RUTH Davidson has condemned Alex Salmond for having a show on Russia Today. As with all her prognostications, the hypocrisy is simply breathtaking. In 2014 David Cameron begged Putin to help stop Scottish independence. At this time Davidson shared a platform with George Galloway. She did this at the Hydro to argue against Scottish independence. Galloway, at this time, was employed by Russia Today with his own show.

In 2008 the then shadow chancellor George Osborne held five meetings with Russian oligarch and Putin crony Oleg Deripaska.

In 2014 a game of tennis with Boris Johnson and David Cameron was auctioned off to raise £160,000 for Tory coffers. It was bought by Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of Vladimir Chernukhin, who was Russia’s deputy finance minister during Putin’s first term in office. The Tories then refused to hand the money back. They said there was nothing improper about it.

The Tories also had links with a lobbying firm representing high-profile Russian clients that donated a quarter of its annual profits to help the Tories win the 2015 General Election.

New Century Media gave the Tories £85,000 in the months leading up to the 2010 General Election, despite the company only making £267,000 in profits for the same financial year. They represented several Russian oligarchs.

In April of last year Formula One magnate Gerard Lopez gave the Tories £400,000. He is on the board of Rise Capital which has done deals for infrastructure projects worth billions in Russia. Listed as partners in the deals were three Russian banks subject to sanctions.

Ruth Davidson is an intellectual pygmy. She is incapable of having any principled position on anything.
Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

WELL done to Alex Salmond on getting his own show on Russia Today, it will provide an excellent opportunity to help push the independence message across the airwaves. I know the usual Unionist mob will moan about this being a Kremlin-backed TV station but is it any worse than the drivel we get force-fed from the UK Government-funded BBC?

For example, BBC Radio Scotland’s Call Kaye show seems to twist every issue into an SNP-bad story, or the biased interviews on Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland where SNP representatives are harried and interrupted while Unionist politicians are allowed to drone on about anything they fancy without interruption.

And if broadcast media in Scotland is bad (and Dr John Robertson and Inform Scotland have proven this time after time) then the press is probably worse. Yet I don’t recall the complaints from the Britnats on this? Salmond has stated he will have full editorial control over his show and I for one will be watching it.
Councillor Kenny MacLaren
Paisley

IT is ironic that the resignation of Mark McDonald MSP as a Scottish Government minister highlights the way the SNP treat female politicians compared to their male counterparts. While McDonald was allowed to decide his own fate after complaints were made against him, the same principle was not applied to Michelle Thomson, the former SNP MP who was hounded by the press despite no charges against her. Ms Thomson was suspended from the SNP, was not allowed to stand at the last General Election, and effectively lost her livelihood.

In contrast, McDonald has not even been suspended. The comments from the First Minister were completely at odds to how she treated Ms Thomson – so you have to question why she supports an errant MSP but ignores an innocent MP? Has the SNP now split into cliques where, depending on which side you are on, you will be suspended and abandoned by the party or your failings will be ignored?
Bernadette Kelly
Glasgow

IT’S World Diabetes Day on November 14, and for anyone who has just been diagnosed, I wanted to let them know it doesn’t mean you should wrap up in cotton wool.

I was diagnosed 20 years ago and throughout my teens I would inject insulin four or five times a day and test my blood glucose with finger pricks another four times a day. I wake in the night when my blood glucose level needs attention, monitor my glucose levels as much as 13 times a day and weigh nearly everything I eat to work out the carbohydrate content so that I can inject insulin accordingly. Yet, oddly enough, I consider myself lucky.

You might think that having this condition may seem a burden, but it hasn’t ever held me back. I’ve held down jobs, travelled the world and due to technological advancements, managing my type 1 diabetes with a flash glucose sensor and an insulin pump – technology only available because of medical research – has enabled me to become a healthy mum of two children.

I believe that a cure is within reach, which is why I work as a fundraiser – not for myself, but for children who have been diagnosed. I want them to have a “normal” childhood where they can go to birthday parties and eat cake, or have sleepovers at friends’ houses with midnight feasts, without the fears of high blood glucose levels and the necessity of carb counting.

Constant thinking, adjusting, calculating, measuring, worrying and stress is a part of life for many people with type 1 diabetes, but with a cure, it will be all be gone.
Holly Davies
Fundraiser, JDRF