Scotland Matters Letters

Surely the time has come to admit that devolution in Scotland has been a complete disaster and that the best way forward for our beloved country is to shut down the parliament at Holyrood and go back to allowing our local councils to accept the money for their yearly budgets directly from Westminster. Having read Derek Healey’s article in Saturday’s edition on how council budgets have been continually cut in real terms for the past decade by this hopeless SNP Government and with local councils struggling to find where else they can make cuts to future budgets, Dundee Council incapable of finding the money to reopen the Olympia swimming pool and Falkirk District Council talking about closing four of its school swimming pools to help meet its new budget requirements, these are just two examples of how councils across Scotland are struggling. The parliament at Holyrood costs the Scottish people around £600 million a year. Surely this money would be better spent if it was shared among the various Scottish councils when you take into account the way this SNP Government throws money at anything that they think will either buy votes or cause divisions like their “neverendum”, their Supreme Court cases trying to stop Brexit or the pretence that the Supreme Court may rule that they could indeed have another referendum without the permission of the UK Government? All that money wasted to keep their diehard following in tow. Don’t forget the £300m wasted in the ferries debacle and the £600m Lochaber disgrace, to name but two. Then there is the mismanagement of everything from the NHS to the education system, to Police Scotland and everything else in between. All that money wasted and, to echo the sentiments of Robert Scott from Saturday’s letters pages, nothing has improved under SNP rule. As far as I can see, nothing ever will. Robert Park, Murray Street, Dundee.

Our politicians are supposed to represent us. In Scotland, at least, it is clear that they do not. I would wager that the large majority of the population is perfectly capable of answering the question: “What is a woman?” It isn’t difficult: a woman is an adult female, an adult biological female. Yet not only do SNP and Green politicians at Holyrood not know that with some honourable exceptions among SNP MSPs, notably Ash Regan and Kenny Gibson, Labour and Liberal Democrat MSP’s seem not to know that either. The same can be said for their UK leaders, Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey, who have given – to be kind – equivocal answers to the “what is a woman?” question. This reached its apogee last week when, in the midst of an almighty bourach over the question of in which kind of prison – for men or for women -an avowedly trans convict should be accommodated. Ms Sturgeon set the tone in an interview when asked whether this person was a woman. She was unable to answer clearly, insisting that “the individual” was a “rapist”, as if that were some kind of third sex. The message that this sent to her Cabinet was clear, as exemplified by the failure of Jenny Gilruth, Transport Minister, to answer the same question more clearly, using the Sturgeon formula: that the individual is a rapist – by implication, neither a man nor a woman. One thing is clear from this entire charade. The net result of a bill that was allegedly intended to create a more benign atmosphere for the very small number of trans people in Scotland has highlighted the problems caused when two sets of rights collide: those for (biological) women and those for trans people. If this is not to result in the tyranny of a minority, the rights of women must prevail. All gender recognition reform has done has been to damage the prospects for trans rights. The GRR bill is dead in the water. Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

In true SNP style, Nicola Sturgeon just keeps trying to move forwards. Unfortunately for her events are taking the SNP, with the Greens in tow, sharp-ly backwards. The gender reform disaster has new twists and turns, none positive for Ms Sturgeon, and now even her “de facto” independence referendum has been described by one senior member of her party as a “noose around our necks”. Similarly, an SNP MP, Stewart McDonald, has cast doubt upon the “de facto” strategy too. It is not independence the SNP ought to be concentrating on, it is the very survival of the party. Right now this is very much in doubt. Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.

This desperate and wholly ineffective SNP administration continues to blight the daily lives of the Scottish people. Not content with a list of costly failures as long as one’s arm such as the ferries fiasco, Prestwick Airport, BiFab, failed Supreme Court challenges and massive domestic policy failures, we are greeted with the news of further delays to the implementation of Social Security payments being made in Scotland. Is there nothing the SNP touches that turns to dust whether it is policy or business? Richard Allison, Edinburgh.

The SNP/Green war against industry continues with the threat to our whisky industry of banning sale advertising of alcohol. In Scotland, we now have the highest personal taxation and business rates imposed in the UK. And the SNP/Green coalition are intent on closing oil and gas exploration down. At this rate, all in Scotland will soon be on benefit as the SNP/ Green coalition close down our industries one by one. Scotland deserves better… Dennis Forbes Grattan, Bucksbarn, Aberdeen.

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