Readers' letters:

Orthopaedics – mostly hip and knee surgery – accounts for a third of all NHS waits for treatment in Scotland. The latest figures show 12,000 waits of over a year for orthopaedic surgery. In each of the past two years, this figure has come down by an average of 4 per cent.

The government is now promising to make that 100 per cent. This is welcome, but we are wary.

Surgeries such as joint replacements can be transformative, allowing people with arthritis to get back to regular life, while at the same time stopping a decline in their physical and mental health.

The public, including those with arthritis, has lost confidence in how waiting times are being tackled – multiple commitments simply haven’t been met - and unless this latest promise is delivered in full, the only 0 per cent we’ll be looking at is trust in the government.

We fully expect the Scottish Government to keep this promise to the millions of people living with arthritis and musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions in Scotland and will continue to hold them to account regarding this.

Alan McGinley, Policy & Engagement manager, Versus Arthritis Scotland, Glasgow

NHS plan nearly had me fooled

It was a close run race to spot your April Fool article.

The Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray said that he was masterminding an NHS operational improvement plan which will focus on boosting capacity to ease backlogs and improving the “flow” through hospitals. That must be the one I thought, since Neil Gray could not organise anything in a brewery.

However, a few pages later was the one “Plans to woo Trump on lavish island ferry tour are revealed”. Mind you it was a close run thing.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow

Wealth tax needed not welfare cuts

When Rachel Reeves found that £22 billion budget blackhole the obvious thing to do was to ask the UK’s 165 billionaire’s for help.

A 2 per cent wealth tax on our 20,000 millionaires would also have fixed it, the £23 billion proceeds being like a flea bite on £170 billion of undertaxed wealth.

Instead, the weakest, poorest, and most desperate in our disintegrating society are to be hit – people whose disabilities are registered so severe they can never work.

Wealth redistribution hasn’t changed direction under ‘Change Labour’. Mass poverty and extreme kleptocratic wealth continue to be the politics of choice. Since Margaret Thatcher introduced neoliberal economics the UK’s 200 richest families have increased their worth by £670 billion. Simultaneously, public wealth has decreased by £1 trillion.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar states removing pensioner winter payments, betraying WASPI women and pauperising disabled people is not austerity. However, a Scottish electorate is reading his lips and realising Labour’s Scotland Branch Manager has about as much influence over UK governance as a photocopier.

The core values of social security Scotland are dignity, fairness, and respect. There’s a growing sense that, the time for mitigating Westminster’s experiments in cruelty is over and that this nation’s dignity and security will only be gained through national liberation.

Fraser McAllister, Musselburgh

Greenlanders’ cool reception for Vance

It seems that Donald Trump and JD Vance feel that all they need to say is “I want” and Greenland and Canada will trip over themselves offering their countries to become American.

Vance returned to Trump wagging his tail for his head to be patted because he’d succeeded in staying in Greenland more than an hour.

Sadly, no-one wanted to speak to him or his wife, which was a shame as she seemed quite nice.

Arrogance, ignorance and sheer belligerence emanate from the White House, where the president daily signs any sheet of papers to hand.

Tariffs, sanctions – who will it be today? It depends whether Trump or Musk is president that day.

Doug Morrison, Tenterden, Kent

Le Pen’s election ban could backfire

First they came for Donald Trump and failed but now the judges have succeeded with Marine Le Pen but is this really a success?

Ms Le Pen will gain votes, even just for her party, by being the victim here but is this an arrow into the heart of democracy? The far Right is on the rise but this is a clumsy way of fighting back.

The far Right are espousing popular policies, particularly on immigration, and this issue has been dodged by most mainstream politicians throughout Europe.

The Western system is already creaking under the weight of highly controversial judgments by the ECHR and ICJ.

Is this the court judgment that undermines the entire system?

Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Brexit vote could have helped Scots

Why did Alex Orr, in his Red Lines letter of 1st April, fail to point out that much of the impact of Brexit could have been avoided had Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney insisted that SNP members at Westminster support the Tory motion to retain membership of the EU Customs Union?

The failure of the SNP to vote in a way that the people of Scotland had indicated in the referendum meant the motion fell by only six votes resulting in misery being inflicted not only on Scotland but the whole of the UK which is totally the outcome of their decision – an action that has never been explained by any occupant of Bute House!

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries & Galloway

Keep free speech at our universities

Freedom of speech is the backbone of our universities. This is an inalienable human-right virtue.

Universities are not only seats of learning but also the right places for vibrant dialogues, intercultural, interfaith and interreligious understanding and debates, mutual respect, innovative discoveries, tolerance, social cohesion diversity and inclusivity.

However, universities have a solemn duty to distinguish free speech from speech that ramps up violence, promotes appalling behaviours of antisemitism, Islamophobia and hatred, and peddles disinformation. This is what universities are all about.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob, London

Causes worthier than others

From down the back of the sofa, perhaps, the SNP has rustled up around half a million of our cash to gift to Stonewall. This is in spite of the organisation apparently scrapping its Scottish operation.

The SNP administration has been urged to explain why in these circumstances it is continuing to back the organisation financially.

Stonewall says it has merged roles into a senior head of nations position.

It is hard not to get the impression that some causes – and countries – if their ideology fits with that of the SNP, are almost having our cash pressed on them, whether they need it or not.

Meanwhile, back in the real Scottish world, where so many good causes are starved of cash ...

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Time to salute the medics in Gaza

Surely, with the killing of 15 medics and emergency personnel (your report, 1 April), the already unpalatable events in Gaza have reached a new low.

The fact that their bodies were dumped in a mass grave makes this qualify as a war crime.

The IDF have shown scant respect for the dead as well as the living, and these 15 medics are the latest of over 1,000 health workers killed in the war so far. Incredibly, the Israelis claim that their well marked vehicles were “suspicious”.

It’s definitely time to salute the dedication, skill and courage of all medics, who are working in nigh-impossible conditions.

Under fire, they are performing miracles. While deserving medals, which they won’t receive, they certainly are owed our thanks.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Our fossil fuels are still needed

It is pleasing that The Scotsman supports Philip Rycroft, chairman of the North Sea Transition Taskforce, an Independent body set up to examine the sector (your report, 31 March). He said that continuing the extraction of oil and gas in the meantime is “an absolute no-brainer”.

More’s the pity that our blinkered politicians and the green climate bunch cannot see the obvious and that we need fossil fuel to manufacture hundreds of everyday items and medicines.

Michael Baird, Bonar Bridge, Sutherland