HAVING just read Kevin McKenna’s excellent article, I have to express the similar sentiments (Excess and lashings of fake cheer ... the magic of Christmas courtesy of the elites, The National, December 13). I was watching an advert last night for a well-known supermarket showing what can only be described as a table “groaning” with an obscene quantity of luxury food and assorted goodies, inhabited by a nauseating collection of “numpties” decked out in the best designer gear, all trying to create the impression of being “yur average maw, paw and the wanes”, each with a facial expression that deserved the use of a custard pie.

I was then brought back to reality by the very next advert courtesy of The Salvation Army, showing homeless, abused and impoverished souls being helped to make the most of a really bad lot at Christmas.

Now I confess that the name “Mr Bah Humbug” has occasionally been overheard in the corridors of Hastie Hall, but do these advertising moguls really believe that they can fool us at this really difficult financial time of the year for most of the population? Get real.

Robin Hastie, St Andrews

I AGREE entirely with much of what Kevin wrote but am irked by the tone of the last paragraph.

I and six others joined nearly 9000 at the sleep-out in Princes Street Gardens. I met absolutely no one who was not completely aware of why they were there. I met no Torcuils nor Julias, but many who recognised that in comparison to those who are homeless we had a choice and are, as Kevin calls us, “the merely affluent ”.

The night was about raising awareness and, just for the record, at -7°C it was not a comfortable one. There was a palpable anger about homelessness, food banks, poverty and stunted life chances in 21st-century Scotland. There was clarity about where the blame lies, and frustration as to what to do about it. Many have since taken clothes and food and given them to people on the street in Edinburgh and to foodbanks.

So please don’t sneer at us. Many people find it hard to act without fear of patronising people who are in desperate need. But to do nothing is unacceptable.

Noirin Blackie, Haddington

THOMAS L Inglis of Fintry, in his letter of December 13, asks if it is “too much of a pipe dream” to expect that the three Unionist party leaders at Holyrood support the cross-sector agreement to establish the “Factory of the future” in Renfrewshire near Inchinnan.

He is too kind. The reality is that the Unionist parties at Holyrood only exist to carp and criticise from the side, and expect Holyrood to sort the mess created by Westminster reserved powers!

They only operate to keep Scots subservient to Westminster.

Their tactics during indyref1, where they lied and used every devious tactic to belittle Scots, are clear evidence that they are simply placed at Holyrood to keep the Union.

Their opposition to meaningful extension of devolutionary powers, even within the Union, shows they are tricksters of the first order.

They are incapable of seeing beyond the status quo at any given point. That is strange because, apart from the Tory arch-Unionists, one would think that Labour and the LibDems would want real additional powers at Holyrood to act as a counterpoint to the current Westminster Tory austerity. But no!

While England has been described as “the elephant in the room”, the non-Tory Unionists at Holyrood are the “cuckoos in the nest”, politically destructive and remorseless!

As support for independence is rising in this quiet period between indyref1 and indyref2, it looks as if Unionism is on the wane.

A word of caution, however: the Tories north of the Tweed are now in third position, according to polls. ScotLab are in second place and see themselves only as there to bring about victory for Corbyn. Unionists through and through! The Anti-Corbyn factions in Labour are no better, with the exception of a few, and they were opposed by Corbyn’s centrists in the Commons who voted with the Tories in the Great Power Grab. Remember the Vow and the post-Vow reality! Unionists at Holyrood are unreconstructable.

John Edgar, Stewarton