We are getting very accustomed to our Scottish government acting in haste. Its latest mistake is to moor a 2500-capacity cruise ship at Leith for Ukrainian refugees. Sounds nice until we find out there are few or no school places for the children and the local authority was not asked but told. With this level of thoughtlessness, can you imagine the SNP and Greens trying to run an independent country? Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.
SCOTLAND MATTERS reached well over 1 million people at the Holyrood election, 1.4m at the Council Elections and in both elections the SNP’s vote and seats won were far below their own predictions.
Now they want another referendum in October 2023. We need to:
- Hammer home their failures – trains, ferries, schools, NHS, jobs, deficit, housing, drugs – and Scotland’s decline since 2007.
- Highlight the issues: the border, currency, NATO, pensions, the £180m debt, the COST and UPHEAVAL to all Scots.
- Get the message to every one of Scotland’s 4.3m voters.
- AND BOYCOTT any illegal IndyRef2!!
However, this costs a LOT of money. PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING TO OUR CROWDFUNDER AND LET’S DERAIL INDYREF2 TOGETHER!!
Nicola Sturgeon and her party are itching to get on with preparations for the referendum that she has announced for next year. To test whether Holyrood has the power to sanction a legal referendum, Ms Sturgeon has sent the Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain QC, to petition the Supreme Court of the UK (whose leading judge is a Scot) on this subject. Her argument is that such a referendum would be merely “advisory” and would therefore have no implications for the future of the UK. That being the case – with the constitution not being affected – the referendum would be within the remit of the devolved Holyrood Parliament; so runs the argument. Having made this chess move in her identity as head of the devolved administration, Ms Sturgeon then assumed her other identity, as leader of the SNP. In that capacity, she suggested to her National Executive Committee (NEC) – who, to no-one’s surprise, agreed – that the party should apply to intervene in the case in the Supreme Court, as an entity with “legal status” to bring the political case fora referendum. So, on the one hand, the SNP Government petitions the Supreme Court on the grounds that its application is not political. And on the other hand, the SNP NEC petitions the Supreme Court, on the very same case, on the grounds that it is the representative of the political case for a referendum. Given that the SNP is a political party, and is the largest single separatist grouping, that assertion is unassailable. The question is, why is the SNP so evidently challenging the stance taken by the Lord Advocate, and has it shot itself in the foot? Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.
The disclosure that the cost of the new benefits IT system has spiralled again by £39million should shock every single Scottish voter. On top of all the other IT disasters it only confirms that the SNP cannot manage the finances of our country. This incompetence at managing major projects reduces income to other parts of the economy. If this happened in the private sector, people would have been sacked. We cannot afford this SNP Government. John Syme, Strathaven, Lanarkshire.
During the 1970s and 1980s inflation was at least 10 per cent every year, mortgage rates averaged 8 per cent, average earnings were £2,000 per year (or £11,000 in today’s money), and food represented 24 per cent of household expenditure, and the price of a gallon of petrol trebled from 33p to £1. On the face of it things were worse then than now. But I can’t recall any news reports of families facing starvation like the ones we see on almost every news bulletin. So what has changed? One difference, and a major drain on household finances, has been the rental or mort-gage cost of housing, which has doubled in real terms even though average interest rates are 2 per cent. There are two main reasons for this: the population has grown 23 per cent from almost 55.8 million to 68.5m and the number of single-parent families has grown from 570,000 in 1971 to almost 3m now. Both these factors have forced house prices up. If there are around 2m more single-parent families that means 2m absent partners need a place to stay. With only one wage coming in, and the remaining partner unable to work full time, it’s no wonder they can’t afford to feed themselves or their family, especially if the other partner does not pay their share and despite the fact that food bills are now 10 per cent of spending, less than half of what it was in the ’80s. God help these people if the interest quadruples to 8 per cent. And god help the Prime Minister who is expected to find the answers to this disaster coming down the tracks. Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven.