Letters I: Are Big Ben bongs more important than Brexit?

We have David Davis’s “constructive ambiguity”, Her Majesty’s government has not even begun to address serious internal issues for post-Brexit like support for agriculture and other areas currently in receipt of EU funding, yet Big Ben chimes are of top importance to the Leavers.

If this nonsense continues, the next act will be encouraging the royal touch to cure leprosy!

John Edgar, Stewarton

DAVID Davis and his “constructive ambiguity” Brexit policy has been roundly condemned as an embarrassment by John Edgar (Letters, August 17).

But all is not doom and gloom. Surely we can take some positives – even from a Brexit procedure that is rapidly descending into farce.

Looking on the bright side, it provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a new, topical version of Alice in Wonderland guaranteed to bring the house down at the festival.

James Stevenson, Auchterarder

I HAVE little doubt that a thoroughly prepared campaign, financed by London against Scotland, was fought at the recent “surprise” General Election. At my home in Argyll and Bute I received, by post, thirteen leaflets from the Liberal Democrats. Four of those leaflets were addressed to me or to my wife and those will have attracted full second class postal charge. The other nine will have been delivered on the Royal Mail “Door to Door” service which, depending on numbers delivered in areas usually comes in at about 5p or 6p per delivery. Delivery therefore to my home of LibDem propaganda will have cost around £3 in postage plus the actual cost of the glossy printed leaflets. This happened to thousands of homes in many parts of this constituency. The costs may have run to six figures. The Liberal Democrats in Scotland do not have two pennies to rub together and to further deepen the mystery there is absolutely no evidence of any coherent Liberal Democrat organisation in Argyll and Bute.

What is more controversial is that although only four of the leaflets (most of which were printed in England) mentioned the Liberal Democrat candidate they all arrived in a three-week period of that General Election so it would be utterly disingenuous to claim that there was no intention of affecting the General Election result, especially as most of them screeched about no second independence election. But they will not be included in the General Election expenses return.

I understand that in some Tory target seats similarly huge bundles of Tory leaflets were delivered This sort of behaviour brings politics into disrepute and is completely dishonest. It also means that London money is funding a conspiracy against Scottish democracy.

Dave McEwan, Hill Sandbank, Argyll

THE issue of air pollution, particularly in large towns and cities, has been raised frequently in recent times. I agree with your correspondent Andrew McCracken that diesel vehicles, especially buses, are the major cause (Letters, August 19).

While he supports more trams, I wonder if anyone has thought about using trolleybuses? Just like trams, they have the advantage of drawing power from overhead wires. But they use ordinary wheels and tyres, so don’t need rails. This should make trolleybuses quicker and easier to install, with savings in cost and congestion during the work.

There is also the safety factor – no tram rails to trap bicycle wheels and injure cyclists.

An investigation into the environmental benefits and subsequent development of modern trolleybuses could be something supported by the new Scottish Green Investment Bank suggested by Jon Southerington, also in Saturday’s letters.

Shirley Robins, Dunoon

IN 1960s Kintyre, one of my father’s favourite statements was that “We’re a’ lairds noo!” Death duties had forced the Duke of Argyll to sell all of his Kintyre estates and the “peasants” had become landowners. As a teenager, I shared a school with almost 100 per cent of the children of Kintyre whether their parents were millionaires or paupers. Respect for all was the name of the game.

And so it was when I moved to live in one of the world’s poorest countries, Eritrea in north-east Africa, where the distribution of income was remarkably equal and wretched underclasses were not to be found – unlike my next place of residence, India where the treatment of the poor is an obscenity.

And now I live in Glasgow, the cultural and economic heart of Scotland where retail therapy is thriving and where many are indeed prosperous lairds. However, Glasgow is not my father’s Kintyre or socialist Eritrea. It is like the Indian obscenity.

I spent yesterday in one part of the city. The main street still has its Carnegie Library and there are a good range of shops tucked below scruffy Victorian red-sandstone tenements. Immediately to the west of the main street are a dozen hectares of wasteland. The cracked floors of long-closed factories give a hint of the past but the destitution screams about the present. According to the city map, to the east of the centre lies one of Glasgow’s famous parks, but instead of a dear green place there is a great mass of weeds and rubbish.

The glaring inequalities are a national disgrace and an indictment of the city councils of the past. I look forward to urgent reformation from the new council.

Alex Hamilton, Glasgow

SO Nicola Sturgeon wishes she could rename the Scottish National Party (Sturgeon I would change SNP’s name if it were possible, The National, August 19). Would she also wish to rename the National Health Service or the National Trust for Scotland? How about the Scottish National Portrait Gallery or the Cairngorm National Park?

My dictionary defines “national” as “of or serving a nation as a whole”. That sounds pretty good to me.

Neil Caple Aboyne NATIONALISM just means politicising our national identity which is a legitimate thing to do when our identity has been denied, ridiculed or systematically repressed. The level of denial, ridicule and repression is directly proportional to the chances of a successful Yes vote.

Neil Munro via thenational.scot