Sunset sorrow

Part of this is due to the fact that broadcasting is reserved to Westminster and BBC Scotland pays lip service to Scottish drama, arts and music on TV. The “Scottish qualifying” quota of television production is primarily coverage of the World Snooker Championship and the Bowls World Championship by companies with a token Scottish branch office. STV is worse, and pays more to screen England football internationals than for any Scottish cultural or sporting content.

As GS Barrow said, in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Scottish History in the University of Edinburgh in 1979: "The failure of Scotland to establish its own organisation for public service broadcasting was the greatest cultural disaster which Scotland suffered in the 20th century."

It is perfectly possible for the current UK Government to allow the Scottish Parliament to have powers over broadcasting, but that there is reluctance from Westminster to allow it to happen. This would be some actual change from Labour prior to renewing the BBC’s Royal Charter on 31 December 2027.

Fraser Grant, Edinburgh

Ireland divided

2024 seems to be year when incumbents are regularly voted out of power by disenchanted electorates, and Ireland looks like being the latest example. A common denominator here has been voter concern over immigration and a high cost of living.

Irish households have experienced a near 20 per cent rise in prices since 2020. Reasons? First, “too much money chasing too few goods” due to quantitative easing in the Eurozone (of which Ireland is a member). Secondly, as a net importer of energy, Ireland has been especially vulnerable to the international spike in energy prices due to war in Ukraine. Thirdly, fear of a wage-price spiral as workers seek to protect/advance their living standards. Sound familiar? A distinctly Irish feature, however, has been the over-heating of the housing market. Acute shortages have stoked rapid price rises, especially in the main centres of population. This has fed directly into Ireland’s high cost of living.

Not as you might first imagine, immigration has also played a part. Boom conditions produce tight labour markets. The response of the Irish Government has been to introduce schemes to attract “talent” from overseas. These benefit expanding businesses including some very large American multinationals (e.g., Google, Facebook, Amazon in Dublin’s Silicon Docks; Apple and Pfizer in Cork; Dell, Analogue Devices, Johnson and Johnson, GE in Limerick/Shannon etc.). Above average salaries paid for new skills recruited outside of Ireland boosts housing demand, thereby exacerbating the problem of local supply, especially at the middle and top end of the market.

This situation is fuelling a more fundamental fear that a booming tech sector alongside a struggling household sector may be creating a two-speed Ireland. Furthermore, in an increasingly volatile and uncertain global economy, high dependency on multinationals carries the obvious risk that corporate HQ’s elsewhere choose to either cut back or pull out when conditions change (witness the rise and fall of Silicon Glen). What then the future?

Ewen Peters, Newton Mearns

Not again – please!

It may not be surprising, but it is still baffling that Joyce McMillan (November 29) can still see merit in the SNP and Greens burying the hatchet and returning to some kind of coalition after all the agony they have inflicted on Scotland as an administration.

I think I can safely say Ms McMillan is in a very small minority with that view, even among her fellow break-up-the-UK enthusiasts.

In their hopefully last collaboration, they blew astronomical amounts of our cash on prestige nationalist projects and achieved nothing whatsoever. As well, the Greens have stirred the Gender pot, to the point the SNP is only one more scandal away surely from downright disintegration.

The people of Scotland need this reincarnation as they need a hole in the head.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Fuel payments

I am one of the people you identify (SNPs fuel payments stance is questionable, 29 November) who doesn’t need taxpayers help with fuel payments because like many older individuals I have a reasonable index-liked final salary scheme pension, but am on a 39-week NHS waiting list to be seen by a surgeon for an annoying but not life-threatening health problem.

Rather than assisting me to be more generous with Christmas presents, I would much rather see the SNP £100 being spent on the NHS. A straightforward means-testing policy would allow this to happen. But the rocks will melt under the sun before any SNP minister will use that term or accept that “waiting list” is a synonym for “rationing”.

Hugh Pennington, Aberdeen

Gender recognition

The present debate about gender at the Supreme Court is based upon the presumption that someone who feels female, but who was born male (or the other way round) can be regarded as a woman in the first instance, or as a man in the second by dint of holding a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC).

This is a matter of legal argument quite apart from the fact that even John Swinney has admitted when he was asked whether he believes that a man can become pregnant, “No, I don’t.” This means that a GRC can determine whether someone can change their legal sex “for all purposes” and this is the nub of the matter. Clearly, it needs to be clarified for the holders of such certificates and for such matters as to how the holders may live their lives. Can men who hold a GRC saying that they are a woman be allowed into women-only changing spaces, or to join clubs exclusively for lesbians?

The holders of such certificates clearly believe that they are women, even if many, if not most women do not think they are. This is not unique, however. There are many people who are in psychiatric wards who believe that they are Napoleon Bonaparte, or, in the case of Mark Chapman who murdered John Lennon apparently thought that he himself was John Lennon. In fact, he signed himself off his last job, giving the name “John Lennon”.

Are we, therefore to expect people to start demanding that they be recognised as who they claim to be? Giving them the same support for their belief as those holding GRCs are given could be fraught with problems. Do we give a man who says he is Napoleon half of Europe to rule? I can foresee problems with that.

Andrew HN Gray, Edinburgh

As if by magic…

Audit Scotland’s table showing additional savings planned for Scotland’s 2024/25 budget shows ‘Savings already announced’, such as ending the pilot that stopped peak rail fares. It also shows ‘New savings’ and ‘Emergency spending controls’. It then has a section on ‘Winter fuel payments: Diverting funding previously planned for universal winter fuel payments for pensioners’. Diverting these payments to where, precisely?

So it isn’t that the SNP administration has not had the funds to pay for the WHP. It is that it has decided to use the money earmarked for these payments for other purposes, to plug a gap in its profligate spending, as detailed by the Scottish Fiscal Commission and the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

As if by magic, in 2025/26, all Scottish pensioners will receive a WHP, at different levels according to income. You’d never guess there is a Holyrood election in May 2026, would you?

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

One man band

Dame Andrea Jenkyns is the latest Tory politician to announce her defection to Reform UK. Hardly a household name, she lost her Leeds seat after 14 years as an MP, going on to describe the Tory Party as being “beyond salvage” and significantly, her new Party as comprising “Braveheart patriots”.

I am far from reluctant to agree with her on one point and on one point only, that the Tory Party are, indeed beyond salvage.

Despite the continuing trickle of Tories to Reform UK, I would argue that Reform UK is beyond salvage too, not least because it is lead by the “Party after Party” egotistical Nigel Farage. Reform UK is just the latest incarnation created to massage his inflated ego.

Scarily, Reform UK boasts over 100,000 members for what is, in truth, a nostalgic English Nationalism. This figure is misleading, however, for the reality is that it’s a one man band. Without that man, this band of Braveheart patriots would rapidly deflate, to become, without any shadow of a doubt, beyond salvage.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Art school

Reading today of the restoration of the glorious Notre Dame de Paris I can’t but help compare this with the lack of progress after the fire at Glasgow School of Art.

It does rather highlight what can be achieved when there is a will to do so, meanwhile Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece lies at risk for goodness knows what reason. We should be disheartened and also ashamed.

D Gerrard, Edinburgh

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