CAN someone please explain the strategic logic behind telling the world that if Plan A is rejected, we will do this instead? Strategic planning in a competitive environment means keeping your plans private until they are put into action. Telling everyone our Plan B means that defences and counter-arguments can be prepared by the enemy. Demanding that we tell them what we are going to do completely undermines our chances of success. Or are those publicly clamouring for Plans B, C etc actually doing the Unionists’ work for them, however well-intentioned and frustrated they may be?

Nick Cole
Meigle, Perthshire

READ MORE: SNP should set a date and publicly endorse Plan B of an electoral route

IN reply to I Cooney (Letters, Dec 8), if Johnson wants to limit voting to holders of photo identity, then most voting-age people will have at least a bus pass, driving licence, passport, student identity card. That covers age groups from 16 to till death do us part. Can’t be too many outwith those categories.

However, where there is, democracy has been denied, which is why devolved governments must fight this absurd attempt to deny people the right to vote.

Scotland and Wales can join forces sensibly on affecting issues emanating from Westminster. It’s time Northern Ireland was invited, particularly on this affecting issue.

Alan Magnus-Bennett
Fife

IN all the recent – fully justified, in my view – furore about the census for schoolchildren, one relevant aspect seems to have been overlooked.

If these questions were to be asked of a child online by an adult, would the police not immediately have to investigate what could be a criminal offence of grooming or even paedophilia against an under-age child? That this questionnaire is promoted by government does not alter the fact that a positive answer to some of the questions could indicate that a criminal offence had been committed by someone.

READ MORE: Survey of Scots teens' sexual experiences to go ahead despite controversy, FM says

Quite apart from that, children in the age group concerned have not yet fully developed the mental capacity to analyse, reflect and make judgments on adult matters. Instead, they are likely to react instinctively, in the belief that the behaviours under discussion are normal adult ones, of which they are expected to have experience. They will either feel that they should have been indulging in them and resolve to rectify that omission, or be left feeling that somehow they are failing in the growing-up stakes.

With my experience as a mother, grandmother and teacher, I am horrified at the stupidity of this whole proposal and its possible consequences of increased child mental health problems. Is there really someone in Holyrood so fixated on the subject of sex? Perhaps that is who needs investigation for attitudes that may well put underage children at risk.

Scrap this ridiculous, harmful proposal now!

L McGregor
Falkirk

ON November 17 I received a letter from the NHS, with instructions to attend a Covid booster clinic on November 11!

It is December 9 as I write, and there has been no further communication of any kind and certainly no apology!

Being fortunate enough to escape the hardships visited upon your contributor George M Mitchell of Dunblane (so very well described in his Dec 9 letter), I was able to log on to the Scottish NHS website and trawl through the copious informations presented there, and hopped about from link to link without success of any kind.

READ MORE: Scots urged to cancel Christmas parties by Public Health Scotland

A list of the regions sites giving main and booster jags enabled me to visit each one in turn, getting further and further away from where I live, but each and every site, without exception, reported that there were no appointment slots available, ever!

They have provided me with an 0800 number that I will try today, but I’ve been here before!

It took me a week to get my Covid jag history because at every turn they asked me for the reference number of the letter inviting me for that jag, but as I had never received a letter – I had only ever been advised by phone when to go to the surgery – they were unable to help me.

We now approach a month since my booster was scheduled, with no apology, no alternative date, no communication.

I believe that our Scottish NHS is the best in the world and this complete guddle demonstrates, to me at least, the intense pressure these folk are working under.

I am, like George, in my eighties, extremely vulnerable but patient.

Christopher Bruce
Taynuilt

BORIS Johnson has announced that ministers and officials will not be going to the winter Olympics. However, athletes are still allowed to participate, so our European gold medal-winning curlers can be supported by us all in February. Just think of all the money being saved by stopping these unnecessary people from going on a freebie.

Edith Davidson
via email