IN the twentieth and twenty first centuries, there has been a predominance of Tory rule.

People still vote Tory in their masses but Britain, that little island off the coast of France that wants to disassociate itself from its neighbours, has degraded into a semi-serfdom.

Meanwhile those same neighbours have progressed into a very much more representative, strong and stable democracies.

Democratic representation in Britain is the worst of any European country and successive Tory governments have found ways to skim more off the top and yet people still vote for them. This is a puzzle.

They have given us a degraded democracy, a Dickensian diaspora of the underprivileged, the proliferation of food kitchens around the island.

Often people working full time require help to live where they live and to work where they work.

Women do not have equality but they will in Scotland when independence is declared.

A majority of working people are living on the edge and many don’t realise it, but look at the proliferation of loan sharks!

The Tories and their monied friends will tell you that the cost of bringing women up to the same pay grades as the men: “Will cost the nation too much!” “Will cause many companies to go into liquidation!”

This is the reality of the appalling Tory attitude but people still vote for them.

Britain, that little island, has a rather sick and prejudiced “class system” promoted by the Tories and believed by their admirers who aspire to be among them.

The older ones among us might remember Geoffrey Howe saying that he would not dine with Thatcher, with a sort of a sneer that suggested that it would be beneath him.

The Tories are the people that will tolerate the creation of food banks, will ignore the need of some working men and women to use them from necessity, will turn a blind eye to the continued disparity in wages for women and yet cry out that they are strong and stable.

Aye, strong and stable at resisting change for the people on the island and strong, stable and determined to ensure the money flows to those that already have it. But people still vote for them.They are divisive, corrosive, destructive and dedicated to their own survival.

It has become rather obvious to those people that do not rely on The Sun and the BBC for their view of the country that the “We” in the “We are better together!” slogan carried by them all, referred to them alone, not us the people of the four nations hidden beneath the bland and misleading title “Great Britain”. The monied manipulators in the creative news industry and of course, the politicians that made it all possible for them have grown inordinately richer while the main population has become inordinately poorer.

Look at the money poured into white elephants: Trident, the Houses of Westminster, the repairs to Royal premises, the bombing of distant people in distant lands. That behaviour gets lecture tours for these gannets, dinners at high tables and many other ego-stroking rewards at our expense.

The French suffered all this. They went for revolution, it was bloody. The Americans went the same way – it was bloody too, and, of course, as did the Russians, but here on this little island on the edge of Europe there are still people that think they are a “better class” if they vote Tory. They are wrong.

They are inferior; if they cannot share common humanity they have failed us and themselves.

Christopher Bruce, Taynuilt

I WAS flabbergasted to learn that some ex-Labour voters are now voting Tory because of their dedication to the Union. A quite disgraceful paradox.

Katy Bell, Livingstone

IT IS almost time to make one of the biggest decisions that the electorate of the UK, which currently includes Scotland, will have to make in their lifetime.

Being old has its advantages and disadvantages: to begin with we have been through rough times which young ones have never been through and hopefully never will, we have also experienced good times such as the end of World War Two and the few peaceful years that followed which we hope our young people of today will also get a taste of.

I feel a touch of sadness that what is also disappearing are the anti-war protests we used to experience especially in the USA and UK . No more people like Joan Baez, John Lennon and Bob Dylan to bring things to the fore and waken us up from the nightmares of the world we currently find ourselves in.

I wonder (but I think I know) where our Robert Burns would stand were he a man of our times. Can you imagine for a minute he would support those who would surrender our Scottishness to Westminster for one minute of his short but full life. A man whose words reverberate around the world, albeit once a year, who can join the world as one for even that very brief moment should without doubt get more recognition than he currently does. He would surely turn in his grave at the hypocrisy of many of those who dress up to commemorate his birth on January 25 1759 and and don’t understand what he was trying to say in his The Braes o’ Killiecrankie or his Scots Wha Hae wi’ Wallace Bled. It goes without saying Burns would have been strongly against Theresa May and to a lesser extent Corbyn, but would definitely be against those “Sassie” Tory and Labour leaders wha wud sell their soul tae the Deil. Burns, to my mind, would no doubt have been an Anti-Nuke Nationalist. I sincerely hope that conscience will bite deep into the hearts of Burns Idolisers when they cast their Vote.

Who on Earth could excuse the heartless terrorism that has plagued our planet like a virus for so many years destroying the lives of so many innocent men, women and children? I certainly could not. But I would compare the efforts to rid our world of this tragic state of affairs by the “powers that be” to that of a US President trying to eliminate an infestation of mosquitoes on his Florida estate with a fly swatter. Hiv, malaria, ebola and the current terrorist situation can only be eliminated or contained by people with brains, not big hammers. The recent tragedies in Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge had nothing to do with the immigrant settlers in UK, there can be no doubt it certainly had something to do with what has happened in the Middle east and Afghanistan over the past 20 years. That is where the people claiming responsibility for those atrocities are situated. That is where US-led regime changes were tried and have failed to date. They lost in Korea... no resultant terrorism...They lost in Vietnam....no resultant terrorism.

They still after all these years warring in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria and whose people are also victims of terror, I think it will only be when these wars stop or when they withdraw from those countries that terrorism will end. No country outwith the US alliance is suffering this terrible virus: do we really need to ask why? My vote is going to the largest and only Scottish Party. Your vote is your business... but look out for May She’s no “Mother Teresa”. Vote well.

Dave Beveridge, Galashiels

I NOTICE from a recent report into the effects on children of the Israeli occupation that there are 75 Palestinian children from East Jerusalem being held in Israeli prisons and detention centres.

Interrogation within these centres focuses on confessions obtained through coercive methods, including physical violence, in the absence of their parents and attorneys. The interrogation lasts for a few hours in some cases, and some children are subjected to intense interrogation methods, slaps, beatings, kicking, and being cuffed by hands and legs to the chair.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child underlines in Article 27(b) that “No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily.”

Like other international laws re illegal settlements, occupation, segregation, use of military laws etc Israel pays no heed in its desperate attempt to consolidate its occupation and make it permanent.

B Mckenna, Dumbarton