Readers' Letters: Leadership poll shows members' lack of faith in Greens 'cabal'

It would seem that fewer than 1,000 of the 7,500 members entitled to vote bothered to do so, which clearly shows the vast majority of the members are still using their grey matter, even after what some in the press still wish to call the “defining leadership years of Patrick Harvie” and of course, his co-leader Lorna Slater!

During that time others thought very differently and saw them as a disaster. As someone who has all his life been involved with environmental matters, and was therefore supportive of many of the ideals the Scottish Greens stood for during the early years in Holyrood, I was far from alone in becoming increasingly disillusioned, not least recently, in hearing about the “civil war'' reported in the press as occurring within the party.

When Robin Harper, the former co-leader of the Scottish Greens, and one of the most respected parliamentarians of the devolution era, resigned his life membership of the party, and went over to Labour, the views he stated very publicly in an interview with Holyrood magazine made sense.

He said there was a “ruling cabal” in the Scottish Greens. “They don’t listen – they don’t want to listen – to reason, to the rest of the party, where there are differences of opinion” and they have completely lost the plot.

He called for an “upwelling” of party members to remove then co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater. Belatedly, it would seem the members – and in very large numbers – have finally listened.

Sadly though, in voting for Ross Greer, who once described the world-renowned magnificent Scottish landscape as “desolate and sterile” as he backed the march of the super-size turbines, a very small number in the Green Party membership seem to have gone into non-listening mode yet again.

They are, of course, entitled to vote as they did. However, for the sake of the Green Party's survival in Scotland, I would hope they would now seriously consider leaving the Scottish Greens to form their very own Trash Scotland Party and take Ross Greer with them!

Neil McKinnon, Glenalmond, Perth

Terrible Trump

Still in the first months of Donald Trump's fateful presidency, the United States has morphed from being a beacon of democracy to become an autocracy, well on the way to dictatorship. The sight of heavily armed National Guardsmen roaming the streets of Washington DC, and harassing its frightened and angry citizens, smacks of nothing less than a police state. One woman lamented, “this is not the America I know”. Similar harassment and arrests are planned for other cities.

Bypassing Congress and the Senate, Trump is increasingly, acting alone, all the while threatening the very fabric of US society. Is this the man we want to welcome on an unprecedented second state visit?

If so, we must make it abundantly clear how we feel about this president and his policies.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Refuse Reform

With the failure of both the Tories and Labour to solve, or at least streamline, the English immigration system the danger of failure is exposed when the Reform Party seek to profit from it.

In ignoring the difference between asylum seekers and refugees, the rabble rousing words of Nigel Farage fan the flames of fear and ignorance, resulting in racial hatred and violence.

As someone once said, “life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage”.

Grant Frazer, Newtonmore, Highland

Help charity

As criticism grows over Nicola Sturgeon setting up a company through which to channel her considerable non-public sector income, thereby minimising her tax liability, I have a suggestion for her.

Let's remember that what she's doing is not illegal but is, to many, grossly hypocritical and morally repugnant since she is avoiding the very Scottish high tax rates she was responsible for introducing. So my proposal is that Sturgeon makes annual charitable donations to match the tax saving she's making on the £300,000 advance from her memoir and all her other non-MSP-related activities going forward. After her years mismanaging the NHS, a medical charity would make an ideal symbolic gesture.

Martin Redfern, Melrose, Roxburghshire

Water fact

Apparently, John Birkett (Letters, 30 August) was told by Scottish Water and SEPA “not to fill the kettle full for only one cup of tea, etc” to save water.

However, this does not save water; it only saves electricity. What water is not needed for one cup stays in the kettle and can be available for further cups.

Steuart Campbell, Edinburgh

Share blame

As usual, the war in the Middle East attracts readers' attention (Letters, 1 September). One suggests Scotland has no say, which is true, while another heaps all the blame on Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump yet, strangely, never mentions Hamas or Iran.

There is a bigger picture here. This weekend saw a large gathering in China which brought together such “democratic” states as Russia, Iran and North Korea. India, worryingly, joined in too. The Anti-Western sentiment was palpable and this must include Scotland too. Israel is fighting our battle in the Middle East but left wingers here want it to fail. If this happened, who do you think benefits? Israel isn't always right but it isn't always wrong either. Holyrood seems to be keen, in essence, to back the views of those countries attending the conference in China, which shows up how little many Scottish politicians understand a very complex problem. The same Holyrood that cannot fix any of Scotland's myriad problems either.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Empty promise

SNP MP Stephen Gethins is right to remind us, on the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, of the enduring importance of the post-1945 international order (Perspective, 30 August). But his article underplays a deeper truth. The rules-based system he praises was never a neutral framework of peace and justice: it was always shaped by power, by selective enforcement, and by the interests of dominant states.

Yes, institutions such as the UN, the European Convention on Human Rights and the EU have delivered important protections. Yet they co-exist with permanent members of the Security Council waging wars with impunity, with the US and its allies ignoring international law when convenient, and with vast inequalities between the Global North and South.

Gethins highlights Russia’s appalling aggression in Ukraine, but is less forthright about the way Western states, including the UK, have undermined the very rules they claim to defend, whether through the invasion of Iraq, support for Israel’s devastation of Gaza, or the retreat from climate responsibilities. To many, such double standards weaken the very legitimacy of the order he wishes to defend.

If the “future is up for grabs,” then the task is not simply to shore up a fraying rules-based order, but to remake it by making it genuinely universal, accountable, and rooted in the principle that the strong cannot simply dictate to the weak. That was the real promise of 1945, and it is still unfulfilled.

Stewart Sweeney, Adelaide, Australia

Plane stupid

Our struggling Prime Minister now claims to have “landed a diplomatic coup by securing a £10 billion deal to build five warships for Norway's navy”. It wasn't Super Starmer that won the order it was BAE – with a superb product.

At the recent Blackpool Airshow we saw the amazing Typhoon aircraft which is manufactured by Eurofighter GmbH, BAE Systems, Airbus, DASA and Alenia Aermacchi. On the previous day of the show, a British F-35B Lightning fighter jet was forced to make an emergency landing in Japan, only weeks after another F-35 was left stranded in India due to a technical fault. The F-35 Lightning is manufactured in the US by Lockheed Martin. In his recent negotiations with Donald Trump, Keir Starmer agreed to buy 12 more of these US-manufactured aircraft. As per usual, Mr Trump will have a say as to where and when we may deploy these 12 aircraft.

Why are we buying faulty US military aircraft when we are clearly capable of building European-manufactured aircraft like the Typhoon?

Doug Clark, Currie, Edinburgh

Warning bell

Reading about the Royal Opera House now warning audiences of the “loud, startling curtain-up bell” was amusing but it made me think of my recent trip to the cinema with my grandsons to see The Bad Guys 2.

It was sheer torture from start to finish – far too loud. Why do cinemas turn up the volume? After two hours of ear-splitting noise I felt physically ill. God knows what damage we are doing to our youngsters’ hearing.

Lesley Dodds, Bathgate, West Lothian

The gig’s up

On the same day that the Edinburgh Festival ended, when the world and his wife had filled every theatre, club and pub back-room, a Sunday supplement carried a page of ten or so ads for upcoming tours by rock bands – not one of them coming to Edinburgh.

Strange. Is it a lack of venues, force of habit, west coast bias?

Barry Gardner, Gullane, East Lothian

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