I SAW an awful image of a young boy, a teenage boy and a woman dead on a beach in Turkey, after their boat sank on Saturday while attempting a crossing to Lesbos.
The Scottish Government can and should take action as it is a disgrace on humanity to stand around watching as we are presently doing. We just had Holocaust Day when we supposedly renewed our vow not to let it happen again.
I propose the Scottish Government charter an aircraft, fly to Turkey and simply bring back one or more plane loads of refugee children. Chartering an aircraft is not a reserved power and this is nothing to do with "foreign affairs". Yes I imagine London will be upset, and yes the passengers do have to immediately claim asylum as soon as they disembark, but they are safe by then.
The UK’s cunning plan has been to say of course we comply with our obligations on asylum and accept anyone who claims asylum, but only after we have done everything possible to ensure that no asylum seeker can actually get here to lodge a claim. So the chartered flight is simply solving the problem of how you get here in order to make your application.
Dr Tim Rideout
Dalkeith
Electorate is not fit to vote on EU membership
AS an electorate about to be invited to say Yea or Nay in a referendum on whether to remain in or to exit the EU, we in the UK are an ill-educated bunch.
What do we basically know about the EU? We are ill-served by a media that presents its public with a mainly negative EU image.
If asked about the EU and what our main impressions of it are, we are likely to conjure up newsreel pictures of suited bureaucrats hugging each other at summit meetings, kissing cheeks and posing for group photos. The general impression being one of smugness, delight in one another’s company and go hang the rest of everybody who every so many years mark crosses in polling stations but don’t have much of a notion as to what the people they elect actually do.
The rest is of French farmers burning straw on French motorways, refugees running amok at English Channel ferry ports, Romanians living hand-to-mouth, and of course Scottish fishermen being thwarted by people convening once a year in Brussels or related places, in one of the darkest months of the year, December. Then there’s the filthy-rich multi-hectare farmers being apportioned amounts of cash that the word "subsidy" struggles to represent.
What else we know about the EU is not nearly enough to entitle us as an electorate to be fit people to be participating in an in or out EU referendum.
One of the meagre media offerings that might inform us as to how the rest of Europe passes its daily round is the BBC Alba programme, Eòrpa, though it too has no agenda I know of to turn UK people into well-informed member citizens of the EU.
Nevertheless, I and others will cast votes in the EU referendum. In Scotland we’re likely to want to stay in the EU because we don’t know enough to feel strongly about changing the current status quo. However, increasingly, we are enticed by impressions of non-EU nations such as Norway and Iceland seemingly managing to flourish, engage in business with the EU and be unaffected by the bureaucratic shenanigans that comprises much of what we know of Europe. Poor referendum material we are but then, in or out is stark, its sparseness perhaps making us ideal material for the forthcoming EU poll.
Ian Johnstone
Peterhead
I LISTENED with interest to the announcement that Mr Cameron has agreed a renegotiation with the European Commission. The details appear to offer a “Red Card” – an option to block some legislation. He must be unaware that the process of passing legislation in the EU already has this option. This process sees legislation proposed by the European Commission reviewed not just once, not twice, but three times by, in order, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (this being the ministers of all European countries). Perhaps I am missing something?
Brian Rees
Zurich, Switzerland
THE criticism of John Swinney’s draft budget by Labour council leaders is yet another in a long list of cynical, misplaced and increasingly desperate attempts to attack the Scottish National Party.
Scottish Labour would do well to remember that it is Conservative, and not SNP, policies which have precipitated the challenges currently being faced by local authorities.
Council-run frontline services are under unprecedented pressure protecting those left vulnerable by swingeing Tory cuts to the welfare state. The compound effect of meeting the increasing demands of supporting those at risk, mitigating the impact of policies such as the illegal "bedroom tax" and the fact that by 2020, the Scottish budget will be 12.5 per cent lower than when the Conservatives came to power is what is really to blame for the difficulties faced by local authorities, not the council tax freeze – a fully funded manifesto commitment which has saved the average household £1,500 since its inception.
Labour had derogated from its role as the party of opposition at Westminster to become a party categorised by abstention and in-fighting. They have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of holding the Conservative Government to account and have been utterly ineffective in stemming the Tories’ ideologically driven assault on public services.
If Scottish Labour must criticise someone, they would be advised to point the finger here, and not towards the SNP.
Cllr Lewis Ritchie (SNP, Leith Walk)
City of Edinburgh Council
ANNE Welsh Jackson says: “The plain fact is, if you are going to England take the precaution of acquiring English notes” (Letters, February 1).
Taking that logic to its natural conclusion, if the English are coming up to Scotland, will Jackson be advising them to bring Scottish notes, or is her advice just reserved for the jocks? The Treaty of Union stipulated that there should be a Bank of Great Britain. Surprise, surprise, it never happened, and never will. The USA and countries in Europe are independent nations, as Jackson knows only too well.
Scotland is not independent, yet, nor is England. On the contrary Ms Jackson, it has everything to do with “Better Together”. If the rejection of Scottish banknotes by our supposedly friendly neighbour England, exemplifies “Better Together”, then we really are better apart as independent nations.
William C McLaughlin
Thankerton, Biggar
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