I LEFT England eight months after the EU referendum as I knew it would be a catastrophic disaster for the UK. I also did not want to live with the increasing xenophobia and English nationalism which is truly awful.
Many English people are still living under the delusion that they are going to be absolutely fine – to quote Johnson “things are going to be wonderful” – they have the wartime spirit and all the rest of the nonsense.
READ MORE: SNP MP Drew Hendry suspended from Commons during Internal Market Bill debate
The ignorance in many quarters is astounding. Many say they don’t want to be governed by the Europeans, not realising that most of the laws come from Westminster, which had a veto over European legislation. When I confronted my own brother-in-law, who lives in the West Midlands, and said food prices will soar and we will not have enough fresh fruit and vegetables coming through from Europe, he replied that we can grow our own peaches and bananas!!
What a relief to live in a tolerant, enlightened country now. England is going to have a massive rude awakening in the next few weeks and months and it is entirely of their own making and their stupidity by believing the lies of Westminster, a lie written on the side of a bus, and the right-wing media.
Susan Rowberry
Duns
WHETHER it’s a no deal or a pathetic face-saving deal, all SNP MPs should withdraw from the Westminster cesspit on January 1.
Rov Laine
via thenational.scot
NOT everything that comes through the letterbox gets read, but the 2020 Report by the LibDems seemed worthy of attention, given their boast of the “third way for Scotland”.
More than 100 years ago the Liberal Party last influenced effectively the lives of citizens of the UK. At Westminster, in 2010, the re-christened LibDems emerged as coalition collaborators with the Conservative party of David Cameron, earning a Deputy Prime Ministership for the leader, Nick Clegg, his price being his abandoning free university education.
The legacy of that administration inter alia included many thousands of pounds of student debt, prescription charges, eye test fees etc applicable in England.
Quickly discarded by the Conservatives in 2015, the LibDems are the party of collusion, forever awaiting an outcome of any minority seeking help for a price. They are not a party of government, which an overambitious and unrealistic braggart of a leader discovered to her cost in 2019, when a substantial Westminster majority was won by the Conservatives, and her own seat by the SNP.
1999 saw the Scottish Government established at Holyrood, a coalition between Labour and the LibDems, with a deputy First Ministership for Jim Wallace, repeated in 2003. It was significant that upon the untimely death of Donald Dewar and also when a Labour First Minister resigned, it was another Labour MSP, not the LibDem deputy, who stepped up. The LibDem party has since 2007 played no part in the effective government of Scotland.
Their “third way” is, in a few meaningless phrases, carefully ill-defined. The oft-used phrase “be careful what you vote for” is good advice for all of Scotland.
John Hamilton
Bearsden
THERE are several strata in The National: the erupting pumice of hot news, the slow lava of opinion and the cool bedrock of culture. This is to explain why I had not read Alan Riach’s piece of December 7 until yesterday. Whenever Alan Riach writes, Goldsmith comes to mind: “That one small head could carry all he knew.” I wonder if he could manage to squeeze in one or two more scraps about Scots.
Firstly he mentions Tam o’ Shanter. The apostrophe is an apologetic one suggesting that “o” is the English “of” mispronounced and not a word in its own right. These polite apostrophes were common in Burns’s time but by the period of The Scots Style Sheet in 1947 were considered unnecessary. Other examples are he’rt and hissel’, now hert and hissell.
READ MORE: Alan Riach: There are differences between language, speech and the sound of music
Later Alan Riach writes about the phonetics of Scots mentioning the sound of the letter “j” being “jey”. This unearths another related anomaly. In the New Testament, Lorimer uses “ey” meaning “yes”. In this he is in line with MacDiarmid’s “oeil” rendition. So in Scots “ey” means “yes” and “aye” means always. In English “aye” means “yes” as in “the ayes have it.”
Thus when placards appear saying “Vote Aye” thinking that it is Scots, this is a solecism. In Scots it should be “ay” or better still “ey”.
Susan Forde
Scotlandwell
SHOULD all grants and benefits to Aberdeen be redistributed across to the Northern and Western Isles? Let them join with NHS England (Aberdeen Council votes to bypass Holyrood and ask UK Government for funds, thenational.scot, December 16).
READ MORE: Aberdeen Council votes to bypass Holyrood and ask UK Government for funds
Still, there is a Scottish election next May – pity it is not council elections, because I believe the Tory/Labour cabal would be soundly defeated.
Local folk should not be penalised by the actions of extremists.
Douglas Blair
via thenational.scot
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