Letters I: Long-term planning is required for the SNP

My experience, although likely well out of date, was many politicians failed to grasp, let alone understand, the concept of good organisation – long-term, that is – and tended to believe it was their own ability that made all the difference between winning and losing.

As someone who devoted a considerable amount of time and effort to the issue, the idea of Deputy Leader candidate, Tommy Sheppard MP, is music to my ears.

One lesson that good organisation teaches those who want to learn is that everything has to be assessed and just because something did not work when it was tried does not mean it will not work now or at some future date.

However, I agree with Jim Lynch when he says that any such changes would take time to implement but then a good organisational idea has never been a short-term solution – we organisers left such solutions to the politicians.

Alan McKinney
Edinburgh

Is winning gold the best way to judge success?

WHILE I am first to admit that Team GB did a fantastic job in Rio, I do suspect that some people, especially the mainstream media, are going somewhat overboard in their reaction to the significance of this achievement. We are often told that politics should be kept out of sport, yet we have been constantly bombarded with reports claiming the success of Team GB is proof that Scotland was correct to reject independence and we are indeed “Better Together”. The hypocrisy of this is, I’m sure, not lost on many of us. To conflate the success with justification for remaining in a political union is, to say the least, mixing politics and sport to the utmost level.

Scottish athletes won 13 medals in Rio, a pretty good haul for what could have been a small, independent nation had we chosen a different path and more than comparable to other European nations such as Croatia and Poland, who won fewer medals. However, we must ask ourselves whether winning medals at the Olympics is the correct criteria for measuring success.

Surely, striving for equality, social justice, universal franchise and accountable representatives are of far greater importance than performing well at the Olympics, which in itself is laudable. But does it make the problems we face any less significant? Sadly, we live in a UK riven with inequality in wealth, health, gender and race, with an unelected head of state and Upper House, a divided opposition and numerous examples of nepotism, cronyism and corruption, never mind getting involved in illegal wars!

Many commentators are using the performance of Team GB as evidence that Scotland made the right decision to stay. Well, if winning Olympic medals is the measure to be used, then they may be correct. However, if medal winning is actually one of the least important measures of the efficacy of a society, then maybe not.

Personally, I’d rather live in an independent Scotland that wins far fewer Olympic medals but is striving to create a better concept of nationhood than what is presented by a dysfunctional UK. Let’s look forward to Scotland competing in Tokyo 2020 as an independent nation, and if we don’t win too many medals, let’s keep it in perspective. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Alan Carroll
Glasgow

I NOTE with dismay that Westminster is to set “no limits” on honours to be bestowed on Britain’s Olympic athletes. A blanket issue of gongs to every medal winner is a populist gesture that doesn’t change that we have a deeply discredited honours system. This follows two weeks of the BBC’s very own “no limits” policy in which commentators competed to see who could make most references to Team GB out-medalling the world.

Personally, I consider overall medal hauls to be incidental. This is especially so given the huge disparities in investment – no other country came close to the UK’s £274m Olympic spend, almost £4m per medal.

What was inspiring about Rio was not the relentless Team GB narrative, nor the prospect of knighthoods, it was the outstanding performances of individual athletes from the participating countries. For example, it was what the record-breaking athletes like Usain Bolt and Almaz Ayana did on the track that will live in the memory, rather than the country they came from.

Yes, Scotland and the UK can be proud of the achievements of the athletes who brought back a medal, but we should not be obsessed by medals alone.

For me, the Olympian ideal is best demonstrated by Scotland’s Hannah Miley, who in Beijing, London and now Rio has come 6th, 5th and 4th in the 4x400 individual swimming medley. To reach the finals of three Games and improve her position each time is a huge achievement and reward for a decade of commitment. Athletes like Hannah should know that, even without a medal, we are immensely proud of her.

DB Williamson
Dunbar

NOW that the Olympics are over and the medal totals have been calculated it has been estimated that on average the UK spent £4.1 million for every medal it won. It seems to me that a more accurate term would be ‘bought’ with money siphoned from the National Lottery. A clever move which robs charities and good causes, virtually creating a state-funded sports programme, saving the government from having to put more of our own money in.

I had viewed this as a horrific amount of money to spend, more so when I discovered that gold medals haven’t been made of solid gold since 1912 and only contain around six grams of the precious metal.

But I’ve had a change of heart. Conservative MP Heather Wheeler took to Twitter to say the British Empire had outperformed the rest of the world. It shows the mentality of the British nationalist that they still believe they have an empire and that it’s a great reason to fly the flag.

The fact is the empire is dead and reasons for mass displays of British nationalism are few and far between, these days. If throwing a few hundred million pounds at the Olympics is enough to satisfy the need to wave the Butcher’s Apron without having to resort to invading Iraq or bombing Syria, it’s probably a price worth paying.

Alas, it probably isn’t that simple. I guess that so long as we remain part of the UK we’ll continue to fund Britain’s need to strut on the big stage whether we like it or not.

James Cassidy
Airdrie