NICOLA Sturgeon’s recent “time is on my side” comment (“First Minister urged to apologise over `chilling’ allusion to Unionist voters dying”, The Herald, October 8) belies a callous, although not unexpected, attitude to what essentially amounts to the deaths of a cohort who don’t vote for her. The first time I could vote in a Holyrood election, I voted for the Scottish Socialist Party. A few years in tax-paying work, a degree, and a lecture from Tommy Sheridan was the final nail in the coffin for that brief dalliance. I was 23 when the SNP came to power. I’m now approaching my 40s. The intervening years could have been used as an attempt to wow me, to show me a glimpse of what an independent Scotland could achieve; instead, I feel underwhelmed by the almost dystopian Scotland the SNP has created. I dread to think what would happen if it ever get these “additional levers” it claims to need. Ms Sturgeon is correct, we all shuffle off the point of the demographic pyramid at some point, but how people vote and see the world in their 20s will be drastically different in their fifties. She may well have cornered the “yoof’ market, but when they end up paying tax for her welfare democracy, have had a sub-par education or can’t get a job that pays more than the minimum wage, they will vote for someone else eventually. David Bone, Girvan.