WHILE I share the disappointment of many that the opening of the new “Sick Kids” may be delayed for up to a further year, I am reluctant to agree with the Tory “heads must roll” mantra until key issues are fully investigated and made public.

Why are basic faults in the building now showing themselves? There is a variety of possibilities for this. The initial design of the building may have incorporated faults. The builders may have devised cost-saving shortcuts which involved deviation from well worked-out plans. Some building regulations may have simply not been followed by the workforce. Cut-price, defective materials may have used. The efforts of builders and planners may have been hampered by consistent mind-changing by the “customer” (the Scottish Government or health authorities).

Once these and other relevant matters have been considered and resolved, we can then then decide which heads should “roll”, or more sensibly perhaps suggest what type of retribution – financial, professional or legal – should be considered and applied, and what changes if any should be made to the procurement of future government contracts.

Alex Leggatt
Edinburgh

DESPITE the reasonable letter by Gil Paterson (September 13), I am not convinced there is any provision in the UN Charter for the case of Scotland regaining its independence. While I have not read every line of the Charter, a quick survey shows only the case of secession of a region from a state.

This is not the case for Scotland, which was an established country long before most of the present countries of Europe and some centuries before the USA was assembled from the various territories stolen from the indigenous inhabitants. England and Scotland are in a union, neither being a region of the other, and the dissolution of such a union does not seem to be covered by the UN Charter.

Dr PM Dryburgh Edinburgh THERE is a growing constituency amongst the people of Scotland for independence, that much is clear. There are also those who are hardening their opinion about unilaterally declaring independence in the face of the UK Government’s failure to agree an Section 30 order.

However we face a Catch-22 situation. To remain in the EU we need to be independent, but to get independence we may need to UDI. And doing that may preclude us from EU membership.

The SNP policy is clearly that we need an Section 30 order, and that we should seek to be an independent member of the EU. The chief stumbling block of which is that agreement.

For the rest of us, we must balance the value of the UK against the EU and consider life outside either. What do we want most? Or perhaps, what do we most need?

For me independence inside the EU is the preferred option.

However, faced with decades of extreme Toryism in London, independence is becoming the thing that we absolutely need.

Brian Kelly Dunfermline IN his column yesterday Stuart Cosgrove highlighted the importance of keeping an oral, visual and academic record of this historic period which we in Scotland are experiencing (Who will capture the memories of the Yes movement before they fade with time?, September 15).

There are already several books in print chronicling the progress of the indyref. Most portray the Yes side.However, Joe Pike’s Project Fear is an excellent insider account of the Better Together campaign. Pat Anderson’s Fear and Smear gives us the same campaign as viewed from the Yes angle.

For readers who prefer their political history lightened with human drama, my own novel Two Closes and a Referendum provides a month-by-month account of the political events of 2014 as they impinge on a diverse collection of fictional characters: Yes supporters, No supporters, non-voters. Most of them (as in life) more driven by the various crises in their daily existence than by the debates and headlines leaping at them from the media.

Once our interesting times are played out we’ll need an academic account of them, as objective as possible (bearing in mind that history is written by the victors).

I’m optimistic that with social media, the internet, books, newsprint and – yes! – songs, there will be plenty of material for the academics to work on.

Mary McCabe
Glasgow