IT was reported last week that Vladimir Putin’s advisers have misled him about the progress of his invasion of Ukraine because they are too scared to tell him the truth. Also last week the Ockendon Report was published about what many recognise as being the UK’s biggest maternity scandal involving the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust. Among the findings of the report were not only that staff didn’t listen to families’ concerns but how many staff were too scared to participate in the investigation, fearing for their jobs/careers.

These are clearly two very different issues, one involving a war in Europe that many dread may lead to World War Three and the other the widespread lack of proper maternity care involving an NHS Trust in England. Both issues however share a major factor – fear and how fear prevents the truth being reached and for proper decisions and actions being taken.

Now retired from a public service job, I can state categorically that I’ve witnessed this fear in individuals throughout my career. In my opinion too many people clamber up the greasy pole of ambition and are successfully promoted, not through sheer talent and hard work, but by sussing out what senior managers want to hear, whether or not it’s in the best interests of the organisation as a whole.

This is in contrast to those experienced, knowledgeable staff who know what they are speaking about and are well respected by many colleagues and managers. If these staff however don’t “play the game” but instead have the temerity to flag up where processes are failing even when in a clear, genuine spirit of improving these processes, they get shot down in flames with their careers up the spout for not being “on message”.

It’s amazing how such a small clique of people at the top of a large organisation, many of whom have been promoted in this way beyond their abilities and in some cases well beyond them, can totally infect, cancer like, the whole organisation in a very detrimental way because of a culture of fear of telling the truth.

These failings in various organisations throughout society are often down to a few individuals at the top protecting their own skins at all cost causing total mayhem below them and affecting the public in the process.

Something must be sadly wrong in society when these obnoxious individuals rise to the top. The saying used to be, “the cream rises to the top”. What with Putin, Trump and Johnson it’s clear that’s now passe. Nowadays it should be, “the excrement excel”!

Name and address supplied

CHANNEL 4 did a piece on the royal family last weekend. It was an exposé on just how close Edward the abdicator was to the Nazis. It turns out that this is yet another skeleton in the Royal Wardrobe, one more to add to the many that the master of the robes will have to fight off to get a shirt out for someone.

The documentary did dovetail with another one that I have watched on the fall of Berlin and how a British Army officer was dispatched rather quickly to that city to find and secure any and all correspondence between the House of Windsor and the Nazis. After the War, when Churchill was once more PM, he along with the royal household including Edward did their level best to rubbish stories then emerging on the subject. Again this was a cover up to protect their own positions, protect their family and protect their future.

The elite that have their talons so deeply imbedded in the running of the UK have been slow to realise that each and every sordid story that surfaces does have a detrimental effect on them.

Now I have had countless tango and sash members and their supporters try to link the SNP to the Nazis it will now be interesting to see if they turn on the Windsor family with the same spit and venom as used on supporters of independence? The short answer to that is of course they will not, for they see the Windsors as untouchable and beyond accountability, such is the servile nature of the apologists.

Which unfortunately is not the way of me nor a great many other indy supporters. I will be as bold as to suggest that we are heartily sick of the hypocrisy constantly discovered at the very root of the seat of government in the UK! Do these people honestly believe that they can do as they please, whenever and wherever they choose? Are they really that naïve to think of themselves that way as scandal after scandal has landed at their feet but in truth they have no one to blame other than themselves.

Not one of them was forced into having affairs.

Not one of them was forced to make the friends they have.

Not one of them were forced to conduct themselves in the way that they have.

What they have been forced to do, and this is the bit that alarms them, is to face up to their moral and legal short comings.

This they have had to do because the plebs have had enough, we have had enough of them and the lesser aristocracy, the House of Lords and the old Etonians, we have had enough of their thinking that they are our betters!

The reality is that they are not fit for high office.

They are not fit to represent us in any way.

But most assuredly they are not now fit for purpose in the modern era.

We need rid of the whole rotten carcass that is Gross Britanicus, time for independence, time for Scotland to prepare to put clear water between that what was forced on us in 1707 and that what we will choose in 2023.

Our future is bright, independence is right.

Cliff Purvis

via email

IF English school children are the only ones who receive the Jubilee book it will be the fault of the UK ministers who are fuming at the devolved nations’ stance, as reported in The National on Thursday.

The position of the Scottish and Welsh governments may have arisen by default; although education is devolved this brainchild of the UK Government appears to have gone ahead without consulting the other governments, with DK contracted to design, print and distribute the book by its Education Department.

There is no reason for outrage from UK Government ministers as the Scottish and Welsh governments have no justification for interfering in the arrangements made by the UK Government’s Education Department or its contractor for distribution of the book. Has the UK Government Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi learned nothing from Sir Gavin Williamson’s experience with “One Britain One Nation Day”?

Perhaps recognition of the territorial limits of his responsibilities and an invitation from the minister to his devolved counterparts to become involved in this project from the beginning would have avoided this embarrassing situation.

John Jamieson

South Queensferry

I WONDER if Greum Maol Stevenson (Letters, Mar 31) is a Unionist because if not, he has fallen into the Unionist habit of criticising Nicola Sturgeon for any little reason.

While I myself would like to see an independent Scotland with our own monarch, at the present time we share a monarch with other countries, and the First Minister was representing our country at a memorial service for the consort of that monarch. As First Minister that is part of her duties to represent Scotland. Regarding being maskless, in England there is no law requiring the wearing of a mask and Nicola was following the rules in that country. “When in Rome…”

As for attending a memorial for a member of the Japanese Royal Family, the First Minister would not be attending. At Prince Philip’s memorial the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain etc, were not represented by their prime/first ministers, but by their heads of state because it is they who represent their countries at such events.

Had the First Minister not attended she would have received a barrage of abuse from Unionists for not being there, and would have given Douglas Ross another excuse for one of his silly rants.

Louise Bradley

via email

I HAD to check April 1 hadn’t arrived early. Nicola Sturgeon and seizing independence, who would have thought the leader of a well mandated independence party would come away with such a wild statement. Couldn’t be she hasn’t the brass neck to ask for yet another mandate at a future election?

Tom Cumming

Nairn

FADED and forgotten? Number 10 parties? Faded and forgotten? Indyref2? To say I’m scunnered is an underestimate of my mood. I have been a passionate contributor to the National Conversation for years but recently had decided to hang up my pen! Five years ago The National front page headline was that Holyrood supported YES for indyref2. There was no stopping us! Yet little progress.

Coronavirus and now Ukraine being suggested as reasons for slow progress. But won’t there always be something? Where has all the fire in the SNP bellies gone. Have the SNP become comfortable in opposition? I fondly remember the passionate maiden speech of Mhairi Black July 2015(!) in parliament. There is a great chance with little activity from the high heedjuns, many footsoldiers (like myself) will lose faith. Pull the finger out, please!

Robin MacLean

Fort Augustus

THE Scots Tories’ confected outrage about face masks will surely come back to haunt them at election time.

We won’t easily forget that in an ongoing global pandemic with an NHS under intolerable pressures, Douglas Ross and his Tory cohorts wanted us to be fully exposed to the deadly mutating virus at its epicentre, with no sensible public health precautions in place.

Alistair McBay

Methven, Perth

Here is my response to Hibs asking me to buy tickets for the Scottish Cup semi-final.

I’ll never visit Hampden ever again. It is a cesspit unfit to grace football.

Last time you dumped my party low down behind the goal. All we could see was on the big screen. We’d have been as well watching on tv at home. Which is where I’ll be in future.

This game should have been played at Murrayfield. Handy for both sets of fans and saving the planet from unnecessary fossil fuel combustion and pollution.

No joined up thinking from the clubs, the appalling SFA and the Scottish government.

Jim Taylor

Edinburgh

READER Mike Baldry sent in a correction regarding an article in last week’s Sunday National, headlined online as: “Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s ‘sleight of hand’ could see him taking more tax”.

He pointed out: “The standard VAT rate is 20% of the pre-VAT price, which means that VAT forms 1/6 of the final price , not 1/5 (20%). If something costs £1.20, that’s £1.00 + 20 p VAT (a 20% rate), not 96p + 24p VAT ( a 25% rate).

“So petrol at £1.44 is 63p cost + 57p duty + 24p VAT (20% of £1.20) - total tax 81p, not 85.5p as claimed.

“Petrol at £1.65 is 85.5p cost + 52p duty + 27.5p VAT (20% of £1.375) - total tax 79.5p, not 85p as claimed.”

Mike is correct – and so we apologise for the error and appreciate the note.

Stewart Ward

Deputy editor, The National