I WAS impressed on several levels with Mike Small’s piece in the Sunday National (Threatened sausages and ‘Global Britain’, June 13). While I share his commitment to robust food standards, vision of a sustainable food system and passion for food sovereignty, I do not share his desire to bestow the value of democracy and virtue of sovereignty upon the European Union when there is minimal evidence for that.
Record levels of food insecurity and food bank use in Scotland, and beyond, is not a direct consequence of leaving the EU. The implementation of the most reprehensible set of reforms to welfare in 2013 coupled with the exorbitant growth in the cost of food, energy and housing have, over the last decade, been the bitter cocktail to intoxicate the many men, women and children on low and restricted incomes.
READ MORE: Mike Small: Brexit's real driving force is lower standards and less regulation
Scotland has – in many ways and within the limited elasticity of devolved power it has at its disposal – flexed its political and economic muscle in the areas of social security, employment protections and housing policy in an effort to establish another way of doing things. Furthermore, it could, and ultimately should, do what it can to carve a new path in relation to extending our food standards and compressing the cost of living.
The notion that we must weld ourselves back to an even more detached institution than Westminster to achieve this is fanciful. The poverty of vision exhibited by those who would see us sever the marital bond of Westminster only to reattach us to Brussels prevents the visibility of harm, rather than help, this would cause our poorest citizens.
Freedom from both institutions, or true independence, presents another prospectus.
Ewan Gurr
National Organiser, Restore Scotland
THE article by Jim Osborne is a good example of how Scotland, as a country rich in natural and human resources, can apply its resource in a way which brings better results for the people living in Scotland and for the national economy at the same time (How our pension funds can be key investor in Scotland, June 14).
READ MORE: How our pension funds can be key investor in Scotland before independence
This is why many economists understand the importance of Scotland taking control of its own destiny by being an independent country.
Andy Anderson
Saltcoats
I WAS very interested to read the content of Jim Taylor’s contribution to the “not proven” debate (Letters, June 12), following my earlier letter.
I have to say that, having absorbed what he says, I at first sight would in all probability have agreed with him! That is not, however, to say that I abandon my original point of view.
Perhaps much more in-depth consideration of the subject is required. Maybe there is a good case for the verdict to remain available in certain circumstances?
READ MORE: Why should anyone suffer the smear of guilt due to 'not proven' a verdict?
Perhaps for big business or corporate subjects while individuals are in a different category? Maybe only available for trials where a jury is involved?
Whatever the eventual outcome proves to be, I suggest that the outcome of the debate be left as one of the subjects to be finalised after the achievement of independence.
George M Mitchell
Dunblane
I WONDER who taught L McGregor history (Letters, June 14). Granted when I was growing up in the 60s secondary history teaching was predominately the Anglocentric version of events, but that changed.
When I started teaching in the mid-70s in the Lothians and Fife I taught from Skara Brae right through the Wars of Independence, Mary and the Reformation, Darien and the Union (including the perfidious Defoe), the Jacobite rebellions, the Clearances, New Lanark, the atrocities of the slave trade, the Scottish suffragettes and World War One (with particular reference to Scotland).
READ MORE: I agree that schools should stop teaching nationalist propaganda as history
By the 1990s I remember pupils producing their Standard Grade investigations on topics such as “The effect of the Clearances on Gaelic culture”, “The rise of the Scottish National Party” and the “Scottish suffragettes”.
In addition there were German, Russian, American, Italian topics and appeasement. If resources allowed there were topics on the Stuarts, The French Revolution et alia.
The beauty of the Scottish history curriculum was (is?) that teachers could choose topics in first and second years and then, within the confines of the SQA exams, focus on Scottish aspects.
Isabelle Gow
via email
IN the village where I live in Argyll, more and more houses are being sold at inflated prices and turned into Airbnbs by their new owners. The result? Young families and those on lower incomes cannot afford to rent or buy and will be driven out. This is happening all over Scotland and is driven by the greed of those with money for yet more profit. When will the Scottish Government act to stop these new “clearances’’ by imposing second home and land taxes?
Alasdair MacDermott
Appin
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