Readers' Letters: SNP and Reform UK fiddling while Rome burns

Contrast this behaviour with the newly elected leader of Scottish Labour offering to work with whoever necessary to formulate a plan to finally start dealing with the drugs issue that has plagued our nation for far too long. It’s early days, but I sincerely hope that Michael Marra continues down the same path.

There’s been enough finger-pointing and division in Scottish politics over the last decade that has managed to obscure the fact that too many lives have been lost.

It’s time for our politicians to work together in finding solutions to the many problems that really matter to our nation.

Paul Sewell, Peebles, Scottish Borders

Holyrood plodders

Holyrood appears to get less relevant by the day. The SNP thinks drug deaths would be minimised by allowing decriminalisation. Just how would this reduce drug usage?

Despite John Swinney obviously being on the rack over this issue, Labour is now so desperate for even potential power-sharing that it has changed from being adversarial to “helpful” to the SNP.

The Greens are far more preoccupied with Gaza, including measures that would actually cost Scots their jobs, rather than even showing concerns over the appalling drug deaths total. The Lib Dems are just a voice in the wilderness and even the Tories have refused to back Reform’s call to sack Maree Todd, the SNP minister responsible for drugs policy.

Reform appears to be the only party that is trying to do something positive to send a decisive message to the SNP that its drugs policy simply will not do.

Given the apathy from all the other parties to this, on the face of it, a reasonable move then Holyrood seems content to simply plod on. Is anything working properly in Scotland? It certainly is not at Holyrood.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

No justification

Stan Grodynski (Letters, 25 September) writes tirelessly to argue that Scotland leaves the world’s sixth largest economy. He never has any good to say about the UK, and on contrary finds criticism of its every aspect. He should ask himself if the UK is so bad why have so many millions come to live here from all over the world?

At the same time Mr Grodynski rejects all criticism of the SNP government ,even though the most cursory scrutiny of their record would find errors, waste, financial mismanagement, concentration of power at national rather than local level, lack of transparency, and even embezzlement perpetrated by an SNP chief executive.

His recent epistle conflating Scotland’s desperate drug problem with that of England is a case in point. There’s no question that Scotland – under SNP rule for 19 years – has the worst drug deaths in Europe.

Mr Grodynski previously has argued for separation to occur on a simple majority in referendum. This isn’t good enough. A minimum of at least 60 per cent or 65 per cent would need to be achieved to ensure the result was beyond all doubt. And the question would have to be: “Should Scotland leave the United Kingdom? Yes or No.”

William Loneskie, Lauder, Scottish Borders

Pressure group

Graham McLeod (Letters, 25 September) lists Scotland’s misfortunes and uses the word “government” to describe the SNP under whose tenure he suggests these have happened. He wants to know what he is missing.

The word “government” is misleading him. He should remember that the SNP was for years no more than a single-issue pressure group driven by emotion.

Now they are in a parliament, not a government, and out of their depth with the management of devolved matters.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Kinrosshire

Heed AI warnings

As AI frontiers push further towards “super intelligence” (i.e. intelligence that exceeds human intelligence across all domains) and the notion of the “singularity” (i.e. the theoretical moment when AI begins rapid self-improvement beyond human control) – is science fiction fast becoming our day-to-day reality?

The feeling of unease this causes has been reinforced by recent incidents involving the tech titan Open AI, where its bots (automated software programmes) 1) autonomously hacked into government health websites in Australia and 2) under in-house “test conditions” re-wrote internal safety codes to gain freedom and autonomy of action.

Growing international anxiety was further heightened this week at the meeting of the United Nations Security Council. A briefing given by Open AI, Anthropic, Hugging Face etc warned that advanced AI presents an imminent, existential threat, if left unmonitored.

The call from these architects of AI was for urgent pan-national cooperation to introduce global safeguards and standard benchmarks to manage risk. These fears were also echoed by many countries in the main forum of the UN.

Is AI now a runaway train accelerating downhill at breakneck speed without any sense of where the safety buffers lie? If so, worry beads out everyone! Rishi Sunak set up the AI Safety Institute in 2023 to test, evaluate and regulate frontier AI models.

But now more, much more, will be needed – possibly something equivalent to a global non-proliferation treaty for nuclear weapons or the prohibition of chemical warfare – but with greater regulatory bite.

The chance of this happening in a world order where autocrats now rule the roost seems remote. Nonetheless, middle-order democratic powers need to unite.

Heed these warnings and get your act together: design and implement a regulatory system fit for purpose to protect the people you are here to serve. And do it quickly please.

Ewen Peters, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire

Water works

Clark Cross proposes taxing tattoos (Letters, 25 September). I foresee problems with that and offer a less controversial revenue source: water. England has too little and Scotland has too much so why not export our surplus?

As all SNP supporters know from the map England is downhill from us so all that’s needed is a pipe dipped into, say, Loch Ness and debouching near London. Gravity will do the rest. Metered at say 1p a litre our financial troubles are over,

Tim Flinn, Edinburgh

History lesson

I was astonished to see Eric Melvin’s letter (September 24) showing that the Edinburgh Council has persisted in restoring its historically-illiterate plaque condemning Henry Dundas in St Andrew Square. Mr Melvin makes a number of valid points about the situation in which the UK as a whole and Scotland in particular stood in the late-18th and early-19th centuries when the abolition of slavery looked like an unlikely outcome.

What is astonishing, when you consider the vested interests involved, is how Dundas ever managed to do it! Blinkered and not very well educated local politicians in the 21st century should really be given compulsory education.

One solution might be for the people who own the rights to the monument to place a larger plaque above or below the offending one which states the facts of the matter and which highlights Dundas’s critical role in the reform of slavery in both the Joseph Knight case and in abolition of slavery in the UK. I would suggest that any such plaque also mention the high-handed way in which the council imposed their plaque.

Peter Hopkins, Edinburgh

Intercessions

The last part of the last prayer in a church service, called a prayer of intercession, needs corrective action.

Most ministers handle it this way: we pray for a, b, c and d. What does that mean? Nothing. We rarely can do anything to help. God doesn’t do anything. All that happens is that we in the congregation feel sorry for people in uncomfortable or desperate situations.

Such prayers should not be of supplication but of thanksgiving. The only thing God does nowadays is strengthen what in his judgement are good-wills wherever and by whomever they occur. That is a huge thing, worthy of our sincere thanks.

God is interested in Goodness only. Goodness, the Word, is the sum of all virtues including new ones as technology advances, and knowing when we should deploy each one to avoid being counterproductive; for example, in choosing righteous indignation instead of forgiveness, or vice versa. He does not intervene in matters of physical safety. On such matters He is both interested and disinterested; interested because Goodness usually comes to the fore as fellow humans try to help, and disinterested because it’s up to us to observe, study, take reasonable precautions but also knowingly to take risks when we try to save others.

Let’s stop pretending that God intervenes in matters of physical safety. He doesn’t. Look at real-world evidence. Make that clear in every church. It would be a brave thing to do because tradition favours the opposite. Such traditions must be overruled or else logical people will stop attending church.

IA Ramsay, Arbroath, Angus

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