Scotland Matters Letters

The media is full of stories and complaints about the broken pledge by the SNP to dual the A9 at the part which is the worst for accidents. But why is all the furore about that particular stretch of road? I spent a week in Lochcarron in West-er Ross last year and to say the roads in that area need attention is an understatement. The roads in the whole area, stretching as far as Skye and Applecross, are narrow with regular passing places. That’s common with many roads in the UK but it’s the state of the passing places which are the problem. The Tarmac on the edges is ragged and broken and if you drive off the edge you risk shredding your tyres going back on to the road. What puzzles me is, why do the residents in those areas of WesterRosskeepelectingSNP MPs and MSPs? It’s they who are neglecting their own constituents. Ian Balloch, Grangemouth, Falkirk.

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SNP Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth has blamed the Russians for the lack of progress on dualing the A9 in the Highlands. Weren’t they also responsible for the low Census return rates last year? I know there was talk of Russian interference in elections, but to be causing this much-prolonged chaos at the top of the Scottish Government is quite an achievement. David Bone, Girvan, South Ayrshire.

MSP Fergus Ewing has gained wide respect for his detailed, persuasive and courageous outing of the SNP/Greens’ bottle recycling mess. The excellent campaign by a coalition of public figures such as JK Rowling and women’s groups, culminating in two demonstrations outside Holyrood and their outing of the Bryson case, has shattered Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, and probably her career. The pro-independence think tank Common Weal’s forensic dismantling of the botched wind energy licensing round has uncovered a multi-billion-pound scandal of incompetence that makes Fergusons’ ferries look like a punctured lilo and the daddy of them all, Wings Over Scotland, publisher of the notorious Wee Blue Book that turned so many heads in the direction of Yes in 2014, has aimed all its guns at the SNP’s gender recognition reform and “de-faketo” independence strategy. And lurking just below the mainstream surface, grass-roots campaigns by the Family Party and the Glasgow Cabbie (literally, a full-time Glasgow cabbie) who has a following of more than 30,000 in support of his campaign against sinister and deeply worrying sex education practices in Scotland’s schools. In terms of reaching living rooms, daily lives and hundreds of thousands of voters, these are the real opposition to the SNP and Greens. I’m unaware of the main opposition parties highlighting the bottle recycling or offshore wind licensing issues, none of them seems to want to touch the sex education scandal and while, to their credit, the Conservatives were the only party to oppose GRR, Douglas Ross now seems to be focusing on “is a rapist a man or a woman” questions instead of challenging the First Minister to meet the UK Government halfway and widening the debate to sex education and the growing bushfire of violence in schools. The Ashcroft poll finding that electoral support for the SNP has fallen to 40% (“Poll: big lead for No and gulf between public and SNP priorities”, heraldscotland, February 13) should be good news for opposition parties until you realise the Glasgow Cabbie, the Family Party and the Reform Party may all field candidates, and siphon off the few hundred votes that could otherwise win marginal seats for the mainstream parties but instead could save the SNP from defeat. The mainstream parties would only have themselves to blame. Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven.

The SNP/Green administration, in particular Lorna Slater, the Circular Economy Minister, has not thought through the deposit return scheme for drinks bottles. I accept that Ms Slater is not in the least interested in the damage this will undoubtedly do to producers and their businesses. These have been rehearsed eloquently and passionately by Fergus Ewing, SNP MSP (“SNP MSP calls for deposit return scheme to be paused and glass excluded”, The Herald, February 10). But neither is Ms Slater, nor anyone else in the administration, remotely interested in the logistics of returning the bottles and the difficulties this will present for citizens. Does she imagine that people relish the thought of either having to visit a return facility every few days or else store empty bottles, filling bags with them and taking them to a facility using some means of transport? How many bottles can a cyclist transport at any one time? How many car journeys – scarcely “green” – will people make to deliver bottles? Will the use of expensive petrol make it worth their while to recoup 20p a bottle? What about the elderly and infirm who can neither drive nor cycle? Are they expected to fill bags with empty bottles, walk to a bus stop with them, and accommodate them on a bus for the journey to the return facility? Ms Slater admits that she has not consulted experts from any of the countries that already have a deposit return scheme in place (“Minister’s admission over review of recycling scheme”, The Herald, February 13), and it shows. This is more Green pie in the sky which should, at the very least, be organised on a UK-wide basis and by people who have thought through the issues I have mentioned. But all that matters at Holyrood is that it is another part of the Greens’ agenda that is the price we pay for Nicola Sturgeon’s manufactured majority. Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

Is drink going to be the final straw for the SNP (Mail)? Hard on the heels of the gender furore comes not only this ill-thought-out bottle deposit return scheme but also highly contentious proposals to axe alcohol advertising to the detriment of many sponsorship deals and even our tourist industry. Is our current SNP/Green administration actually working at all? Everything it touches these days leads to problems. Nicola Sturgeon ought to be highly embarrassed by this. The SNP: weaker for Scotland. Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.

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