IF the issue of the rehash of previous positions on independence was meant to placate independence supporters, it’s proved a damp squib. Plenty of other writers have bemoaned the lack of progress towards the avowed aim of the SNP, so I won’t reheat cauld kale here.
I started working for independence more than 40 years ago and that remains my aim, not a referendum. A referendum, not independence, has become the objective of the SNP under the current leadership.
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It’s time they considered their position on this and reviewed ALL the options for the membership to give their opinions in a real debate at conference.
The ball has been kicked down the road too often in recent years and has been burst in the process. A new ball with a different direction is needed with an urgency currently lacking from the present leadership.
Righteous indignation and assertions have seen their day, and empty rhetoric no longer suffices to keep the members happy. They now have other homes to go if progress is not forthcoming.
Drew Reid
Falkirk
WEE Ginger Dug is right that there need to be compelling reasons to keep Gaelic alive and growing, but I’d put today and the future ahead of the past as the source of the whys and especially the hows. The two are interlinked (Why EVERY Scots has part to play if Gaelic’s to be saved, Jul 20).
Primarily a language is a social tool. It will only keep being used in the context of a society founded on its own economics, philosophy, a sense of its own kind of history and core identity continuing: education, media, and, crucially, “social density”, as Prof O Giollagain of Sabhal Mor Ostaig put it, all interconnecting.
READ MORE: Wee Ginger Dug: Why EVERY Scot has a part to play if Gaelic is to be saved
Right now the Gaelic-identified community is dissolving because all kinds of outside influences and elements are denying it that vital operative solidarity. It needs to recover it on all the aforementioned bases, to work out ways of regaining the status of an autonomous “society within a society” (compare the Muslim and Hindu communities, maybe) in this multicultural society of ours, operating within the Anglosphere (no Gael today lives outside of this) but as a robust critique of, and equally viable and attractive alternative to, its Anglo-Saxon aspects.
Otherwise the same non-future awaits it as has overcome native Gaeldom in the Isle of Man, which English incomers imitating Manx have reduced to nothing but a lovely little alternative English lifestyle.
Ian McQueen
Dumfries
REGARDING the Wee Ginger Dug’s latest column, I’ve tried to learn Gaelic but find it extremely difficult because it isn’t spoken as it is written. Or, rather, they use an awful lot of letters that are either silent or have a different sound to normal. Nevertheless, we should all have at least a smattering of words that we could use, when visiting Gaelic-speaking areas or between ourselves.
Between 1948 and 1955, when I was at primary school, we had a music teacher. She was not permanent to our school but went round different schools and gave a singing lesson perhaps once a week to those schools. She taught us a couple of Gaelic songs, and I can still remember bits of them. Here’s an example of how they sound to me but not how they are written in Gaelic.
Vermee oh, oh rovan oh,
Vermee oh, oh rovan ee,
Vermee oh, roo oh ho,
Sad am I without thee.
We were never taught any Gaelic conversation but I believe that if we are to save it, then all schools should teach at least a few words of conversation. Maybe something like, “Hello, how are you? My name is…” That could be expanded upon perhaps by having 20 minutes each day when the class greet each other in Gaelic and maybe learn a few extra sentences each time.
If we could get Scotland to the position Wales is in, where most folk speak Welsh, that would be an improvement. I think it has to be done via the primary schools as “play” rather than as “learning”. They should also be made aware
that at one time five different languages were spoken in Scotland. Latin was the language of the Church. French was the language of the King’s court. Gaelic was mainly in the Highlands, and Scots and English were mainly in the Lowlands. I believe both Gaelic and Scots need a revival.
Charlie Kerr
Glenrothes
I HAVE been interested in the series of articles written by members of the banking and financial sector.
In particular, I have noted with interest that the articles advocate a relaxing of existing pension trust law to enable a larger ability to invest in options currently outside of the law.
Pensions are deferred wages, and the contributions being made by workers into these plans must be safeguarded. We do not wish to return to the 1980s with elongated pension holidays and situations where unscrupulous pension trustees used the money to prop up failing businesses and the workers lost their deferred wages.
I would agree about the demise of the Weimar Republic and the impact of rampant inflation on fixed incomes such a a pensions, which is why the triple lock is currently in place.
Pension funds should not be considered a moveable feast for the banking sector. This may mean that investment options outside the current regulations should remain so.
Like many others, I have worked hard for my pension and hope to benefit from that investment in my retirement and not to see it depleted by risky investments.
The banking sector’s greed caused the last financial crash – should it really be given any access to our deferred wages?
Carol Wood
via email
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