Readers' Letters

The church, I fear, must confront the sobering reality of there being no church, not as a matter of despair, but as a miraculous opportunity, to start again, and indeed be born anew, to a new dimension of inclusive faith.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Clean decks

The not surprising figures from the 2022 Scottish Census show that a majority of Scots are now non-religious. This proportion rises even further for under-50s.

In a watershed moment, now more than ever, there is no mandate for compulsory Christian worship in schools and unelected representation in local government.

The religious minority, of which Christianity is a further subset, continue to have the right to private beliefs, but they must help to relinquish these unjustifiable privileges with grace.

Neil Barber, Edinburgh Secular Society

Slap in face

I was pleased to see David Bol's article highlighting the lack of later abortion care in Scotland (22 May). Despite the religious right's best attempts to demonise people who need later abortions, society is starting to understand why a small percentage of abortions happen after 20 weeks.

Some of the most devastating foetal anomalies cannot be detected until 20 weeks, giving women a very narrow window to make a heart-wrenching decision (often a choice between an abortion or delivering a full-term baby who will live briefly, suffer, and die). Sometimes these later abortions are necessary for girls, vulnerable little girls who have been abused and are unable to understand what has been happening to them.

It was infuriating to see an SNP MP engage in a Twitter/X spat with Back Off Scotland, who have fought hard for people in Scotland not to be harassed by anti-abortion protesters outside clinics. Two SNP MPs are named supporters of some proposed anti-abortion amendments that could be considered in Westminster. For the SNP to allow this and then say they will abstain from the vote is a slap in the face to women in Scotland.

One vote the SNP did not abstain from was the Westminster vote to ban foxhunting. As a vegan, I am pleased about this. I believe it is barbaric to have foxes torn apart for sport.

As a human being, I believe it is outrageous to have women's rights torn apart by Westminster. It would be nice if we mattered too.

Gemma Clark, Paisley, Renfrewshire

Unjust transition

Leah Gunn Barrett is correct in the claim that alleviating poverty was a political choice but it was one that slashed the budget for a Green Transition (Letters, 22 May). For example, it reduces the financial aid for flat owners faced with a £44,000 bill to fit a heat pump and takes cash away from rural Scots finding £33,000 to meet the increased EPC ratings planned by the SNP.

A ban on gas (6p/unit) and replacement by electricity from wind farms (24p/unit) will mean the 35 per cent of Scots living in fuel poverty facing penury as fuel bills increase by around 300 per cent.

Time, surely, for a major debate on whether a Just Transition is delayed until the economy can afford the cost!

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway

Power failure

One objection of Dr Richard Dixon (Scotsman 22 May) to small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs of 300 MW base load capacity) apparently is that they would take up the area of all of two football pitches (about 3 acres).

The equivalent in wind turbines of 2MW (load factor about 30 per cent at best) requires 16,000 acres!

These turbines would, of course, require far more transmission infrastructure and, being intermittent in output, would need either gas power backup and/or storage, all of which would hugely add to the cost, and they would have a lifetime of only 20 odd years at best, compared with 50 for the SMRs.

A McCormick, Terregles, Dumfries

No service

The public sector now largely works from home. This is why you can’t get through to many departments by phone, because that phone is in the home of someone simply unwilling to answer it, or perhaps even on holiday. So the “we are really busy” message plays until the caller gives up. Service from the public sector has become a disgrace.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Perth and Kinross

No irony

Over the years we have become accustomed to Scotland's nationalists following the line of perpetually blaming others for what goes wrong – and, of course, for berating opponents for doing exactly what the SNP are most guilty of doing themselves. That line has long ago worn thin and ceased to be even mildly interesting.

And yet we have the latest emanations from the SNP's ranks, from none other than former leader Nicola Sturgeon. She deemed it fit to have a go at the poisonous state of political debate in Scotland. Most would agree with her summary of the situation today but I wager most fair-minded observers would place her as the instigator and at the very centre of that poisonous debate. Who could forget her infamous rant about detesting Tories – not the Tory Party, not Tory policies, no, simply being one of the million-plus Scots Tories was enough to earn her scorn and hatred.

Then, more recently, she has a go at young people with no experience of life who are finding jobs and positions with political parties, and are miles out of their depths and with no understanding of how a normal working person survives. Again, fair comment.

But again the former leader of the party under whose wing this phenomenon erupted – they had, remember, a 20-year-old university student elected as a candidate at the height of their dominance – sees fit to criticise the monster she has helped create.

The SNP Irony Meter is again off the scale. It is little wonder they stagger on towards political oblivion.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

What crises?

Last week the SNP government announced a “housing crisis” and this followed a “prisons crisis”. We know there is a NHS crisis, we know there is a police crisis, we know education is in crisis and there is a crisis at Ferguson Marine

The SNP has been in power for 17 years and Scotland is a place of political crisis. Why they get support beats me.

Douglas Cowe, Kingseat, Aberdeenshire

Know your Burns

Susan Dalgety, in her latest column (Perspective, 18 May), describes how political debate in Scotland is “broken” …and that Nicola Sturgeon broke it. She then commences a tirade of disparagement consisting of personal opinions and insults, mixed in with facts, some of which could generously be described as “debatable”.

However the language she uses, such as “…using her new speaking voice, much less shrill than when she snarked her way through First Minister Questions...” doesn’t really qualify as reasonable comment or debate. In fact, it shows an astonishing lack of self-awareness in someone who is decrying the subject of her ire for making political debate toxic. She concludes the article by asking whether we should welcome Nicola Sturgeon appealing for consensus and civilised debate, and decides no, she should continue to damn anything Ms Sturgeon says.

Perhaps Ms Dalgety would benefit from reading some Burns poetry, specifically “..O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! “ or perhaps more simply consider that the pot should never call the kettle black.

David Morris, Dalkeith, Midlothian

A hard price

We all heard a timely reminder in the Holyrood Parliament yesterday (22 May), a timely reminder with a Westminster general election looming. Because this reminder came in a question from SNP MSP James Dornan, who reminded us all of the expensive mistakes of the Labour Party while being in control at Holyrood and Westminster and subsequently introducing PFI Contracts (Private Finance Initiative) in Scotland. This question revealed that almost £15 billion has been paid back, almost five times the value of the contracts, all borne by our local authorities, impacting on local government budgets and, ultimately, public services.

On taking control at Holyrood in 2007 the SNP, rightly, put a stop to PFI projects in Scotland, recognising that they were not best value for the public purse.

So this question at Holyrood was in fact a timely reminder of the financial damage Labour inflicted on Scotland, damage our local authorities and, ultimately, council tax payers are still paying for today.

Catriona C Clark, Banknock, Falkirk

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