THE letter from Maggie Rankin on Saturday is great relief to me. Gradually I found I was losing my appetite for The National. I seemed to have trouble finding reading matter that I found palatable. I was subsisting on a meagre diet of a single crossword a day. Now I realise what was wrong: there was too much SNP being sprinkled on everything.
READ MORE: Letters, December 5
The paper advertises itself as supporting an independent Scotland. May we adopt a low-SNP diet? In defence of The National, it is only being over scrupulous in its reporting. Any group becomes tired after a while. In particular the First Minister has exhausted herself on our behalf over the Covid pandemic. Tired people find new projects daunting.
Two items in the paper make my point. The item by Lorna Slater on Friday envisioning a different country gave fresh ideas which read pleasantly. The future is Green, and this progressive philosophy is being delayed be the long-needed declaration of independence.
READ MORE: The SNP’s lack of ambition is hindering the independence cause
Pat Kane’s piece on Saturday about Gaelic reminds me of the grievous loss of Scots and Gaelic from your columns. Whatever the problems, these should be reinstated, even if only items about Scots and Gaelic but in English with vernacular quotations.
Iain WD Forde
Scotlandlwell
CONGRATULATIONS to Pat Kane for his article on the place for Gaelic in our modern Scotland. I especially liked “certainly, we need a Scotland that can talk confidently and clearly in the world language, English .... we also need a Scotland that values the way it talks to itself, its accents and vocabulary”. As a native speaker of north-east Scots and a Gaelic learner (albeit exiled in Fife!) I think that is spot on!
READ MORE: Pat Kane: Gaelic Duolingo’s global popularity proves presence of opportunities
However, I remember the (now far-off) days when we had a weekly Gaelic article in The National. This dropped to fortnightly before disappearing entirely about a year ago. So I ask the editorial team – when can we have our Gaelic back, please?!
Doug Fraser
Dunfermline
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