians but not brown or black refugees?

Long-term debate on refugee issue

BOTH your columnist Kevin McKenna ("UK’S cruelty to migrants echoes an older hatred", The Herald, August 15) and your letter-writer Robina Qureshi (August 15) make valid attempts to put the current situation with migrants entering the UK through unauthorised routes in perspective.

To Mr McKenna I will only add that hostility to migrants is neither new nor uniquely British. The famous "Strangers" speech attributed to Shakespeare in the Tudor play Sir Thomas More shows that there was a push-back against Protestant refugees from Catholic persecution in France, and no doubt there are many other examples from earlier history. Nor should he paint too rosy a picture concerning Germany's recent history of migration: in the 1970s, I lived in a street in that country described by locals as "only fit for Turks and students". Moreover, the initiative of Angela Merkel's government to welcome to the eastern part of the reunited Germany a large number of Syrian and other immigrants has led to a backlash resulting in the re-emergence of the skinhead far-right and the rise of the Alternative fuer Deutschland party.

At the same time, it is easy to see where Ms Qureshi is coming from, although her description of the current situation being one of "bare-faced racism" is hard to sustain when there are similar privileged schemes to those applying to Ukraine for people from Hong Kong and Afghanistan. So discrimination possibly, but racism, no. Exaggeration will not win sympathy or the argument.

However, no-one can deny that the UK is not acting well in the current immigration crisis, and that there are matters that require urgent action. Most obviously there is a need to speed up the assessment process so that refugee status is granted (or refused) as quickly as possible. This will cut down to a minimum the requirement for accommodation for people in this situation. The second is to recognise that to try to stop the small boats before opening new and comprehensive safe and legal routes is to do things the wrong way round – the way to put the people smugglers out of business is to dry up the demand for their services. Finally, there are many good reasons that asylum seekers should be allowed to work for their living if they are able and wish to do so.

These are measures for the short and medium term, however, for an issue that will keep returning until some wider issues are addressed. These are the facts that the war on movement is as lost as the war on drugs, and that the UK needs a larger working population to support an ageing demographic.

Seen historically, those Huguenot and other Protestant refugees brought technologies and know-how that contributed massively to the English and then UK economies, and their successors in every wave of migration have enhanced our lives enormously. There is no reason to fear that the Strangers arriving in the UK in our times will contribute less, and it should be a source of pride if they wish to come to the UK rather than stay in intermediate countries when they have arrived in Europe.

Our longer-term debate should be about investing in welcoming and retaining refugees and other valuable immigrants, rather than in doomed attempts to keep them out.

Peter A Russell, Glasgow.