Readers Letters: Don't let Scotland be run by inexperienced MSPs again

Around 40 MSPs have opted not to stand for re-election in the Holyrood elections in May, more than half of them are SNP, the party which has presided over 19 years of failure and fiasco. Many would argue that this is a good thing.

Among the opposition party MSPs still standing are many competent, experienced individuals who have represented their constituents well and opposed the SNP excesses, but now face being unjustly associated with their parties’ struggles in Westminster.

Many voters will feel that the SNP’s record of incompetence, scandal and obsession with separation from UK is the worst of all the offers on 7 May. Opting for inexperienced alternative candidates, while tempting, may result in many inexperienced newbies in Holyrood. The splitting of the pro-UK vote may even result in the SNP forming the largest party. These voters should consider their alternatives carefully.

If a decent pro-UK MSP from a party you would not normally support stands a better chance of winning than your preferred party candidate and has a record of competent opposition to the SNP, then consider voting for them.

Mark Openshaw, Aberdeen

Misguided

Another week begins and the public are treated to a speech by the leader of the Scottish section of Reform Malcolm Offord.

In his speech in Ingliston on Monday and his subsequent appearance on some TV outlets he talked about a range of things .

For example he said his party, if elected, would cut public spending by around £4 billion in their first term of office in Holyrood – to fund tax cuts. Predictably Offord could offer very little detail on which areas the service cuts would be implemented in.

However, he did mention that economic development support services would be an area where the axe would fall. This seems a really strange position for a party who bang on about encouraging economic development at every opportunity.

On the same day as the hapless Offord was making his speech the news came through that another former Tory, Suella Braverman, had joined Reform. Braverman supported the reckless Liz Truss budget which caused havoc to the finances of many households and businesses by pushing up mortgage and interest payments. I would suggest that given her track record she is unlikely to offer any sensible ideas on the economy and public spending to her newfound political home. It looks as if Reform are now showing themselves to be very misguided on economic issues.

Arthur West, Irvine, North Ayrshire

Union spot-on

Louise Gilmour, who is the Secretary of the union GMB Scotland, has challenged the UK government on its stance over the oil and gas in the North Sea.

She sensibly states that opposing drilling was “self-harming” and that the Government's belief in a just transition to green jobs was “delusional”. She is correct in mimicking Donald Trump in calling for the UK to “drill, baby, drill” since the UK could harvest these resources as opposed to having to buy, at a much dearer cost, the oil and gas we need for decades to come from unstable and often unfriendly countries.

Reports suggest the UK's offshore energy industry supports a significant number of jobs and if the North Sea were to be closed down it would lead to the loss of 400 jobs every two weeks for the next five years.

After stating the stark, obvious truths, Ms Gilmour’s next statement should be a clear threat that unless this Labour government changes its attitude the GMB will stop the millions of pounds it gives to the Labour Party every year.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Fast fallen

I had high, naive, hopes Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham would stand in and win the Gorton and Denton by-election, become prime minister, make Keir Starmer Foreign Secretary – a job he'd be good at – sack Ed Miliband and Rachel Reeves and appoint two of the many talented backbenchers who have the common sense and delivery nous to deflate the ludicrous net zero cost and policy balloon, boost oil and gas as a source of reliable cheap energy, reform out of control benefits and use as much of the money saved as is required to fund and actually deliver Lord Robertson and John Healey's widely admired defence review and build the necessary infrastructure to mitigate the predicted draconian impacts of climate change.

At least, by falling at the first hurdle he proved that he's not up to it either

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Blown away

The Scotsman posed the question, “What next” for Chinese wind turbine manufacturer Ming Yang (26 January)?

That one is easy to answer, after umpteen years of eye-watering subsidies extorted from our energy bills – when the wind stops the lights go out!

George Herraghty Lhanbryde, Elgin, Moray

Ageist BBC

The disastrous efforts of Radio Scotland to justify the recent scheduling changes have led a large part of their listenership to feel they are simply not being listened to. Online and in the pages of The Scotsman,it's easy to see that the axing of a number of culturally significant programmes is not an issue listeners take lightly.

The Scottish music industry has spoken out but was roundly ignored by new Radio Scotland boss, Victoria Easton Riley. She has also ignored listeners' pleas to reinstate Billy Sloan and Iain Anderson.

Perhaps the “high heid yins” at the BBC's Pacific Quay HQ think they are pulling the wool over our eyes. They're not. The BBC intimated publicly that they are not interested in the older listeners who tuned into The Billy Sloan Show and The Iain Anderson Show (though obviously people of all ages listened to both). In attempting to jettison those listeners judged to be over the hill by having the temerity to be over 55, Radio Scotland's tender documentation asked for programmes that would appeal to fortysomethings.

However, surely the whole purpose of public service broadcasting is to create something listeners of all ages will find appealing? Judging from the online communities around both the weekend shows that were axed, this was something they did admirably.

Why and how is the BBC allowed to make policy decisions that are openly ageist?

Ellie Mackillop, Edinburgh

Where’s the draff?

My quest for “real haggis” – without oatmeal – via my letter published on 22 January has brought in directly to me fresh information that might raise a second eyebrow with younger readers or ring a bell with fellow ancients. The Newhaven purist I first heard railing against the new “Factory haggis” in 1969/70 was probably bemoaning the absence of draff, the strong-smelling malt barley waste that had traditionally been supplied to local butchers by the maltmen from Leith breweries – perhaps ever since William Younger’s rumoured pioneering ale-making at his Leith kitchen-sink!

For long in history, oats could not be grown at all in many parts of Scotland, of course, and the common meal came from Bere barley. Jogging my own memory farther back, I recall that when my job took me to Dundee in January 1962, the haggis in local shops looked very different from what we’d known in Edinburgh. A neighbour gave my wife a copy of her mother’s recipe for making her own haggis. Whether it contained oatmeal or not has been lost along the Alzheimer’s Road, but it did nourish lodger Jimmy Shand!

Jack Kellet, Innerleithen, Scottish Borders.

Wrong genius

I enjoyed Martin O’Gorman’s rather bizarre claim that if Robert Burns was alive today he would be “cancelled” by the “woke gender politics brigade”(whatever that is) despite the fact millions around the world still celebrate his genius (Letters, 27 January).

Mr O’Gorman can clearly quote Burns but does he really understand what Burns was saying? If Rabbie was alive today he would be exactly what Mr O’Gorman abhors. An outspoken radical who used language in the most creative and inspired way to highlight the plight of ordinary people who suffered at the hands of the rich and powerful and, crucially, he believed in human decency and freedom from oppression for all. He was, in fact, what Mr O’Gorman may refer to as a ‘leftie.’

On top of that, the reductive nature of Mr O’Gorman’s own language and his use of words like “woke gender politics brigade’ and “cancelled” would have disgusted such a wonderfully articulate and inspired wordsmith as Burns.

Yes, his personal life was somewhat contradictory but which great artist’s life wasn’t? Most of us are able to put this into an understandable context.

Mr O’Gorman clearly wishes to be provocative, which is fine, but by using Burns as his example he picked on the wrong genius. Rather than being able to quote Burns, Mr O’Gorman should maybe try to understand him. But he may not like what he finds.

D Mitchell, Doune, Perthshire

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