THE BBC’s Good Morning Scotland on Sunday morning allowed ex-MSP Struan Stevenson, CEO of Scottish Business, to spout on about pay rises, strikes and the return to the 1970s. He stated that the current Health Secretary Humza Yousaf was not correct when he said that there was no more money to increase the pay offers.

Stevenson stated that the £20 million set aside for the 2023 independence referendum is available, and also the £1.5m used on administrators building the post-indy Scotland.

Now, I don’t know about you but I would have expected a CEO would have a better command of arithmetic and finance than demonstrated by Stevenson.

It must be obvious to everyone that £20m spread across the Scottish health sector workers – some 165,000 covered in this dispute – will result in a “huge bonus” of £10 per month before tax. That’s three or four coffees per month.

When people are trying to work together to come to some agreement, specious comments that Stevenson has "vomited" onto the airwaves, are at best unhelpful, at worst detrimental.

Stevenson complained that businesses in Scotland had suffered hugely during the last few years under Covid and other known issues.

Doesn’t he understand how his intervention is just so wrong by sending out misinformation?

I suspect he does, and is not really interested in resolving the disputes, but will simply poke a stick at the independence movement.

Alistair Ballantyne

Birkhill, Angus

Gillian Mackay’s recent article on Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement was revealing in terms of Hunt’s real Westminster Tory background, even going as far back as supporting the Osborne and Cameron years of Tory policies, not forgetting Cameron’s Brexit disaster. The reference to the Truss/Kwarteng destructive short-lived leadership should not be forgotten either, playing a huge part in the financial collapse the UK is now undergoing.

Scotland’s budget is suffering an undeserved £1.7 billion shortfall as a result of that former leadership, along with the mishandling by the intervening Brexit governments.

Mackay says the Tories cannot be trusted with our economy. They cannot be trusted with any economy as shown over the last 12 years. Yes, it’s time the Scottish Government, Greens included, started making noises as to the independence mandates it has been given.

READ MORE: Wee Ginger Dug: The term 'Unionist' should be expunged from discourse

However, I for one I understand that the country has to be governed by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and her government. But also, let’s hear what it has to say about the kind of country we can look forward to. What kind of economy, what about law and order, how will the country be protected, what about pensions (10.1% increase is still never enough), and of course, currency?

Now we have more time in which to continue the independence campaign, our government has the space in which to spell out all of the above and more, in order to convince the population majority necessary for a Yes vote for Scotland’s independence.

Alan Magnus-Bennett

Fife

According to the First Minister, the recent Supreme Court judgment has galvanised the Yes movement.

Addressing the SNP’s annual St Andrew’s Day dinner in Glasgow on Friday night, the First Minister told SNP members that “thousands took to the streets because the myth that the UK is a voluntary Union was shattered”.

I like many others took to the streets (in Glasgow) but this was clearly an initiative led by Lesley Riddoch and well-advertised by The National. Sadly the First Minister or the SNP made no initial efforts to organise any events to mark this important decision. I understand her attendance at the Edinburgh event was confirmed only a relatively short time before the actual event.

I will be very interested to see if in future the First Minister attends many other events organised by the now apparently galvanised Yes movement.

Well done Lesley Riddoch and The National – it would not have happened without you both.

Glenda Burns

Glasgow

As someone who has no respect for anyone who accepts a “peerage” and sits in the unelected House of “Lords”, I find it hard to accept being told not to question the deliberations of the five entitled super-lawyers who gave their biased verdicts on whether a Scottish independence referendum would be legal.

I am not aware of one thing and need an answer from a proper historian: Was the “Supreme Court” created as part of the Act of Union? My suspicion is that it came into being much later and for that reason no-one calling themselves Lord or Lady and puffing themselves up to sitsitting in the “Supreme Court”, should have the right to supreme it, or lord it, over any such decisions that are within the provenance of that Act.

Until we can rid Scotland of such outdated, inegalitarian and establishment institutions, true democracy can never exist.

Keith MacLeod

West Lothian

Your depiction on page seven of Wednesday’s National of a lawyer strangling a defenceless wig in advance of the announcement of the Supreme Court’s ruling poses the question of whether the legal profession is symbolically committing “harakiri”.

Has this become the preferred method by lawyers of signifying dissent and dissatisfaction with the predicted outcome of the decision by the Supreme Court?

If this is going to become an accepted (if rather muted) method of signifying protest by lawyers, there should be, as in Japan, a prescribed ritual accompanying the event.

It should be, as in olden times, done in a public ceremony and the capital offence formally announced prior to sentence being carried out.

Dr Lindsay Neil

Selkirk