Readers' Letters: As usual, MSPs want a perk Scottish voters don't have

Absolutely ridiculous. If a supplement is to be paid by “normal” people who might work far away from Edinburgh and have a home near their work location but retain a home in Edinburgh, why do MSPs think they should be exempt?

Sounds like one rule for us, but certainly not the same rule they made in the first place, for them!

It’s like MPs and MSPs having a special HMRC helpline. Why ? They should join the same queue as the rest of us and experience the same service members of the public get. Another one rule for them!

Brian Barbour, Haddington, East Lothian

Pure plunder

Edinburgh isn't really trying – the announcement of a potential 300 per cent premium on Council Tax for a second home (ie an aggregate 400 per cent) has already been far surpassed by Midlothian, at a total 600 per cent, including penalties for empty homes.

Does this policy stack up? After 37 months some Midlothian owners could be facing bills of nearly £28,000 a year. And yet the projection of £200,000 extra Council income is tiny, compared to the £66 million in council tax Midlothian raised last year. There are only 35 second homes in the county; and in Scotland as a whole, just 21,000 out of a total housing stock of 2.73m dwellings.

The impact on homelessness of this plunder is marginal. And, of course, we have to hire a well-paid empty homes officer to snoop on those whose property is caught up, with little regard for owner problems with tardy solicitors, Land Registry, regulatory obligations to upgrade and the impact of slow moving executries.

Perhaps the left-wing councils and SNP government behind this attack on private property rights could do something better with the record 11,751 empty council-owned houses in Scotland reported last year?

(Cllr) Peter Smaill, Borthwick, Midlothian

Who knows?

On studying the latest opinion poll of Westminster voting intention (Find Out Now, 20 August 2026), I was astonished to note the level of “don’t knows” across all age groups, regions and genders.

Overall, this is running at 35 per cent, rising to 42 per cent of females, and 41 per cent in the 40-54 age group, levels which are higher than all the political parties in the UK.

While the “don’t knows” often give even the more popular parties a run for their money, this level of disconnect should surely be of concern to us all, and to the parties themselves. Where is our democracy heading?

Thomas George Fish, Edinburgh

Snub to women

Edinburgh councillors this week considered an officer report on how the Council is responding to the single-sex provisions in the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s updated Equality Act Code of Practice.

The report, written from a gender-ideological perspective, recorded engagement with Stonewall and other organisations within the “LGBTQ+” movement that promote gender-identity beliefs and might therefore be expected to resist single-sex spaces, but none with organisations representing those who hold protected gender-critical beliefs under the Act and might be expected to favour them.

Officers explained that this limited engagement reflected that transgender people had “suffered a loss” by no longer being able to access Council facilities and services they had previously used.

As it was the Council that unlawfully permitted such access, aligning itself with trans-activist organisations, and as it is women who suffer a disproportionate loss of privacy, dignity and safety from such access – and who would be particularly vulnerable to any failure to comply properly with the Code – it beggars belief that the Council opted not to engage with women’s groups, not least gender-critical ones, in bringing forward this report.

While the committee decided that future consultation and engagement across the Council’s business should encompass groups representing the full range of protected characteristics under the Act, I fear that, when it comes to ensuring gender-critical groups are not overlooked again, feet will need to be held firmly to the fire.

Brian Forsyth, Edinburgh

Reform needed

The last Scottish Labour Party leader to visit Peterhead was, I understand, Jim Murphy in 2014 on his Irn-Bru soapbox, and the party didn't field candidates in 2017 and 2022 local council elections in Peterhead.

At the last general election it wasn't the SNP who effectively deselected David Duguid and replaced him with Douglas Ross as candidate in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East and lost the seat to the SNP, was it?

When I was growing up in St Monans in Fife and during my lifetime the Tories have gone from having a five-figure majority under the late Sir John Gilmour to ending up 13 votes ahead of Scottish Green Party candidate at the 2024 general election.

The Scottish Labour Party, which used to dominate the West of Fife, like the Tories needs to stop blaming the SNP for every problem, be it the NHS or education system and actually start convincing people to actually vote for them.

What policies would actually want to make a person vote for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, Scottish Labour Party or Scottish Liberal Democrats?

I mean, they promised that the status quo would not continue in 2014 and have recently kicked electoral reform at Westminster into the long grass?

Seriously? Are we really going to have to wait for 2029 and beyond when the system is broken now and there is cross-party support for changing things?

Peter Ovenstone

Peterhead, Aberdeenshire

So draining

I can recall downpours in the past which never flooded streets like today’s. The decision to massively reduce gutter drains means that the few remaining are overwhelmed .

As happens so often, planners lack common sense and knowledge of simple physics. Bring back what we called sivers but are now called storm drains.

Wilma Shaw, North Berwick, East Lothian

No nuclear?

Malcolm Parkin's eulogy of Britain as John of Gaunt's sceptered isle is wrong on several counts (Letters, 20 August). But let's stick to energy, where he asserts that the UK “refuses to build nuclear stations”.

Would that that were true! The UK government persists in throwing good money after bad, with Sizewell C green-lit last year despite the horrible cost and time overruns of Hinckley Point C, still not operational despite getting its permit 13 years ago.

As for his tilting at “windmills”, the Berwick Bank offshore wind farm, with up to 307 turbines, will be able to meet Scotland's household demand twice over. And the current thorny issue of “constraint payments” to suppliers when there's too much wind could be largely resolved by electrolysis of water to produce “green” hydrogen.

George Morton, Rosyth, Fife

Spending disaster

The article by Huw Owen of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) was extremely interesting (Perspective, 20 August). This organisation, celebrating its 60th anniversary, has supplied direct cash support to help those affected and rebuild the damage caused by Mother Nature.

Since time began Mother Nature, with floods, earthquakes, cyclones, volcanoes and tsunamis, has caused devastation and deaths. She can never be tamed.

What we need is more money for organisations such as the DEC – but where will the UK get it? From taxpayers? We are already taxed to the hilt.

Most countries are not interested in net zero. Think about the COP30 conference in Brazil – 56,118 people attended yet 85 countries once again refused to commit to phasing out fossil fuels and refused to sign up to Nationally Determined Contributions spelling out in detail how they would cut their emissions.

It has been calculated that the cost to the UK of hitting net zero by 2050 will be £116 billion, but the UK is famous for underestimating.

The UK should cut back expenditure on net zero since most of the countries in the world are ignoring this as they explore for, harvest and burn fossil fuels, and divert some of this £116bn to repair the damage caused worldwide by Mother Nature and encourage other countries to do the same.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Big bunfight

First it was Tunnock's teacakes, then the traffic cone. Now Green MSP Holly Bruce, backed by Labour and the SNP, wants Unesco status for the “Scottish roll”. The roll in question was formerly delivered daily to thousands of Central Belt homes, including mine, by Dalziels of Airdrie, in a paper bag featuring a horse saying “a good roll does satisfy”.

I assume Ms Bruce's real mission is to burnish her working class credentials with her Glasgow Southside constituents.

As I write I'm tucking into a Co-op ciabatta roll with a ham filling.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Write to The Scotsman

We welcome your thoughts – NO letters submitted elsewhere, please. Write to [email protected][email protected] including name, address and phone number – we won't print full details. Keep letters under 300 words, and in the body of the email – no attachments – and avoid 'Letters to the Editor/Readers’ Letters' or similar in your subject line. If referring to an article, include date, page number and heading. No poems.