Scotland Matters Letters

Sir, – Murray Foote, the former media chief of the SNP, resigned last Friday following revelations that he was misled by the party managers over the question of membership numbers. The accusation that the numbers were down by some 30,000 was in his words “driver Subsequently after some kicking and screaming, the SNP had to admit that the loss of 30,000 members was in fact true. Mr Foote rightly resigned as he felt that he was expected to manage information which was demonstrably untrue. Now we hear that the SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell, has had to resign over the issue given that the national executive committee had lost confidence in him. Questions must be asked given some of the suspicions which exist over the Salmond inquiry, the “lost” £600,000 and some serious shortfall in government spending over the monies received to combat Covid, not to mention the ferries. There has been a culture of obfuscation and cover-up under the Sturgeon/Murrell partnership and the last thing we appear to need with a new leader is the “continuity” position. Mike Salter, Banchory.

Mike Russell did an excellent impersonation of “I know nothing” Manuel from Fawlty Towers on the BBC when asked about their membership meltdown, the reasons for it and why he, the party president, wasn’t informed. Surprisingly Boris, Brexit or the pandemic weren’t blamed, only the cost-of-living crisis. Mind you, if I had to choose between paying £12 to join the SNP, heating the house or put food on the table I’d plump for a jumbo bag of popcorn, sit back and watch the fun. Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven.

How much dirty SNP linen can Scotland take in? We’re into our fifth week of them brawling on the streets, so rather than canning their leadership election and subjecting us to another (admittedly entertaining) blizzard of acrimony, why not do as the Conservatives did last year and let members change their vote? They all -candidates, party hierarchy, members, MPs MSPs and councillors – made their bed or pretended not to know, so they must lie in it. And if they must have a rerun, others should stand – Joanna Cherry, for example. Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire.

There have been very few times I’ve agreed with Nicola Sturgeon but when asked if she would continue as First Minister while the leader election mess was sorted out, we were of the same mind – “God, no!” Jane Lax Aberlour, Moray.

The First Minister is still telling us what a success her leadership has been. Ask waiting forever NHS patients, badly let-down school pupils, funds-starved local authorities, ferry-failure suffering islanders, and remember the seriously-flawed raft of legislation put in place by the SNP Government, not to mention the huge sums of public funds wasted on futile court cases, and overseas ’embassies’ ( I use the term loosely). Plus of course, the culture of secrecy and document redaction to avoid scrutiny. If these all represent success, God help the producers of Loose Women if they decide to accede to Nicola Sturgeon’s request for regular appearances on their programme – they’ll be ‘off air’ and scrapped in no time. Bob Irvine, Edinburgh.

Having gone through all the news regarding the present state of the SNP I am, like many thousands of others, shocked but not surprised at all as they did not have a creditable way of governing Scotland. And with fewer than 70,000 members they are now outnumbered by all the other political parties. With so many millions of taxpayers’ cash being spent on many dubious causes and telling lie after lie, the rot has to stop now It would now be more beneficial for the real people of Scotland to be governed back in Westminster and the idiotic building in Holyrood being sold off very soon as this was a building too far and a huge drain of public cash. Gavin Elder, Peterhead.

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