ALISON Phipps’s description of the treatment of her foster daughter in Dungavel and Yarl’s Wood can be echoed by many others (My daughter’s nightmare in ‘the place where women cry all the time’, The National, November 18). When I visited two Zimbabwean asylum seekers, one of whom had been badly tortured by Robert Mugabe’s youth brigade, the experience would have been farcical if it were not so tragic.

Our Christmas presents of a jersey and diary and a box of toiletries were never given over on the grounds that “the map of Britain in the diary” would help “B” escape and “J” might drink the cologne that had one per cent alcohol in it. Later on when I attended and spoke at an immigration tribunal at Heathrow, the reply from the Home Office representative to the judge who asked why they wanted to deny bail to “B” was that “he might be an absconding type, my Lord”.

Fortunately the judge overruled this Gilbertian performance, but the fear and abuse described by Alison were certainly reflected in B’s. case. He was taken, chained to a van, to Colnbrook Centre, a 10-hour journey, with one toilet stop and a little food and water. I wrote to two government ministers, Paul Boateng and Peter Hain (it was in the last Labour government), reminding them that we had all campaigned in the Anti-Apartheid Movement against the treatment of human beings in that way in South Africa. I received no reply from either.

Some years later I heard HM Chief Inspector of Immigration describe the system as “unfit for purpose”. Some of the staff in Dungavel I found to be kind and sympathetic but totally untrained and unskilled, since the system operates in private hands and compared with the prison service, asylum seekers have far fewer rights.

The sooner an independent Scotland is able to fashion a humane and decent asylum system, and that Dungavel (farmed out by Westminster to “for profit” companies) is closed, the better. Scotland deserves better, as do those who seek our time honoured sanctuary from persecution.
Iain Whyte
North Queensferry

IT’S a funny old world, politics and the Scottish media. Kezia Dugdale announces that she is to appear on I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here and it’s the story of the week. Good on you hen, making the announcement only hours before the new leader of the Labour Party in Scotland was announced.

This was Kezia’s Johann Lamont “branch office” moment. She was sticking it to them after this ungrateful party had conspired against her at every opportunity and then stabbed her in the back. It might be the making of the lass. I cannot wait for Oor Eck to extract the maximum outrage from social media when he discusses Kezia’s appearance in the jungle on RT.

So the Labour party in Scotland has a new leader, and I don’t think anyone was surprised at the result. A dyed-in-the-wool Unionist, voted into power by the unions, with the blessing of the Westminster Corbyn-ites. After all he is English, therefore talks the same language, English rule (at Westminster) OK.

Corbyn needs the Scottish vote to get him into power and has put his man in place in Scotland in order to achieve that end. The media in Scotland will welcome the new leader with open arms and all we will hear from now to polling day is how “New” Labour will transform our NHS or schools, or infrastructure (hopefully not as they are doing in Wales and England). And whilst all this was going on Oor Nicola was getting on with the day job, burning the midnight oil at the Scottish Office, to save the three fabrications yards in Scotland just as her Government did when Prestwick Airport and the Ferguson yard on the Clyde were going to the wall with the loss of hundreds of jobs.

Strange therefore that the media in Scotland seemed very reluctant to trumpet that.
Walter Hamilton
St Andrews

NOT so long ago all we heard from Labour and Tory MSPs in Scotland was that the SNP should drop the idea of a second independence referendum and focus on the “day job”. Well last weekend’s news certainly threw some light on that plan.

Whilst Nicola Sturgeon and her team were working hard to successfully save the jobs at BiFab, it was announced that former Labour leader Kezia Dugdale is abandoning her constituents to take part in “I’m a Celebrity”. Not that long ago the Tory leader Ruth Davidson confirmed she was taking part in celebrity Bake Off.

So it seems that the SNP Scottish Government has focussed on the day job while Unionist politicians are concentrating on tawdry TV shows to promote themselves at the expense of their constituents. All we need now is for Willie Rennie to join the Z-list celebrity circuit by signing up to the “biggest loser” TV show!
Councillor Kenny MacLaren
Paisley

RICHARD Leonard is the new Labour leader in Scotland. Quite wonderfully, this latest grey, grey, grey off-the-peg white bloke to front Labour is offering a message of “real change”.

Well, we all need a laugh.
Amanda Baker
Edinburgh

VERY much enjoying your Thursday music articles, and good to see acknowledgement of the Peatbog Faeries’ 25 years as a band. Unfortunately, the accompanying picture was of another notable Scots traditional band, Breabach.
John Macleod
Milngavie