INSTEAD of directing spiteful invectives at the crushing electoral SNP victory, (and by association at the electorate) the Toxic Tories and the Tartan Tory Labour party should examine their unionist fanaticism and admit that their disastrous performance shows once and for all that they really are now yesterday’s parties.

For a century at least the Tories have purported to be the party of the business community. Yet after all this eye-watering time business communities all over the UK are still mired in incredible red tape and punitive taxation.

The Labour Party, founded on the democratic principles of working class socialism, now has a leader with a clenched fist determination to remove choice from the electorate over the referendum. Kier Hardie must be spinning in his grave. Yet both these parties are utterly convinced that it is the electorate that is out of step with them and not the other way round.

Indeed they told the electorate absolutely nothing in their broadcasts and leaflets, launching instead into a constant mantra about how their whole raison d’etre is merely to stop the SNP. They merely idealised – but not a single word about implementation.

This, quite undemocratically infers that Scotland must never be allowed to decide to go to war: must not be allowed a referendum on independence no matter the pressure on the First Minister by her bosses, the people and in consequence must never be allowed to join the EU. And that no matter how Scotland votes, it will always only get the government another country votes for.

Therefore, because of their rejection at the polls and living in denial, we can be assured that over the next five years this pair and their supporters will launch one blistering attack after another. And they will bring in others like president Biden and the Pope for example, similar to last time .Our voice must be louder, stronger and far more vociferous against the deluge of extremism coming our way.

Whilst that is ongoing, I hope over the next five years our First Minister will if possible have a state of the nation address stating clearly what the electorate can expect in an independent Scotland. They must be told for example that: pension levels will remain the same. Unemployment benefits will not lessen. Whatever currency is used its value will not be less. Scotland’s Nato membership will not be cancelled should we remove Trident and renege on our commitment to the security of the West by shifting responsibility onto another Nato country. Would an independent Scotland be required by law to pay back its share of the £2 trillion UK national debt? By virtue of the same law, would Scotland be entitled to the same percentage of UK assets since its taxes helped create them? Including and most vitally, military assets like frigates, warships, tanks, submarines planes, etc?

This last push over the next five years is the most crucial one of all. It should also be our most determined.

Robert Gritton

via email

“JABS, jabs, jabs, to jobs, jobs, jobs.” What playground nonsense is Johnson going on about now? I’ve never heard such jabberwocky rubbish spoken in a parliament, noted more for its deceit and lies than its integrity.

It’s becoming an Alice in Wonderland environment full of bob-a-job issues and problems than anything of national importance.

And where is Rishi Sunak these days? Does he not understand that next-to-nothing, low-paid jobs will not realise tax that might have helped with the national debt. Although I doubt any fiscal studies would help to resolve a £2 trillion black hole.

And now we have Priti Patel in trouble yet again with what has been described as the worst immigration discrimination policy seen by the United Nations High Commissioner for decades. Such is the scale of it that it risks “breaching international law”.

But then again, with Johnson lying to Hartlepool prior to its by-election in front of the television cameras, nothing is too easy as being the right dishonourable members as those sitting on the government side of the Westminster Parliament.

Alan Magnus-Bennett

Fife

TORY and Labour politicians opposed to Scottish independence have waxed lyrical over the close partnership for 300 years. It seems to be forgotten that the Act of Union in 1707 was achieved because the English Treasury vired a shedload of cash to stuff the pockets of a corrupt group of Scottish MPs led by the Duke of Queensberry who pocketed about half of the bribe money himself.

What happened then? Enforcement of English policies and laws. The vicious suppression of popular rebellion, the Dress Act 1746, the banning of the indigenous language and the ethnic cleansing of the Highlands, with families who had farmed land for generations turned out of their homes which were set on fire by British soldiers.

Starving Scots were trying to subsist from small-scale fishing on the coast of Sutherland. Mortality was high. Massive emigration to North America and the Antipodes in search of liberty denuded areas of the country of its people in favour of a wealthy landed aristocracy who put their sheep on the land. Ever

since, Scotland has ever since been at the mercy of the English voter.

The victory of the independence vote giving the SNP a fourth term in the Holyrood election makes the mandate clear.

Michael Gove in an interview with Sophy Ridge in introducing the idea of the Westminster government dealing directly with local authorities said they would “see how we can use the broad shoulders of the UK Treasury”.

Let us hope that a 21st-century poet will not feel the need to write about “a parcel of rogues” again.

T Scott Wallace

via email