We need a plan to escape the clutches of the Tories ... and we need it now

Now, with the publication of Boris Johnson’s heinous Internal Market Bill, the same fate will befall the Scottish Parliament. Johnson and his cronies/henchmen Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings have been embarrassed and exposed by Holyrood.

Johnson’s risible, rambling, incompetent, incoherent response to Covid-19, juxtaposed against Nicola Sturgeon’s, has made him more of a laughing stock than he already was.

The UK Government is giving itself the power to interfere in devolved areas. Food standards will be lowered. All so that corrupt American agribusinessess, who donate heavily to Donald Trump, can sell us their substandard rubbish. Things like chlorinated chicken and growth hormone beef are all currently banned. Trump wants country of origin labels removed so you don’t have a choice in what to buy.

Public school-educated Tories will now decide the spending priorities of Scotland, not the elected Scottish Government.

In 2015, Martin Shkreli was a hedge fund manager. He obtained manufacturing rights to an anti-malaria drug. After doing this he raised the price from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill. Trump’s donors want him to cut a similar deal for the NHS.

The Tories are negotiating just such a deal. We know this because Jeremy Corbyn exposed them. The Internal Market Bill allows the Tories to impose this deal on Scotland.

So anyone relying on medication better get ready to have it rationed. All so greedy Tory/Trump supportering billionaires can have more money.

READ MORE: Tory MP Bernard Jenkin blasted for 'delusional' claim about UK's Brexit deal

This is arrogant Anglo-Saxon colonialism. Now that the Tories are ripping up the devolution settlement and will break the law with impunity, the SNP leadership need to step up. Sturgeon can no longer hide behind constitutional niceties. Those have been binned by the Tories.

There can be no more fudges, no more delay or dither. Sturgeon must publish a timetable for Scotland’s exit from the UK. If she won’t then she should step aside for someone who will.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

THEY, the Great British Government, quite simply are a clusterbourach.

The whole of the world is looking on in open-mouthed astonishment at the meltdown taking place within the Downing Street bunker complex.

I do not think that I have ever witnessed such an ill conceived strategy as that which is being played out under the input of Cummings and stewardship of Johnson. So bad is the stuff as yet unannounced, one of their top legal beagles has resigned over it. So far the EU, Scotland and a rush to sign have been blamed for this government’s complete lack of ability to negotiate.

I, like many others, have commented at length on this administration’s petulant ways, their immature hiding from tough decisions and their lies. It would now seem that as the hour draws near to produce that which was promised, they realise that their egotistical, bombastic public school attitude has achieved nothing. I really am half expecting letters to be sent to any senior family members who have offspring in the cabinet informing them to come and collect said offspring and maybe consider putting them into a different school, one less demanding, one less expecting, one far removed from the arena of important decision-making at critical times.

Who would ever have thought that politics would be the most interesting show in town and because people are paying attention and the EU have conducted negotiations in the open, our imbeciles that have been involved have been well and truly shown up as indeed the imbeciles that they are. If only they had spent less time playing with crayons and more time talking then there might be some sympathy for them. As it is, every single one of them deserves the public ridicule that is heading their way.

Our time to move away from them is coming near and all that is required is for us to have faith in our country, it’s folk and their abilities.

Cliff Purvis Veterans For Scottish Independence 2.0 SO, the serial liar is back. Apparently, we no longer have an “oven-ready” Brexit deal as it was too rushed and pressured for Boris Johnson and his serial incompetents to scrutinse.

What a shame they never let Parliament have the time to scrutinise their dodgy deal! So now Johnson is advocating some more dodgy legislation to try to undermine the deal he signed with the EU. What does that say about the integrity of this corrupt UK Government?

Who can ever trust Johnson and Co? The UK will be a pariah state! Yet, we’re expected to form an orderly queue behind a row of mandates waiting for this corrupt UK Government to grant us the right to have a referendum. On yer bike!

If a majority of MSPs elected in the new Scottish Parliament in 2021 support independence or independence supporting parties then we should take our future into our own hands, organise our own referendum and go for it. More and more people are seeing through the lies and corruption of the UK Government and realising that the only chance of a decent future for ordinary people is returning the full powers of a normal nation to our parliament in Edinburgh, so let’s go for it.

Cllr Kenny MacLaren
Paisley

TRUST and honesty should be at the heart of any Union, especially when one partner wields the majority of power.

When, however, any partner decides to break the rule of law either domestically or internationally, it reneges on its responsibilities and by default its actions precipitate the end of that Union.

Actions have consequences.

Richard Easson
Dornoch

THERE is a pernicious pathogen abroad. Concealed, camouflaged, and creeping, it is damaging and destroying, by degrees, that organism which we call democracy. It is attacking cell by cell, and the manufacturers of these – now many and multiple – morbidities have little care for the integrity, health or wellbeing of the body politic in the four nations of the UK.

They have set in train a gradual and inexorable degradation of the freedoms that should characterise and evidence health and vigour on the visage of a democratic state.

The depredations of the rule of law – the most recent symptom being the Internal Market Bill, but not forgetting (as we were reminded by Ian Blackford at PMQs) the improper prorogation of Parliament, and the Durham debacle involving the arch-alchemist of the present administration – which constitute the very canker attacking the heart and the viscera of a free society, are now surely detectable and capable of diagnosis for what they are: the ravages being wrought by a debilitating disease, the like of which we saw in Germany in 1933, and which we cannot fail to see in Putin’s Russia and in Trump’s America.

The tissues of the body politic are being rendered tender to the touch – the first warning sign of an at present soft dictatorship. Radical remedial intervention is needed. This disease can be lethal. For ourselves here in Scotland, independence is the sole available antidote.

Patrick Hynes Airdrie WE should not let the brain-numbing technological complexities of the nuclear Behemoth obscure the clear fact that – morally – the question could not be simpler. Either you press the button, or you don’t. And if you don’t, then do not tolerate anyone threatening to do so on your behalf. End of.

Bill Kidd’s criticism of councillor Chris McEleny is therefore entirely correct. It is not “pragmatic” (as Mr McEleny claims) but unprincipled, opportunistic and utterly cynical to urge selling out to a Guantanamo-style deal with Westminster. Does he not understand, we are not talking about horse-trading, but hydrogen bombs, instruments of mass extinction, human and environmental? Is he simply assuming that Trident will not actually be used – either accidentally or wilfully – in the many years’ reprieve he generously grants it? If he knew the number of accidents and near launches there have been, he would not be so self-assured, he would be worried sick, like those of us who actually know the record.

This outrageous suggestion runs a horse and cart through the principled opposition to criminal and illegal weapons of mass destruction which, up to now, has characterised the SNP, as it has the Greens and SSP.

READ MORE: Scottish independence: Why there should be no backtracking on Trident

I can only hope that the basic good sense of the membership prevails and that the SNP continue to be a party maintaining a principled opposition to nuclear weapons and treat his proposal with the contempt it deserves.

On the morning of independence, when Scotland joins the 122 states that agreed on the Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons in 2017, we can take our place among them with honour, and some pride at having driven the reluctant rUK towards ditching Trident.

What a splendid gift the newly independent Scotland will have to give to the rest of the world!

Brian Quail
Glasgow

IN referring to timescales, MSP Bill Kidd underlines the problem of the removal of nuclear submarines from the Clyde by an independent Scotland (Why there should be no backtracking on Trident).

The MoD, a Westminster/Washington alignment, is perhaps the most powerful and secret body of influence on UK and US politics. The development of rocket launching sites in Shetland and on Scotland’s north coast may well see the them used by the MoD as war will ultimately move into space. This is no longer science fiction. The F16 fighter planes can now be independently controlled by artificial intelligence and outperform human pilotage.

The struggle for an independent Scotland may well centre on nuclear weapons. Support of the UN and the 84 member states signed up to the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will be vital. To the twin threats of nuclear weapons and climate change should be added the reactionary attitude of the present UK administration. The fight for an independent Scotland will be dirty.

We must keep our hands clean and gain the respect of the many nations who have already thrown off the imperialist yoke.

Iain R Thomson
Strathglass

MY attention was drawn to the article in last week’s Sunday National on walking paths in our countryside.

READ MORE: This Ramblers Scotland map project is casting light on amazing secret Scotland

Since achieving “summits” is now no longer an option, I have taken to paths to maintain my interest outdoors, all kicked-off by doing the West Highland Way in my 70th year. One short walk I discovered was the Crossford to Braidwood circuit, in South Lanarkshire, and only 9km, but what a surprise lay in store on the inward leg, just after Fiddler’s Gill ... out in the middle of a field was an astronomical telescope!!

It was quite an amazing sight, and I have since learned that it is a Dansken equatorial telescope, and the optics have been secured by Lanark museum and their intention, if they can raise funds, would be to re-site it for public view. The point is, you just never know what you’ll come across, even on the most modest of walks!

Iain Lyall
Hamilton