Scotland Matters Letters

Is the First Minister making an attempt to catch up with “Air Miles” Angus Robertson? He has announced a trip to New York next month for a “climate change event”. No doubt the FM will be bringing along a large entourage who all have to be housed in the best hotels, again at our expense. I venture that his presence could have been covered by a minor official from Britain’s New York Consulate, leaving Humza Yousaf free to tackle the mountain of problems we have at home. I am not against flying as such. Hard-working families, for example, deserve a break in a warmer clime — but the difference is, they do not normally make hypocritical statements about climate change and how our habits must change. Mr Yousaf’s flights will be churning out tons of carbon and making use of fossil fuel-powered aircraft for merely an ego trip at our expense, in every sense of the word. Alexander McKay, Edinburgh.

For many years Scotland has had the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe. There has now been a reduction in the numbers, but the rate is still nearly three times higher than the UK average. Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, promised time and again to sort out this appalling problem. But the SNP has failed. Dennis Forbes Grattan, Aberdeen.

I HAVE just heard Lorna Slater on the radio telling all that the SNP/ Green pact is unique in that they don’t have to agree on everything but where there is common ground for the common good they work together. Unique? There have been many similar political pacts in my time and I am afraid that, to my cynical mind, they were in place simply to ensure a party stays in government; just like what we have in Holyrood. If parties really worked for the common good then the SNP would have voted for a customs union at Brexit and hence achieved a much softer exit. Now that, in my opinion, would have been in the common good but the SNP had no intention of achieving that goal. It chose simply to add to our woes to score points from the UK Government. Duncan Sooman, Milngavie.

WHETHER the SNP loses or retains the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election is an important issue, but not the only one of the moment involved. Alex Salmond has urged the SNP to collaborate with him and other separatist groups to the extent of offering one “unity” candidate (“SNP faces ‘electoral disaster’ without pact, says Alex Salmond”, The Herald, August 19). He does this not out of the goodness of his heart but out of self-interest. He is looking beyond that by-election to the General Election next year. His own price for a unity ticket would be, at a minimum, that the SNP stand aside in the constituencies currently represented by Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey, who were elected in 2019 as SNP MPs for East Lothian and Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath respectively, but defected to Mr Salmond’s fringe Alba party. They are the only elected representatives that Alba has -even if they weren’t elected as Alba candidates – and that party’s tenuous credibility would be completely destroyed if the 2024 election left Alba without any elected representative. Mr Salmond needs help from his former party. The SNP has another headache besides the sniping at its heels by Alba, whether or not Alba stands a candidate in Rutherglen and Hamilton West. For the Scottish Greens are to stand a candidate there. The Greens’ vote is normally negligible in General Elections, but this time -with strife in the nationalist camp and in a by-election that changes little in immediate terms-we can expect some habitual but disgruntled SNP voters to make their own protest against SNP incompetence, infighting and failure to make progress with separatism by voting for the secessionist Greens. For the SNP, and also for Alba, it looks as if the old Chinese curse of “may you live in interesting times” is coming true. Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

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