KERR Walker is absolutely right (Letters, May 22). A large segment of the Scottish farming industry – particularly in the more fertile areas of the country, where large machines and larger areas proliferate – are apparently sleepwalking into a set of conditions which, once they have arrived, will make the last Ice Age to cover Scotland look like a mild summer’s day.

I have been pointing this out to anyone who will listen ever since the 2014 referendum, when my large Yes signs were broken down and removed from my land, by persons unknown, only to be found dumped in one of my neighbour’s fields.

Until my recent “retirement”, I had spent upwind of 65 years rearing sheep on the hills of central Scotland through good times and bad. Consequently, I have seen and appreciated the amount of finance which in recent years has been pumped into Scottish farming from the EU funding programmes. Where will this come from after Brexit? Westminster? I don’t think so.

The money thus obtained may well go in the first instance to farmers, but its effect feeds right through the other local shops and businesses. In this section of Scottish countryside voters seems to be ambling along under a blue haze, thinking of times long gone when their local MP was a local Tory landowner whose family opened up their gardens to visitors at weekends and all was happy and cheerful.

In the early 1960s when he was awarded the premiership, good old Alec Douglas-Home was foisted upon us voters in Kinross and West Perthshire as the Tory candidate, but he at least had the courage to come to each and every village and climb into the back of an open truck and answer questions.

The people in charge of the Tory Party today are a very different breed, with very different ambitions and intentions, and should not be trusted to support Scottish agriculture and countryside.

Our agricultural and food industries, both land and water based, have moved on quite a bit since the 2014 referendum and the huge amount of revenue earned for Scotland must be protected post-Brexit by having unrestricted access to our existing markets and a well-thought-out support structure from our Scottish Government.

George M Mitchell
Sheriffmuir, Dunblane

A FRENCH lawyer, Julien Fouchet, wants the Brexit talks to be stopped because he says they are illegal. Thousands of expats were denied a vote and their exclusion violated established democratic principles. He doesn’t have much hope of success, because it’s all over bar the shouting, but feels the principle is worth fighting for.

Let’s look at this from a Scottish perspective. In 2014, 800,000 English residents in Scotland were allowed a vote in the independence referendum. A similar number of Scots resident in England were denied the opportunity. Let us put to one side, but not forget the hundreds of thousands of Scots elsewhere around the globe.

Any future referendum denied by a Tory or Labour government will have to be consultative or non-binding. It will be run by the Scottish Government who can change a protocol of the Section 30 agreement to widen the scope of those entitled to vote. Surely it would make sense to at least include Scots resident elsewhere in the UK?

Although consultative, if a Yes vote was obtained it would put intense political pressure on the UK Government. If May intends to retain the EU Convention on Human Rights as she has indicated, there would be further pressure from our friends in the EU and the UN wouldn’t be silent either.

Bruce Moglia
Bridge of Weir

I WONDER if George Kerevan reads The National’s letters pages. His piece yesterday (We can be pro-Europe and put Scotland first, The National, May 22) suggests he does not.

I am one of many who has explained why a supporter of independence would vote for Brexit. The EU is an authoritarian organisation, dominated by the IMF and Bundesbank, and has adopted globalisation and neoliberal economics to the detriment of many of its people, particularly in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

It is absolutely impervious to any views which challenge its orthodoxy.

Like the SNP supporter in Musselburgh I feel that the party is taking its supporters for granted by claiming that a vote for them in the General Election is a vote against Brexit.

If people of my persuasion do vote for independence this time it will not be an anti-Brexit endorsement.

Mr Kerevan claims to grasp our objections but gets bogged down in what he admits is “technical stuff” and goes on, ingenuously, to state, “We desperately need to understand their motivation”. Listen up then.

Mr Kerevan claims the SNP “want to create a nation state free of elites and whose institutions are close to those who are governed”. And “that the SNP are always ready to listen and learn. That we can always do better”.

Who is he kidding? Can he point to any small country which has influenced our masters in Brussels? Previously, Belgium was held up as one example of this but they were whipped into line after eight years of fighting the trade deal with Canada that will sweep aside the rights of so many people and companies in favour of the profits of multinational companies.

If, for its own political reasons, the EU condescends to admit an independent Scotland we, too, will be subject to this agreement and any others which the EU oligarchs decide will be in their interests. The good thing about Mr Kerevan’s article is that he doesn’t accuse pro-independence Brexiteers of rampant fascism. Perhaps that is because he has listened to the view of two politicians he respects, Stephen Maxwell and Gerry Fisher. Get out of your political bubble, Mr Kerevan, and speak to ordinary members of the public. Then convey our objections to the EU and to the SNP hierarchy.

Lovina Roe
Perth

MY former colleague Gerry Fisher is well able to conduct his own defence, but I would like to share my reasons as to why I agree with him on Scottish independence and the EU. George Kerevan is totally right to say that the “dae as yer telt”  school of SNP diplomacy does not impress. But I can answer George on the question of why EU scepticism runs deep with me. EU moves towards further enlargement and centralisation are enshrined in the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon, despite various national referenda earlier in that decade clearly telling the EU that its constituent countries did not want this.

The EU has advanced over the last decade in its centralisation agenda, yet SNP policy on the EU has stagnated. No serious attempt has been made to promote a vision of EU reform by the SNP, and successive party conferences have been denied the chance to debate the same.

Councillor Andy Doig
Renfrewshire

I’VE always been puzzled by the Scottish Parliament’s willingness to subvert our Holyrood election timings so as to follow the Westminster elections. After the 2015 UK election, our parliament again voted to extend the Holyrood term to five years and fix our next vote for 2021, after the anticipated next UK election in 2020.

As a result of the current election, ours will now take place the year before the next again UK election becomes due. If we are to be voting ahead of Westminster, why not take our election date back to the original four-year cycle, which would put it at May 2019 (a generation after the Scottish Parliament reconvened).   It would allow us the option to vote on both independence and on the national government to be charged with carrying that through in response to a referendum and whatever the heck is happening by then with the Brexit horror show. If necessary, we could market it as a referendum itself – much as the Unionist parties are, weirdly, doing with this UK election.

Donald McGregor
Edinburgh