HOW can any measure taken by the Scottish Government, or the Yes campaign generally, possibly be a step back if it should fail? Shouldn’t we be attempting anything we can, short of violence, to win our democratic right to have our say about our right to self-rule?

For me, Sturgeon’s strategy of failing to deploy tactics doesn’t sit well. It makes me feel like an impotent child seeking permission from a stern parent knowing refusal is certain.

Scotland is a proud nation in its own historical right. Irrespective of the dirty and undemocratic deal in 1707 to form alliance with England, our rights as a nation are undeniable.

READ MORE: Poll reveals majority of Scots back indyref2 legal battle with UK

Leaving the UK is a legitimate desire and it is our fundamental democratic right to exercise our national rights as and when we choose, unfettered by another country’s contrary vested interest.

Sturgeon seems to be sitting it out, for no known reason, apparently stricken by temerity when what our leadership needs is the same boldness and drive of those marching and campaigning at the rallies. Isn’t it incredible that a response to Johnson’s refusal appears not to have been sent, which should have highlighted how the refusal breaches ever tenet of the UK’s claim of democracy, and insisting that the Section 30 order be implemented or the matter goes to the national and international courts?

It’ll never be in Westminster’s interest for Scotland to depart the UK. We need to understand this and begin the political campaign to win back our rights. And meekly asking the PM to chuck us a crumb from his table doesn’t cut it.

There are many campaigning options. Not all of them may be successful, but even in failure each in turn, right up to withdrawing from involvement at Westminster, would build the constitutional crisis necessary to bring about the referendum, because without that the referendum will likely never happen.

Isn’t it time to sound the clapperboard and declare ACTION?

Jim Taylor
Edinburgh

IT’S a funny old world.

Poor people, poor because of Tory austerity; men and women on the scrap heap for generations because of Mrs Thatcher’s destruction of British industry; sons and daughters, grandchildren, of miners; all, out of despair at what Tory governments have done to them, and their antecedents, over the decades ... voted Tory.

And now we have another right-wing Tory government, a government such as we haven’t seen since Victorian times, with a majority which allows it to do what it likes, literally, as the unwritten UK constitution has caused them little constraint up to now, nor will it.

READ MORE: The creation of EVEL was a quick fix to a larger constitutional failing

And those who have voted for them, out of despair, will find despair heaped on despair, as Johnson and his henchmen sell off anything in the public sector which they have not already sold off, or destroyed, further chop the remains of our prized welfare state, heap fuel on the fires of global warming in the name of profit, whilst shovelling the proceeds into the offshore bank accounts of themselves and their friends. Bank accounts which, fortuitously, Brexit will render safe from EU regulation.

In their exclusive enclaves, and private clubs, many will be the glass raised to the naivety of those who repeatedly vote to be humiliated and impoverished, to live on a pittance because there are no jobs, or in the gig economy with no rights, their children chucked on the scrap heap, or sent to be maimed and killed in foreign conflicts for no purpose, yet continue to vote, time after time, for their oppressors and exploiters.

Did I say “funny”?

Les Mackay
Dundee