I AGREED with much of what Sandy Stronach said, both about the EU and new SNP members (Letters, July 20). It is no secret that I am a Leaver. And like him, I have also been surprised that our local branch has the same small number of attendees as 30 years ago when I first joined. New members are not just waving flags, although in our experience you are allowed to do little more.
READ MORE: What are all the new SNP members doing? Just waving flags?
We rejoined the SNP in 2014, and we have not been encouraged in anything ambitious. We were told if we had any political ambitions to get in line behind people who had already been there for years, and any initiative-taking is viewed with suspicion. It all has to go through what is effectively the “top tier”, but we are good enough for delivering stuff and doing what we are told.
Consequently, most of those who attend are middle-aged or old (I may be in either category, depending how young you are), but young people have been frightened off.
Kevin McKenna (SNP paralysed on indyref2 at just the wrong time, July 17) was spot on. Two great opportunities (better than now) have been spurned: the first when we got 56 SNP MPs and the second just after the EU vote. The SNP has indeed become used to government, and where they should be leading on land reform, rent controls, price controls even of basic necessities like energy and transport, they are busy trying to persuade the markets that nothing much will change after independence, there is nothing to fear.
READ MORE: Kevin McKenna: SNP paralysed on indyref2 at just the wrong time
If nothing does change on independence, we have been wasting our time. What is the point of taking a selfish, greedy, out-of-control British banking sector and filling it with (new) Scottish banks who will be just as irrelevant to the majority of Scots residents because they serve only their shareholders? What is the point of replicating a housing sector where property is too expensive for most people to buy or even rent? Where is the action against the vested interests who treat Scotland as a playground, against the huge distortion of the rented sector by Airbnb, and against big developers who can destroy local communities with no comeback? The SNP could have used its majority to tackle these big questions, but instead has chosen to back those who exploit the people.
And the silence on independence is deafening.
Julia Pannell
Arbroath
THE response of the Scottish Government through a “spokesperson” to my article on Scotland’s trade statistics, (Why Scotland needs better trade statistics, July 20), is worrying to say the least.
READ MORE: SNP ministers urged to bypass Westminster on trade data
The response begins, as one might expect, with a red herring, “Improving Scotland’s export performance is key to Scotland’s economic performance”. No-one suggested otherwise.
The nub of the matter is, of course, the point of the article, which is the lack of any survey covering the imports of services and the messy guddle government statisticians have had to get into to supplement the response rate to their export survey from a miserable 22%, and in one important sector from a low of 15%.
The article suggests putting in place surveys of exports and imports of goods and services in the same survey as the present required study of other business information – a technique used in Northern Ireland with great success and a very good, timely response rate.
The Government’s spokesperson’s response is “Northern Ireland operates a separate statistics system and has more powers to collect its own survey data”.
Exactly. Have you, the spokesperson, not read the article?
The question is “why has the Scottish Government not demanded the same powers, and if it has not been given them, then put them in place itself?”
That was the point of the article. And clearly not answered.
It is a travesty that detailed work carried out by researchers in their own time without payment is treated in such an askance way by civil servants who clearly have neither understood, nor perhaps read, the article.
One might say, “Well, more fool you”. But the driving force of many of us is to improve the Scottish economy so that it is fit for independence, or some other form of government which is better that what we have at present.
The response by the “spokesperson” is shameful and embarrassing to those who care about Scotland.
Margaret Cuthbert
Economist
“WARS were good for heavy industry, but wars could not go on forever,” writes Michael Fry in his article (This new business walked away from Scotland and more could do the same, July 22).
READ MORE: This new business walked away from Scotland and more may do the same
Seldom have I read a more ignorant remark. Apart from the active wars currently creating misery for the many and wealth for the arms industry investors, he may not have too long to wait before his Tory friends involve the UK in another imperial offensive. Perhaps in his next article he could explain the benefits of nuclear weapons.
Iain R Thomson
Strathglass
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