Scotland Matters Letters

The ferries fiasco rumbles on. Although neither ship has experienced choppy waters, the SNP appears to be heading into a heavy swell which may produce enough white water to engulf the First Minister and her motley crew. After the BBC revelations about what can at best be described as an `unconventional’ and biased procurement process, it looks as though the only thing to set sail will be a lifeboat – the good ship Denial. Graham Wyllie, Airdrie, Lanarkshire.

Nicola Sturgeon’s desperate attempts to counter Douglas Ross’s incisive questions over the ferry scandal at First Ministers Questions were an abject failure. When she attacks first, then attempts to get around the question, the die is cast. There is nowhere to hide over these ferries. Something amiss has been going on. Miss Sturgeon’s defence that it is all about saving jobs falls on stony ground when hundreds of jobs have been lost recently at an Aberdeen paper mill and the McVitie’s factory in Glasgow. Did Miss Sturgeon rush to rescue either case? It now seems it is the ferries front and centre of her thoughts. Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.

If the ineptitude and the carefree attitude of this SNP Government to the public finances was not so very serious it might be laughable. However, it is contemptible. We have a First Minister describing UK Government economic policy as “morally repugnant” and John Swinney saying it was “an absolute mess” (“John Swinney hits out at Kwasi Kwarteng budget”, herald scotland, September 29). These comments were declared in a week in which Mr Swinney, the Scottish Government’s acting Finance Secretary, was unable to quantify the financial commitments made by the SNP administration to the GFG Alliance run by Sanjeev Gupta covering the Lochaber smelter. The auditors resigned, concerned about the lack of available information and a potential Serious Fraud Office investigation. Further, we are now advised that the Ferguson Marine ferries for CalMac are delayed again with a further increase in costs, meaning the final cost of around £300 million will be three times greater than originally budgeted. The First Minister and her Finance Secretary should not throw stones from their glass houses and their hypocrisy is staggering as well as hugely insulting to the people of Scotland. Indeed, one might refer to it as “morally repugnant”. Richard Allison, Edinburgh.

We all know there are lies, damned lies and statistics. To that, we can add “there are SNP government statistics”. True, the Sturgeon regime has closed down statistics about educational achievement in Scotland, creating what Professor Lindsay Paterson has called a “data desert”. It is, though, tougher to abolish statistics about medical waiting times and treatment. The figures are so dire- especially for orthopaedic procedures where, in June 2022, 42,372 people were on the waiting list- that the SNP regime has revamped its NHS website to record lower waiting times than are actually the case. I wonder how many hip and knee operations the £300 million (and rising) wasted on the two Calmac ferries would pay for? Certainly, saving £200m on the initial agreed cost of £97m could have saved a lot of people a lot of pain. Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

Nicola Sturgeon was banging her drum recently about the Tory budget making the rich richer. This from our First Minister who jets off around Europe at the drop of a hat to open expensive and use-less embassies. Who jets off to America to be pictured at the Tartan Day parade in New York. Who is driven around all over Scotland in a limousine. And who lives in a luxury mansion in an affluent part of Edinburgh. All of the above comes at the taxpayers expense. I would call that the equivalent of being rich. Ian Balloch, Grangemouth, Falkirk.

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