PICTURE if you will a country – well in truth a union of four countries, okay three colonies and one xenophobic control freak of a colonial master. Anyhow, these countries – all with different histories, culture and languages, forced together in the Union of 1922 – now having the aforementioned xenophobic control freaks ram an anthem down their throats, as if it will in some way spiritually lift the morale of the plebs. Or so the plan as put forward by Chris Philp, the Tory MP for the outer reaches of the galaxy, has it!

Now I do not know from what upbringing Mr Philp comes, and to be honest I do not care because no amount of singing will heat a home, no amount of singing will feed a child, no amount of singing will get that veteran off the street and receiving the correct care required for someone who has had their mind brutalised. Yes, Mr Philp, we are still waiting for Westminster to come good on that promise made by David Lloyd George in 1918, when he stood in that hall in Wolverhampton and promised to make Britain a land fit for heroes to return to.

No amount screeching an anthem so despised by so many will ever hide the way your party, your democratic model has so butchered its own citizens. It must truly be dark and desperate days in the Conservative and Unionist HQ as they see their last colonies all with well-established and growing independence campaigns. Not the monarch, nor her Lords and Ladies all accompanied by their sycophantic hangers-on like Mr Philp in the Commons will be able to hold this debased and contemptible Union together. The writing is most certainly on the wall for all to see.

We cannot now, as a nation with any measure of self-respect, continue to be associated with the truculent mob by the Thames, of the old school tie, from a time when serfs worked the fields and no investigative journalism took place.

Those days are long gone, and as such they can no longer conduct themselves at their pleasure.

Cliff Purvis

Veterans For Scottish Independence 2.0

A CALL for democracy was heard in the House of Commons on Thursday! It was also a call for the House of Commons to follow the calls of political leaders on working from home. SNP MP Pete Wishart called on the Leader of the House, Jacob-Rees Mogg, to reintroduce the remote/hybrid system for MPs in light of the exponential rise in Covid infections.

This is the only way forward. This would allow MPs to participate remotely, represent their constituents and embrace democracy. Just think, we are now in 2022, Covid has accelerated remote learning, it has forced many to work from home, be it by instruction from the politicians or employer, so why not the Mother of all Parliaments?

Catriona C Clark

Falkirk

DR Robbie Mochrie’s idea about each local authority ward researching as if for the statistical account is brilliant! And the Church of Scotland has the very handbook to help make that happen in a methodical way. It has produced “Who is my neighbour?”

By combining census data with church parish data, it enables any congregation to work out an accurate picture of that area. By using it, a church group will be able to say with certainty “for every 100 people in this parish, X are over 60, Y are economically active, Z go to church”, etc. It is an invaluable tool.

With the expertise within Heriot-Watt University it would be easy to adapt that system to produce a similar handbook for each ward in Scotland. Then each activist group within the ward would be profiling the same data and so we’d have a good, clear and accurate outline of communities in Scotland.

It is also possible that in doing such an exercise the local activists will discover what many church groups have discovered: their perception of what is needed locally is different from what is actually needed.

Please can Dr Mochrie and his university colleagues get cracking to give us such a handbook, quickly? A profile taken BEFORE the election would be useful to gauge, in time, what, if anything, has changed.

Grace Franklin

Address supplied

LETTERS have been written recently by Alba members, and those sympathetic to Alba, requesting that SNP members and politicians desist from attacking the party and its representatives as all independence supporters have a common goal. This is a perfectly logical appeal.

However, although not an SNP member myself, it appears that Kenny MacAskill, who was elected as my MP while representing the SNP, is duplicitously waging a one-man campaign against the SNP and its leader, our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. It is one thing to be constructively critical of the SNP and its leadership but quite another thing to be conducting what appears to be a personal vendetta via the eager-to-print Unionist-controlled press.

To hold the second referendum with significantly better prospects of winning this time, it is critical that together we convince as many previous No voters and undecideds as possible to back independence. Constantly attempting to undermine the only party that can deliver that referendum, and the only politician who is trusted to lead Scotland by a significant majority of the public, will not help to achieve this, but perhaps Mr MacAskill’s priority is not independence itself but furthering his own ideological goals, as reflected in his past membership of the disbanded 79 Group.

I would like to be proven wrong on this suspicion but if not, at least if he were to begin this New Year with resigning as an MP (and if necessary seek re-election as a legitimate Alba MP, perhaps encouraged by others in Alba who are genuinely more focused on helping Scotland achieve self-determination), I could respect his personal integrity.

Stan Grodynski

Longniddry, East Lothian