I WONDER if your readers can help me ?

I often wonder about who or what decides the items and priorities for The News, but tonight my puzzlement plumbed new depths. The first 12 – yes twelve – minutes of the BBC 6 O’Clock News were devoted to what was portrayed as a tremendous British achievement (Major Tim Peake, the first British astronaut to visit the ISS). Union Jacks everywhere, live coverage of the astronaut’s family and friends at the launch, coverage of the excitement at the astronaut’s former primary school, etc etc.

My first thoughts were that this was the BBC just following a Government line, to promote Britishness: after all we were told that the Prime Minister had been glued to his TV for the launch. But Channel 4 News followed suit at 7pm.

I had understood that many astronauts from different countries have for years been ascending to the International Space Station, courtesy of Russian launch capability, to assist with research projects, and expand the Space Station. So why the tremendous importance of this evening’s news, the excessive prioritisation of what is a very small event, one of a continuum on the international stage, as if it was something truly, uniquely, important ?

Gordon Brown
North Kessock, Black Isle


SO the GB taxpayer has sent the first Briton Tim Peake into space.

Born in Sussex, we wish him and his fellow cosmonauts well. Imagine if our intrepid spaceman were to come from Scotia? But take heart fellow Scots, his wife Rebecca hails from Perthshire.

Sad perhaps that under the Scottish Beeb’s stewardship, Rebecca’s Scottish connection was never mentioned, although STV had the decency to acknowledge the fact.

While munching my Pittenweem fish supper, I can’t help feeling for our poor cosmonauts, tucking into toothpaste tube-and vacuum-packed nourishment 250 miles above us.

Bob Harper
Anstruther

Christmas day in the Union, and the cold bare truth is clear ...

IN this season of giving it would be appropriate for Scotland and the Scots to think about giving back to the Union instead of always taking. As Conservative MP Nick Boles so endearingly said in his Yuletide message to the Scots, if we had stupidly voted for independence “we would be entirely bankrupt and scuttling for help”.

We could start with oil. In light of the ever-declining price of oil, would now be a good time for Scotland to rid itself of the dreadful burden of North Sea oil?

From the 1970s onward Scots were beguiled into thinking, as billions in oil revenues flowed into the UK Treasury’s coffers, that this was a resource that might benefit the country should it gain independence.

Sadly we did not heed the wise words of our Better Together partners when they repeatedly predicted, as the oil price rose and rose, that this was a ‘blip’ and no wee country, specifically Scotland, could expect to base 15 per cent of its economy on such a volatile resource.

We failed to listen when respected figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility, changing their guesstimates from hour to hour, forecast the imminent demise of oil as a useful world resource.

Better, they said, to trust in the solid, tried-and-tested financial institutions of the City of London, which out of their inherent goodness, have for generations subsidised the economic wastelands out with the M25.

To be fair, we did give something back to the Union, but I don’t think they fully appreciate the contribution of Baroness Mone – ermine-fringed bras are worn by a selective few in the Lords, some of them female.

So, Scotland, as Christmas approaches let us trust in the altruism that has become the hallmark of this Conservative administration and ask the wise Chancellor to remove from us pitiable Scots the burden of North Sea oil just as he so kindly lifted the onerous weight of the profitable Royal Mail (but left the burden of the Royal Males).

Let us give thanks to Blessed St Barnett for his formula which eases all pains and afflictions when taken as part of an austerity package .

Let all rejoice at the open-handed generosity of those Three Wise Men – Iain, Duncan and Smith, who have brought gifts aplenty to the poor and the disabled, chiefly by removing from them the need to worry over where to spend their surplus benefits.

Now is the time for us to embrace the Union and Unionists and live up to the high regard in which they hold the Scots and Scotland – too wee, too poor and too stupid !

James Mills
Johnstone

I WAS a wee bit irritated by reading that a gentleman in Aberdeenshire had complained about two flagpoles, both adorned with our national flag, being erected by Trump International (Donald Trump on offensive again as flags spark row with Aberdeenshire Council, December 15).

While I would have no truck with Trump, a truly dreadful person in my opinion, I am delighted that he has decided to fly the Saltire on his property.

The complainant has described our national flags as “monstrosities” apparently. I have to wonder if he would have been so upset had the Union flag been atop the poles?

Incidentally, I do find it more than daft that, at least according to Aberdeenshire Council, planning permission is required to proudly display our standard. What a nonsense!

George Greenshields
East Kilbride

ALASTAIR Stewart (Letters, December 16) is spot on. During the Yes campaign, I and many others encountered a lot of fear and concern from pensioners who were led to believe by Better Together and the Labour Party that their pensions would be stopped immediately as a result of a Yes vote and they would be left destitute.

Despite our reassurances on the facts, the scale of dishonesty on this issue from the No Thanks campaign was incredible and it was no surprise that having the doom and gloom lies constantly fed to them resulted in them choosing to vote No. Now they know the truth but how can we encourage them to support a future Yes vote?

We have discussed this issue in depth at various Yes2 meetings and the main point seems to be getting the facts to them outwith the mainstream media such as tabloids and the BBC. Encourage them to explore the internet and social media, set up pages for them and teach them how to use these platforms, go door-to-door with printed information they can check for themselves and continue tirelessly to talk to them. These are just some of the suggestions put forward for the continuing Yes campaign to undertake.

Our pensioners deserve better than fear of poverty in their old age.

John McHarg Yes2
Dunblane

I HEAR Alistair Carmichael, the well-known Liberal liar, says he’s had a death threat. Given his proven history in matters pertaining to the truth, I would like to ask – how can we trust that he’s not telling another porkie?

Robert F Henderson
Fort William

I AM writing in relation to the disappointing absence of Gaelic from The National.

I have been a subscriber to the paper almost from the start but have become increasingly frustrated by the utter lack of Gaelic content in your pages.

I very much hope you will find a suitable means of introducing a regular Gaelic element.

Wilson McLeod
Edinburgh

FOR a Christian cherry- picking isn’t an option or shouldn’t be (See Derek Ball, Letters, The National, December 16).

For non-believers it’s simply a book. I agree men haven’t changed. We were given free will.

That’s what led to the Fall. As now, people preferred to go their own way, thinking that they knew best.

That route hasn’t got us very far, as Derek Ball seems to agree.

Catriona Grigg
Embo, Dornoch

Cameron could learn from the Austrian experience

THEY say those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. If so David Cameron should study some interesting parallels between the United Kingdom and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the once powerful state that fragmented in 1918 to produce modern Austria and Hungary, its old partner in the Dual Monarchy.

Hungary had, of course, always been very much the junior partner in that long relationship but had never entirely come to terms with that fact.

Yes, they sent representatives to the Imperial Parliament in Vienna. But inevitably the interests of Austria, much the larger country, tended to dominate, to say nothing of the international problems of an empire that at one time stretched from Russia to Mexico.

So the Hungarians became increasingly restless and eventually Imperial Austria (for by then it had become difficult to distinguish between Austria as such and the greater Empire) decided to give them back their ancient Hungarian Parliament in Budapest.

This minor sideshow, it was thought, would keep them quiet for a bit and let the Imperial Austrians get on with running the really important things, like wars, for at this stage the Austrians hadn’t grasped the fact that they were no longer a major force in the world.

The Hungarians of course continued to send their representatives to the Imperial Parliament in Vienna, while their fellow Hungarians at home got on with running Hungary.

The snag was that pretty soon the Hungarians in Vienna didn’t have anything much to do and were, not to put too fine a point on it, making themselves a bloody nuisance and generally upsetting everyone. Some of them couldn’t even speak proper German or spoke it with a ghastly provincial accent. It was all becoming increasingly awkward and difficult.

The end came when Austria misunderstood a little local difficulty in the Balkans and blundered into a catastrophic war in 1914 that destroyed half of Europe and set off a chain reaction of revolutions across the continent. Which is what resulted in the re-emergence of Austria and Hungary as independent nations. I think your readers will see the parallels.

Peter Craigie
Edinburgh

WHILE I have nothing but the utmost respect for Angry Salmond, I find myself disappointed at his lack of knowledge of fundamental comic book lore.

Surely everybody knows that “the Joker never goes to jail” (We Scots trump the US in the sexy stakes, The National, December 15) because he is in fact a permanent resident of Arkham mental asylum?

I trust we will not see a repeat of this kind of basic and profoundly unsexy error in future.

Bob Kaye
Glasgow

SURPRISED to see the estimable Elspeth King (and maybe Burns as well) getting her Covenants mixed up (Letters, The National, December 16). The ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ was a treaty signed between the Scottish and English Parliaments in 1643.

The Scots agreed to support the English in their fight against King Charles in return for the English promising to make Presbyterianism their established religion. Unsurprisingly, the English ditched that plan as soon as Charles had been defeated. It was the ‘National Covenant’, signed in Greyfriars Kirkyard in 1638, that gave the Covenanters their name and their cause.

Sandy Thomson
Cromarty

I HAVE supported and followed The National newspaper from the first edition to date, and like many others who buy this paper will continue to do so. I was delighted to read the new extended edition and look forward to enjoying the additional features. Well done to the team – your efforts are appreciated.

I have kept many articles and letters from The National over the last year and am compiling a scrapbook of many of the important ones. I intend to continue to do this until the next independence referendum in Scotland when I will share my scrapbook with as many people as possible to remind them of all the broken promises, scaremongering and incorrect statements that came out during the first campaign.

I hope my scrapbook might help to encourage and even enlighten as many No voters as possible and that next time we will succeed in getting what this country truly deserves.

Ann Alexander-Ulke
Edinburgh

The Long Letter

The Covenanters: A resistance fighting an alien autocrat

IT is a fruitless exercise to project current mores and behaviour onto long-gone events, and vice-versa. Rather than throwing any useful light on matters past or present, it tends only to reveal the motivations and prejudices of the person attempting it. Chris Bambery’s view of the Covenanters is no exception it seems, especially his further justification (“A caliphate for Calvinists”: The author of the original article responds to the criticism of our readers, The National, December 15).

The Daesh analogy is unhelpful at best, since he seems to overlook firstly that the Reformation was a truly popular grassroots movement in its day, and secondly that the Covenanters were essentially reactive, engaged in a principled struggle to resist the brutally-enforced imposition of an alien hierarchical form of religious control over the Scots by a self-centred autocrat lodged in a distant then-foreign country.

The Covenanters’ religion may have been fundamentalist, but they most certainly did not set out to impose it ruthlessly on everyone else. As happens with such matters, of course, things then got out of hand all round, even more seriously on the continent, where vast regions of what is now Germany were laid to waste for decades, and news of every atrocity, near or far, bred ever more intolerance in a veritable chain reaction of violence.

The discussion has alas been befuddled since by evident confusion between the Covenanters and the later established Church of Scotland. The Kirk has had its own journey to take, but at least one which has recognisably been informed throughout by principle.

I don’t understand a certain kind of historical self-loathing that seems to be fashionable with some these days. Our predecessors lived in rough times, but their struggles are what made us what we are now. They were imperfect (as we are too, though in looking back we all-too-readily forget this) but we have benefited greatly from the legacy they bequeathed us, their mistakes as well as their successes.

The Kirk in particular has given all Scots a well-grounded sense of fundamental equality, a belief in self-governance, a respect for knowledge and a tendency to earnest disputation. Long may it be so!

Robert J. Sutherland
Glasgow

THE articles in The National by Chris Bambery attempting to promote atheism and attacking Scotland’s Christian heritage would have been deeply offensive to swathes of Scots.

The writer declares he wants to see an independent country based on tolerance and solidarity. The matter of inclusion was not mentioned and obviously not from someone with such prejudices.

By picking out the worst things that happened in the 17th century Calvinist time he is also attempting to taint religion as a whole. To try and compare it with the psychopathic death cult of Daesh today is more than shameful. No mention of course of the good work the Church does in helping people in need and with its missions overseas, or of the fact that millions of people lives have been changed for the better through finding the love of God.

J Maclennan
Inverness