I WAS very interested in the article by Veterans for Independence, “Being in the military doesn’t make you pro-Union (July 16).

Being fairly bored over the past few months I have taken to having a look at the profiles of some of those who seem to spend their waking hours criticising the SNP and/or the Scottish Government online, mainly via Facebook.

Some accounts are clearly fake, with no posts of their own and no or very few friends or photos, while others have pictures of Union flags and the entrance gates of a certain football club in the west end of Glasgow. Many seem to host an unnatural number of pictures of Wee Jimmy Krankie. These are people I suspect the message of the independence movement will probably never reach.

READ MORE: This is why being in the military doesn’t make you pro-Union

I have noticed a trend in those I could say are in a slightly less hostile frame of mind but still opposed to the idea of independence. They are often ex-military and often (but not always) retired. They usually have regimental badges in their photo albums.

I don’t usually post anything political online as I don’t have the time or inclination to debate with many of the people who inhabit that virtual world, however I did yesterday. I was contrasting the Covid death rate between Scotland and England.

I got a reply from young woman who got her figures very wrong and thought the massive difference was simply down to the population density in England’s large cities. We exchanged a few comments, we parted without angry words and with her a little wiser. I looked at her profile and it seems she is in the Royal Navy.

I suppose my point in all that this is there is a small but significant veteran audience whose opinions may be altered with the right message. My late father served in the last few years of World War Two and nearly made it to Erskine Hospital just before he passed away. On the subject of Erskine, which I have visited a couple of times, it seems difficult to find a figure on the overall number of veteran’s charities but Sky News recently put the figure at more than 1500.

The UK Government recruits, trains, equips and sends young folk off to war, and in many cases seems to conveniently forget about them, leaving the third sector to try to look after them.

Perhaps Veterans for Independence and the wider independence movement need a rather more aggressive message, for example: “An independent Scotland will look after them as well as remember them,” which may have more appeal to veterans.

Brian Lawson
Paisley

I HAVE just witnessed John Lamont, Tory MP for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, stand up in Westminster and deliver the most appallingly speech related to an amendment raised by the SNP to extend the Brexit negotiations beyond December 2020.

This speech contained prevarication, comments verging on racist, anti-SNP rhetoric and attack after attack on our independence aspirations, and was full of “too poor, too wee, too stupid”-type comments.

It was an out-of-control, rabid delivery which belittled our nation of Scotland and firmly reinforced the Tories’ view that we should remain a subject nation.

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It did not in any way address the amendment laid before the Westminster parliament with reasoned argument; he simply used his platform to attack the SNP.

This performance merely reinforced a fact which I constantly raise, that there is no such thing as a “Scottish Tory”. Their only aim is to decry our nation and fail to recognise that the Scottish voters overwhelmingly at every recent election have voted the SNP into government.

Even at Westminster the SNP has 48 MPs and the Tories six. Even with these figures they simply do not recognise they are a fringe party in Scotland.

From Lamont’s point of view, here is an MP whose majority was halved in a Tory stronghold full of tactical voters, yet the SNP polled nearly 40% of the vote in 2019. He does not represent them in any shape or form. So much for democracy.

I do hope the people of Scotland watched this spectacle and saw in action the type of British nationalist Tory whose only concern is pursuing the agenda of his right-wing masters at Westminster and has nothing positive to offer this Scottish constituency.

Dan Wood
Kirriemuir

DURING Wednesday’s PMQs, while answering questions on the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Boris Johnson managed to shoehorn in a cringeworthy joke about briefs and Calvin Klein. Given the terrible death toll in Britain from this virus, the joke was in appalling bad taste.

However from a Scottish independence perspective this blundering idiot is the Christmas gift that keeps on giving. Jackson Carlaw and the Scottish Tory branch office know this, and tremble.

Terry Keegans
Beith, North Ayrshire