DURING the build-up to the EU referendum, the Leave campaign said the Conservative farming minister, George Eustice, “told farmers at the launch of Farmers for Britain that the UK Government would continue to give farmers and the environment as much support – or perhaps even more – as they get now” from Europe.

He helped to get that Leave vote, but the spirit of those words have not been matched by him or the Conservative Government in Westminster. While they say support will continue until 2020 – which is simply the end of the current parliamentary term – what happens after that is as clear as slurry.

At the Oxford Farming Conference last month, the BBC’s rural affairs and environment editor reported that Eustice had said there would be no more “subsidies” post-2020 for farmers.

Neither does the Conservative Government’s White Paper on Brexit meet the spirit of Eustice’s promise. It says: “With EU spend on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) at around €58 billion in 2014 (nearly 40 per cent of the EU’s budget), leaving the EU offers the UK a significant opportunity to design new, better and more efficient policies for delivering sustainable and productive farming, land management and rural communities.”

Following on from that, we’ve had the Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, suggest that powers over regulation will be retained by Westminster rather than devolved “automatically” from Europe as promised by the Leave campaign in the referendum.

Considering Theresa May is desperate for a trade deal with Trump, which could open up the UK to American produce, this has set alarm bells ringing for Scotch quality producers.

The weasel words we have heard come nowhere near the clear promise that farmers and crofters will get “as much support – or perhaps even more – as they get now”, and considering Conservative governments’ habit of cutting public spending, those words hide myriad possibilities for a leopard that doesn’t change its spots. The position of the UK Government suggests that, just as Westminster sold out Scottish fishermen going into Europe, they will use them as a bargaining chip to leave, perhaps to get other EU states’ support to lobby for the banks in the City of London to still have free access to the EU market.

Votes for the Conservatives in Scotland’s farming communities at the council elections in May will be used to claim they have the support of those communities to implement that weasely worded paragraph.

James MacDonald, Oban

I READ the report about the interesting research at Dundee University into the “overuse” of antibiotics by physicians and an increase in resistance (Dundee University study claims advising clinicians ‘the best way to lower antibiotic use’, The National, February 11.

I lost my mother when she was 92 and was distressed that, while in hospital, she had her antibiotics stopped after periods of only seven days. Each time this happened she lapsed into a delirious state due to a recurrent urine infection, causing her unnecessary suffering.

Some time later, I read that 80 per cent of antibiotics used in the UK are administered by farmers and veterinary staff to animals.

I appreciate the need to do all we can to ensure antibiotics remain effective but it seems bizarre that animals can be treated without restriction when we apply rationing to our human population. I would be interested to know if the Dundee University research includes antibiotic use in farming.

Ian Stewart, Uig, Isle of Skye

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I NOTICED that Alex Orr (Letters, February 11) was attempting to “spin” the recent Scottish speech of senior European Commission executive Jacqueline Minor. In fact, he was quite right to argue that various headlines in the Unionist press did indeed seek to overplay what Ms Minor said.

Some Unionists have claimed that if Scotland became independent it would have to go to the “back of a queue” to join the EU, behind current applicants Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro. The end of the queue claim is nonsense but so is Orr’s claim that “there is, of course, no queue”. There is a queue – made up of these three countries.

What Ms Minor made clear was that an independent Scotland would have to join this queue but could possibly leap ahead of these countries (if Spain agrees) because its laws and governance are already consistent with EU requirements.  What Orr completely fails to address is that, through Ms Minor, the Commission has repeated its position stated in the 2014 referendum that Scotland cannot “remain” in the EU. That is of immense importance to any prospects of indyref2 pre-Brexit.

The only purpose of holding an independence referendum before Brexit is complete is to attempt to “remain”. Spain had already made its opinion more than clear, but we now have it from the EU horse’s mouth. If the SNP win a pre-Brexit indyref2, Scotland will inevitably be out of the EU for some extended time. We cannot know how long.

Before winning a referendum, the SNP cannot even negotiate with the EU on preliminary terms. Meanwhile, the rUK will be exiting the EU and we will be launching a new currency. We will then face the dire threat of being outside the single market on World Trade Organization terms. Oh! What a catastrophe!

Now to the second main point Orr made. Again, he is quite right that Scotland would not have to join the euro immediately. However, we must remember we will be launching a new currency upon independence. Since we want to join the EU, it cannot be sterling. We will have to commit to joining the euro sometime. What effect will this have on our new currency? Currencies are not usually temporary.

It must be really embarrassing for a leading member of the European movement in Scotland to have to try so hard to scotch any idea that Scotland could be burdened with a central European institution, the utterly crazy euro which is laying waste to Europe. Ms Minor also poured cold water on Nicola Sturgeon’s imaginative paper trying to preserve Scottish membership of the single market within the UK.

SNP Europhiles must accept a second kick in the teeth from the unelected Tories of the Commission in a mere three years. What have all the trips to Brussels, selfies and coffees achieved? It makes me think of a great verse from Ae Fond Kiss:

Had we never loved sae blindly,

Had we never loved sae kindly,

Never met or never parted,

We had ne’er been broken hearted

William Ross, Address supplied

HAVING read the Sunday Herald’s article on the transatlantic popularity of Scots’ taunting of Scrotus Trump on every medium from rough cardboard through to the internet, I have been suitably amused and impressed by the creativity of the acerbic wit and plain speaking of our fellow citizens.

The National: trump.jpg

However, this torrent of (richly deserved) abuse might have been more appropriate if it had emanated from a mature nation unafraid to stand on its own two feet, as opposed to one in which an approximate 51 per cent of voters are apparently unwilling to contemplate taking their future, and that of coming generations, into their own hands, despite all of the clear-cut evidence contradicting such a passive position. Given the vile nature of the UK Government we currently accept, if we are going to throw stones then perhaps we should first make sure the glass house we live in is made of toughened glazing.

Ian Duff, Inverness

IT is obvious that, despite any tenuous connection to the First Minister, Ronald Coyne, the Cambridge undergraduate who burned a £20 note in front of a homeless person, is not Scottish.

No true Scot would be capable of such an action.

John Eoin Douglas, Edinburgh