I WASN’T affected by the rail strike yesterday, as the trains which operate from Cumbernauld to Glasgow are the driver-only operated type (DOO) which are the cause of the dispute. But I must take issue with the comments made by Phil Verster, managing director of the ScotRail Alliance, where he claims there will still be a second person “rostered” on DOO trains. There is a world of difference between this and someone actually working.

I am often on DOO trains where the driver is the only member of staff on board. As a woman I find this both worrying and intimidating. Travelling late at night can be a fretful time when there are loud and aggressive drunks on board and no member of staff to help.

I have seen disabled passengers unable to get off the train as there are no on-train staff to assist them. Thank goodness there hasn’t been a major accident involving a DOO train.

A cast-iron guarantee must be given that all current and future DOO services will only run if there is at least one other member of staff on duty at all times.

Anything less puts profits and shareholders’ interests first and that is unacceptable.
Joan McNiven Cumbernauld

It's not just the Tory right wing who want Brexit vote

IT WOULD appear that too many people are being influenced by Nigel Farage; he has certainly put a spoke in the Vote Leave campaign, and perhaps made a vital contribution to driving many into voting for the opposition.

There hasn’t been enough publicity given to those on the Labour Leave group, and this has given a completely false viewpoint that it is right-wing Tories who are the driving force and real enthusiasts for Brexit. Kelvin Hopkins, the Labour MP for Luton, has, however, stated a very good case for leaving the EU, which can be read, in full, online.

He stated: “The EU is anti-democratic, anti-socialist and failing economically. With low and negative economic growth, high unemployment (nearly 50 per cent youth unemployment in some member states), ... forced privatisation and restrictions on collective bargaining rights as conditions of bailouts, the true nature of the EU is plain to see.”

The Council of Europe, which is entirely separate from the EU, with institutions such as the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, and the European Social Charter, covering matters relating to health, education, labour rights and such, would surely still protect the people of our own country, in the event of us exiting the Union.

At this late stage I still haven’t fully decided, but will certainly cast my vote one way or another come Thursday, rather than admit the recreancy of having to abstain.
Norrie Paton
Campbeltown

BORIS of the far right assures us that our current favourable trade terms with a massive EU market may be replaced with new trading partners. But Europe is right on our doorstep. Trading much further afield will prove costly, financially and pollution-wise.

Brexit is a lemming-like leap in the dark (into the abyss?).
James Stevenson
Auchterarder

I SWITHERED about responding to William Ross and his tiresome and borderline offensive letter, but I might as well lest anyone actually believe his blizzard of half-truths and misrepresentations (Letters, June 21). Let me say it again: our hands are not tied by the EU, and nothing has been imposed on us. We have signed up to a set of rules we helped design. His tired assertion that the EU is undemocratic has been disproved time and time again. We democratically elect the Parliament and the member state governments, jointly they make all the decisions.

Yes, the Commission proposes the laws, in the same was as civil servants in Holyrood or Westminster draft the text of domestic legislation. It is the democratically-elected politicians who decide to amend, approve or indeed kill off proposals. The EU is neither an empire nor a country, and it is absurd to even suggest such a thing. It is independent states voluntarily working together, which has helped underpin peace and prosperity across the continent in a way generations before us would marvel at. He mentions Mrs Macdougall in Falkirk Tesco, and I would agree that there is an unfortunate disconnect between folk and the EU, largely down to decades of half-truths and snide denigration he himself continues.

I hope Mrs MacDougall will be glad to know that according to Falkirk Council, the European Social Fund has assisted 580 unemployed people in Falkirk into the labour market and that EU cash funded tourism development at the Falkirk Wheel and the Public Realm Project helped the regeneration of Bo’ness town centre. I hope she will have a read at www.scotlandineurope.eu to get herself some more facts. He suggests I cannot honestly deal with immigration, as if my view has been somehow unclear.

Let me say it again: immigration has been great for Scotland and we need more of it. We have all the controls we need. The EU has been great for Scotland, and the alternative is handing everything to what will by then be a Ukip-led Tory Party in a palace by the Thames. I fail to see how that could possibly make Scotland’s cause better.
Alyn Smith MEP
Glasgow

LISTENING to Jim Sillars on the BBC the other night I couldn’t help but think he was losing the plot with regard to the objective we share of Scotland’s independence.

I have no doubt he is fully aware that the mainstream media are keen to exploit an apparently “dissenting voice” within the SNP camp, but to be arguing with SNP MP Joanna Cherry instead of taking Kezia Dugdale to task or challenging some of the skewed assertions of the Conservative Lord Forsyth must have come as an unexpected “bonus”.

I don’t necessarily disagree with Jim’s view that Scotland might be better off outside of the EU as well as the UK, but it seems the more pragmatic way forward is to first focus on the biggest impediment to Scotland determining its own future – the Union of 1707. Should Brexit result, then the forces of the British establishment would likely coalesce around ensuring a strong UK.

This would no doubt appear to give Scotland greater control of its day-to-day affairs in the short-term but, as with devolution, control of the country’s destiny would still effectively remain in the hands of a corrupt elite.

In the longer term, independence would be delayed and the advantages apparently diminished while the current momentum could be lost. Brexit would provide a much greater diversion from the goal of achieving an independent Scotland free to make its own choices.
Stan Grodynski
Longniddry, East Lothian