FOR anyone like me who wants an independent Scotland to be radically different than “Britain” (ie England and it’s three subjugated colonies) if you have not already seen it, you must watch Darren McGarvey’s joust with Andy MacIver on last Wednesday’s Scotland Tonight on the STV Player.

The fairly short debate was about whether or not the pandemic had increased inequality in society. Darren was in brilliant form with an impressive bristling, understated but appropriate aggression, demolishing Andy’s arguments basically that the Tories are not to blame for inequality generally, never mind during the pandemic. Andy was quick to quote two statistics that for some amazing reason he felt backed up his argument:

• The top 5% of earners pay half the tax take

• A quarter of the UK GDP is spent on welfare

I’m sorry to be the one to tell Andy, but the fact the 5% top earners can pay half the tax is definitely a reflection of an extremely unequal society. If the Tories had not engineered a society over the years whereby so many people no longer have jobs that pay decent wages, far more of them would be paying much more tax. That would lessen the burden on those poor downtrodden 5% and the need for such a welfare spend!

On a second point why do I have to sit up to 11pm to hear views such as Darren McGarvey, basically that the whole system is rotten to the core? Whether we have to listen to rabid, frothing at the mouth members of the ERG such as Andrew Bridgen etc, or on the surface, the quietly spoken, “mild mannered” Andy McIver, they all have one thing in common. They all support a party that has stamped on the poor, stamped on the vulnerable, stamped on the weak and stamped on the disabled. The roughly 25% rump of their support in Scotland need to be told that on a regular basis. Mind you, how many of them give a damn?”

Ivor Telfer

Dalgety Bay, Fife

WE have only days left before the final Brexit. We do not know Scotland’s fate yet, but if we leave in to the UK negotiators it will be either a very hard trading deal, or no trading deal, either of which will be extremely damaging to the Scottish economy.

The Scottish Government can’t just sit on the sidelines and allow this to happen without comment.

We now know that both the UK and the EU can, and have agreed, that one part of the UK, Northern Ireland, can remain in the single market after Brexit while remaining, at the moment in the UK.

If such a deal is possible for Northern Ireland, and acceptable to the UK and the EU, it must be possible and acceptable to both that Scotland also be in the same position. The Scottish Government has a mandate and can say without any doubt that the Scottish people would be happy to accept this, and also to accept, without question, that Scotland would be happy to remain aligned with the EU requirements for market membership as the currently are.

The Scottish Government must push the UK and the EU for such an agreement in a last ditch attempt to save our economy and businesses from this Brexit madness.

Andy Anderson

Saltcoats

AS a former Labour voter my disdain for the party is amply reinforced by the latest verbal meanderings of Gordon Brown.

Clearly he’s attempting to dismiss the increasingly popular yearning for an independent Scotland by wrapping around it the problem of the failure of the UK, the very reason independence prospects are now very real.

Brown’s abject failure, apart from being a Scot who doesn’t put Scotland first, is he doesn’t recognise there is no political structure that can make the UK work for Scotland, where Scots would happily accept another 300 years of subjugation to a parliament that barely acknowledges us.

We’ve seen how the “partnership” he and his misnomer “Better Together” colleagues claimed to exist is simply a political mirage, and how we’ve not only been ignored, but told to stand quietly in the corner while our Parliament is dismantled piece by piece and taken from us. Isn’t Keir Starmer on a loser with his proposed speech of desperation to bolster his failed branch office? Clearly Labour’s reality check won’t happen until the election in May renders them redundant as a political force in Scotland.

Perhaps the humorous aspect is that Gordon Brown’s pals think it a good wheeze to trot out luvvie Labour Lords from their Westminster gravy train, the very same responsible for the Party’s downfall in Scotland, as if they have even a scintilla of credibility with which to persuade us that the UK union will ever in any way deliver for Scots.

Haven’t real Scots wised up to Gordon Brown. Isn’t it a pity the Unionist media still affords him a platform.

Jim Taylor

Edinburgh

IN an article in The National headed “Scottish Government suffers Holyrood defeat”, Conservative Jamie Greene calls on the government to increase the number of teachers in order to “help reduce class sizes”. This is a fantastic idea that the EIS has been pushing for since I first joined the union in the 1970s, but I wonder how he would achieve this now in most schools across Scotland.

Under the Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition at Holyrood, supported by the Conservatives, councils were told that if they wanted government money to update or build new schools, they would first have to reduce the excess capacity in their schools and make sure all schools were at, or at least very close to, capacity in the future. This now means that in new and refurbished schools there is no extra capacity for reducing class sizes.

This leads me to ask Jamie Greene where he is going to put these extra classes? Are councils expected to look again at their schools’ estates and build new extensions on them? Given that most schools do not have any spare space, unless of course Mr Greene is suggesting they should build over their sports facilities, where would these extensions go? More importantly, even if schools did have spare space, who would be paying for all this extra building work, especially as many councils are still working under the huge financial burden imposed on them by PPP finance deals imposed on them by the coalition?

Tom Tracey

Greenock

I FIND myself very much in agreement with your correspondents in Thursday’s National Alastair Naughten of Aberdeen and Yes Moffat regarding our ability to organise another referendum for independence.

“It is time to cut the London regime out of the equation altogether” – music to my ears! I am long past the stage of “Setting the heather on fire” or, of being a “loose cannon”, I am indeed an SNP member and activist of many years’ standing.

It does not sit easily with me however to be treated like some unruly adolescent and be told “Now is not the time” or to have a throwaway comment from a conversation in 2014 constantly used against us like a form of Holy writ. What about being found dead in a ditch somewhere? All this from the most appallingly unfit, inept group of second rater’s to hold Westminster office in my seven and a half decades of life.

I can feel quite unwell when we are put in the position of having to grovel to these charlatans for PERMISSION to ask for PERMISSION to have a referendum for the independence of my own country! A friend of mine from Stirling used to say that such a situation “made him greet wi’ temper”

Geography has put us on the same island and post independence it would be nice to think that we could exist in a state of mutual respect. I sincerely hope that the upper regions of the SNP are burning the midnight oil over what solid steps are to be taken on regaining our independence in the face of the lies, contempt, and total disregard for the dignity, and legal aspirations of an independent Scotland.

Colin R Stevenson

Strachur, Argyll

THO the Scotch langage disna wun as mukkil siller frae the guberment as the Gaelic, A wuid til nou aye ettilt nivver ti say onie ill about thon tung. Hit is a sair gunk ti rede in yer pistils at a whein wichts o the Erse tung (the auld Scots nemm o Gaelic) consither Scots isna a leid. Baith the Scots an Gaelic bene dang doun bi Inglish fur thrie eirs hunner in eddicautioun, polateiks an dailie day speik sae aiblins we suidna lichtliefie the ither. Can A juist mynd ma Gaelic kith an kin at thair langage wi its allya the Celtic kirk duin the verra samen doun dangin ti the Pecht leid an at the tung o the Weirs o Independanss wes the Scots o the gryte maks “The Wallace” an “The Bruce”.

The bit wryte in The National anent Beethoven mynds me at he endytit monie vawriautiouns o the tuin “Hey Tuttie Tattie” itherwyss kent as “The Mairch o the Scotch Sojers” ir “Scots Wha Hae”. Thur bits o muisik insense intil me at this maun be the melodie o wir Naitiounall Anthem wi hits kenspekkil Scotch snap an siccar swash. A’m gey sairie ti say at Burns’ wirds becom mair orra an auld farrant bi the day. Mibbies ane o wir braw Gaelic bards wul can dyte uz nyow yins.

THOUGH the Scottish language does not gain as much finance from the Government as Gaelic, I would till now not intentionally have said anything negative about that tongue. It is a painful disappointment to read in your letters that a few proponents of the Erse tongue (the old Scots name of Gaelic) consider Scots is not a language. Both Scots and Gaelic have been suppressed for 300 years in education, politics and daily speech so perhaps they should not disparage each other. May I remind my Gaelic relatives and neighbours that their language in alliance with the Celtic church carried out the very same suppression of the Pict tongue and the language of the Wars of Independence was the Scots of the great poems The Bruce and The Wallace.

The piece in The National about Beethoven reminds me that he composed many variations of the tune Hey Tuttie Tattie otherwise known as The March of the Scottish Soldiers or Scots Wha Hae. These musical pieces convince me that this must be the melody of our National Anthem with its easily recognisable Scotch snap and firm and steady tempo. I am very sad to say that the words of Burns are becoming more superfluous and politically incorrect by the day. Perhaps one of our fine Gaelic poets can write us new ones.

Iain WD Forde

Scotlandwell

WHY do pro-Unionists think that the continual ‘SNP bad’ is effective anti-independence propaganda when it is surely clear to everyone that, in an independent Scotland, the party, having successfully achieved its goal, will split into more specific political factions?

Subsequent elections will allow the Scots, as in all self-governing democracies, to choose their representatives from a wide range of parties, new and existing.

Brian Cairnduff

Cavalaire sur Mer, France