Letters I: Town might have been spared 'Plook' awards

The flats at the top of the town centre look inordinately high in the picture.

This was a “working” model, parts of which could be raised to show an exploded view of the construction.

It was wheeled out for exhibitions and visiting architects etc and was a beast of a thing to work with.

My last job as a joiner working “on the tools” was in finishing the said flats.

Afterwards, I got the job of model-maker with the Development Corporation, where I did my building work in much more civilised surroundings.

There was a myth surrounding the town centre which said that the edifice was to have been built down the hill towards the railway instead of, as it was, across the “hog’s back”.

There might have been fewer Plook on the Plinth awards if this had been true.
Jim Gibson
Selkirk

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Unionists know they are on to a loser, so beware

DESPITE more than two years of sustained and venomous attacks in the media on the SNP and the independence cause, support for independence has not wavered an inch, even in the polls commissioned by our enemies – despite, I may add, no independence campaign going on.

This is the very good news, which we should be shouting from the rooftops.

The continual pleading against another referendum tells me one thing. Our opponents know that their efforts are failing.

They know that as things stand they will lose the next one. So I am concerned about what comes next.

Nobody with even the faintest grasp of history and politics will have any doubt over the completely unscrupulous nature of our opposition and I wonder if it is only a matter of time till various “revolutionaries” and bampots suggesting “armed rebellion”

and similar appear (as soon as they can be invented, funded and put together).

Already we can see a huge increase in trolling by fakes on our online sites, purporting to support independence while trying to sow argument among the faithful.

More importantly, however, we need to make sure that the next referendum is controlled and entirely supervised either by the Scottish Government or by an agency without a vested interest in the result.

In particular, we need to make sure that the postal ballot operation is not done through easily accessible council computers by a staff without the time or the facilities to properly check and validate applications and submissions but by a dedicated and secure nationwide postal ballot unit.

Dave McEwan Hill
Sandbank, Argyll

I VOTED to leave the EU, yet I am a staunch supporter of independence for Scotland.

Does this mean I am a cruel, xenophobic, bigoted, Brexiteer; a self-hating Scot who rails against the very notion of Johnny Foreigner trampling all over these green and pleasant lands?

But am I also a proud Scot who cares not a jot for the UK and the wellbeing of those living outwith Scotland, so long as I see the back of the English Johnny Foreigner ruling over us from afar?

Am I a super bigot? Or a super virtue signaller?

Or perhaps I just hate the imposition of corporately-owned governments run for the benefit of the few, at the expense of the all the rest, regardless of whom they claim to identify with?

I ought to find it unacceptable, and insensible that I should demand to be rid of one bully (Westminster) but welcome another bully (EC/EU) as a benign guardian.

Further devolution of regional governance throughout Scotland, UK, Europe, etc is far better suited to meet the local needs of communities rather than this one-size-fits-none approach of centralised power, of which Holyrood is no exception.

Once Scotland wins self-determination from Westminster as well as from Brussels, I shall look forward to campaigning for the decentralisation of power from Holyrood.
James Andrew Mills
Renfrewshire

TABLOIDS owned by billionaires want you to hate the “wee doley doon the street wi’ a 42-inch telly an’ a brand new car, and six bairns wi brand new claes”. I don’t. I say good luck to him and his family.

They’re getting by in a system that is designed to keep people like them down.

The poor in this country (UK) are not meant to better themselves but to be mindful of their betters while getting by as wage slaves.

The tabloids scream “cheat” and point the finger at them, directing your attention away from the real culprits: the bankers and multinationals with their obscene bonuses and all to compliant Westminster politicians doing their bidding. They use public money to bail out failed banks and sell off public assets to their corporate pals and pocketing their dues.

They maintain the myth that a country’s success is based on its earnings not on the wellbeing of its population.
Mark Harper
Dysart

OVER the festive period, I was feeling very reassured that things were all coming together in The National.

I speculated how interested people would have been to have read the news of the Holyrood Parliament 25, 50 or even a 100 years ago.

In 1914, the first bill for a Scottish Parliament had been refused its second reading in the Commons due to the outbreak of the First World War.

You also carried a beautiful photograph of the Kirk in Laggan in the falling snow. I had an uncle, a hard-working tenant farmer on the farms of Breakachy and Aberarder, who was an elder of the Laggan Kirk for more than 20 years.

He was also a county councillor and, for years, a quiet supporter of the SNP.

He was a good public speaker and latterly worked very hard, along with the historian JM Reid and others, to persuade the Kirk and Nation Committee of the Church of Scotland that restoring the Scottish Parliament would be a very sensible and indeed a necessary thing.

His name was Neil Usher and Laggan kirkyard is his last resting place.

Many others who have passed away would also be very touched to see how far their efforts have helped Scotland.

Let us pray that good sense will prevail in 2017 as well.
Lesley J Findlay
Fort Augustus