THE so-called Supreme Court ruling that Holyrood cannot have an independence referendum is an abomination. It has rightly been met with contempt and anger by millions of Scots.

It is a shameful landmark in the destruction of democratic rights. It leaves the United Kingdom as a legal, moral and politically bankrupt entity.

This disastrous decision will stand alongside the Dred Scott case in its infamy. This was when the US Supreme Court ruled that even freed descendants of slaves had no rights the white man was required to respect. Nor could they be citizens.

There is no doubt that Scotland now is a colony. Democracy exists here in name only. To pretend otherwise is a filthy lie.

The ruling should be the end of the “constitutional” approach pursued by the SNP. This has been a disaster. Reasserting Scotland’s ancient right to independence will require a head-on collision with the Westminster cesspit.

What is needed is a mass campaign of civil disobedience similar to that taken against the poll tax. The Westminster colonial overlords need to fear the consequences if they hold on to Scotland.

SNP MPs should disrupt the illegitimate proceedings at Westminster. The other course of action is that Holyrood is collapsed, and a fresh election called on a single issue of independence.

Then independence should be declared unilaterally.

The right of nations to secede is enshrined in international law. This trumps domestic law. This was the position of the UK when Kosovo left Serbia. The same applies to Scotland. This will not happen with the current SNP leadership in place.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

IT is clear that the decision by the (so-called ) Supreme Court now turns attention to the case put by Bruce Moglia in Tuesday’s Long Letter.

I fully agree with his proposal, and now is the time to have a Scottish Court – for Scottish Law was guaranteed after the Union – to rule on the (many) breaches which have been perpetrated in the Treaty of Union between England and Scotland.

Such an investigation would highlight the many failures over the years which have been imposed on Scotland. As an international treaty it can then be voted on again. If Westminster refuses to accept the result it will be shown to the world as hypocritical, which we know it is.

I cannot understand why the SNP hasn’t followed this route.

(As an aside I do not acknowledge nor do I recall being asked to vote on the formation of the Supreme Court. By approaching it, the Scottish Government has given it a position it ill deserves.)

Paul Gillon
Leven, Fife

I WOULD consider the definition of the next General Election in Scotland as a de facto referendum as a mistake. As we vote in a representative democracy with a first-past-the-post system, the fact that the SNP reach a majority of Scottish MPs must be the only criteria for the triggering of negotiations of a new relationship to England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

There is no merit in looking at the vote share to determine a mandate; the mandate is the number of MPs – even Margaret Thatcher recognised that the number of votes is irrelevant as the fact of a representative democracy stands. The Westminster Parliament does not recognise vote share as an indicator of legitimacy so neither should the Scottish Government.

I notice that the mainstream media is already pushing hard to make the vote share the deciding factor, and we have inadvertently given them the levers to do so. We must force the issue on the type of election in which we are partaking and reiterate the way the result will be defined.

David Neilson
Dumfries

THE Union by consensus is dead.

The Union, for all, is over.

The underscoring that the politics of one part outweighs the rest is now accepted as the normal.

No matter how you word the Supreme Court judgment, it has cleared away the last vestiges of Unionist bile about how we are all in this together.

It really is now a case no matter how the people of Scotland vote, we will always be under the thumb of whoever the English electorate elect to Downing Street.

So going around the various indy groups, the stand-out Twitter comment has to be from Salmond, who instead of launching an attack on the Downing Street government launched it on the Scottish Government. Time, I think, to remind that failure that he and his fundamentalists have been rejected at all opportunities and his turncoat MPs are far too scared to seek election on a fundamentalist ticket.

In the real world, the Scottish Government is considering its next move, but be in no doubt that this is not the end of the independence campaign.

Cliff Purvis
via email