IN The National recently there has been a rich and varied menu of writing describing the chaotic situation in the UK, but few suggestions on how Scotland can dissolve its union with this entity. Many such as John Drummond in the Sunday National set out very cogently why we should be describing the arguments against self-determination as myth using the definition “untruth”.

There is another meaning of myth as “traditional story”, which is very applicable to our southern neighbour. The royal family, the Lords,

Westminster (as the description of the parliament, cathedral and city) has a mythic ring.

To describe the House of Commons as a Great Hall where the king’s warriors a sword’s length apart drunkenly abuse each other and bang on the woodwork while shouting support for their friends could well be a Viking myth. The appearance of the monarch with a great golden crown bedecked with precious stones could be from Beowulf. And the existence of a moot hall peopled with Lords to pay homage to her while nattily clad in stoat pelts could only come from Tolkien.

In Scotland we wish to escape from this myth into reality. Scotland should become a modern country where the people are enabled to have the correct information to make their own decisions. This will have to be a quick process as the problems of the planet are pressing and unavoidable.

The democratic tool is the referendum. First we need one on freedom followed by those on all other political and ethical questions of our age. The only way to overcome holding referendums is to ignore democracy, which would make the UK ungovernable. Imagine if Scotland voted to be independent, rejoin the EU and remove Trident and this was overruled in each case by a parliament which is actively ignoring international law about Northern Ireland and weapons of mass destruction.

But what if people vote for the status quo? Common sense shows that our problems are on us now so any such vote would have to be based on myth, and thus be invalid.

Even Whitby residents have had a referendum on second homes distorting the housing market there, thus facing reality and exercising their local democracy. Though it has no legal status it has the force of public opinion.

Iain WD Forde

Scotlandwell

IN responding to Holyrood Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone preventing a statement on the SNP’s scene-setting document, I rather fear that George Adam MSP, the Minister for Parliamentary Business, let the cat out of the bag by saying the document “had no significant policy commitments”.

I understand that SNP members were emailed an electronic copy of a rather nice leaflet headed The New Case For Independence. I suppose the real question would have to be: why were these leaflets not centrally produced and several thousand delivered to every SNP branch ready for delivery into letter boxes this weekend?

If the First Minister’s announcement is the starting gun it is claimed to be, where is the massive fundraising campaign? Where are the materials for street stalls? Where are the leaflets and posters? Where are the plans for public meetings? Where are the advertising billboards? Will the First Minister and even just a few MPs and MSPs join the forthcoming march to Bannockburn? In essence, where is the grassroots campaign that we will need to win this referendum?

More detailed policy papers are to trickle out over the coming months. If we are not careful Christmas 2022 will soon be upon us. No doubt Boris Johnson will say a firm no to the First Minister’s plans and the whole process will end up in court or probably courts. Surely we need a cunning but practical plan if, and probably when, the legal case for holding a referendum is rejected.

We are less than a week away from mid-summer’s day. The nights, as my late mother used to say, will soon be “drawing in”. July and August will, for many folk, mean holidays. Are we to wait until September to get things under way?

Every day lost between now and late 2023 makes it that bit harder to win.

Iain Wilson

Stirling

ANDREW Tickell’s article in the Sunday National made me think of Nicola Sturgeon and contrast between her and Keir Starmer (Starmer’s lost Labour still searching for love in all the wrong places, June 12).

Nicola Sturgeon will be neither deluded nor under any illusions about any rare pat on the back or agreement with anything she does that comes from the Unionist print media like The Sun et al, because when the referendum campaign begins in earnest she, her government and the indy movement will face a screaming torrent of abuse, lies, distortion and scare stories from that same media.

She understands that the counter to all of that in order to achieve success is a solid, diverse mass movement and the sympathetic support of the EU and other nations in the world that Scotland’s fight for nationhood requires.

It is part of her role as First minister to cultivate the second requirement.

What is Sturgeon’s main task? Apart from formulating the policy and giving expression to the argument for independence, she has a government to run and show those not yet convinced that Scotland can govern itself. Her added responsibility is to promote our country internationally.

Those in our movement who don’t fully appreciate the above and criticise her non-appearance at rallies or demonstrations are in my view being politically short-sighted.

Bobby Brennan

Glasgow

I AM sure that the vast majority of independence supporters warmly welcomed Nicola Sturgeon’s announcements last week and it was therefore interesting, and disappointing, to read the respective articles anent this by Paul Kavanagh, Kevin McKenna, Alyn Smith and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.

McKenna, on cue, was as feistily negative as ever of the SNP, even now that the firing gun, long awaited, has at last been fired. Ahmed-Sheikh’s piece, written from an Alba angle, did not mention the announcement at all and again contained some negative references to the SNP. Alyn, as to be expected, was positive, as was Kavanagh.

A statement made by McKenna was most telling (about himself), when he wrote: “Yesterday’s campaign launch had little of the optimism that feted that first campaign launch.” Does he not realise that he is one of the main instigators of this lack of optimism?

So come on, all of you skilful writers and communicators, now is the time to sing the same song and be realistic enough to publicly (and objectively) support the SNP without giving yet more grist to the mill of the opposition.

I am sure that the vast majority of pro-independence supporter will warmly welcome that too …

Dennis White

Blackwood

IT has started already, with the ink on my previous letter barely dry. On Wednesday your sister paper The Herald had the headline “Independence would make English trade challenging”.

Why is trade going to be challenging? It’s not the good people of England that are the barrier.

It’s the extreme right-wing politicians and little Englanders that are the barrier.

It’s the politicians that sold the people of England untruths regarding broad sunlit uplands that have created more barriers to trade than anyone.

Traffic jams in Kent, queues at passport control, food shortages, and a cost-of-living crisis.

The rest of the European Union and their free movement of people don’t have barriers. America and Canada trade along with other countries of the world.

It’s the British Government that does illegal breaking of international law. Even though they negotiated the deals and stated they were “oven ready”.

So why are they trying to shift this on to Scotland and independence?

Already the old arguments of project fear have arisen. No doubt the next instalment will be the saga of the pension.

Robert McCaw

Renfrew

IT’S not surprising that on the day the First Minister launches a new drive for independence, the Westminster elite decide to sanction an SNP MP for being a sexual predator.

However, it’s not believable that the First Minister claims she knew nothing about it. Most of those paying attention to Scottish politics were aware of the complaints against Patrick Grady.

Considering that this issue has been played out in the newspapers, why was the FM unaware of it? This does not seem credible.

By refusing to act – and you have to question why the party’s national secretary did not initiate the complaints process against Grady – it was guaranteed that the incident would be used to embarrass the party at the most opportune moment for Unionists.

If Sturgeon had acted when the complaints came in then Grady would not have been used to undermine the launch of the new indy campaign.

Will Harvey

Paisley

HAS anyone noticed a trend with the Johnson administration? From where I am sitting, it looks as if at anytime he or any of his cabinet come up against legislation that prevents them from doing as they please, then they withdraw from that agreement, or rip it up!

That is not government, it is not even statecraft; it is, however, something akin to how previous totalitarian regimes have behaved. This report of Boris Johnson withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is worrying. We do not have a written constitution to safeguard us, with the UK run by convention and a code for ministers that can be amended at anytime by the Prime Minister. That said, what Johnson has done is to highlight just how fragile our liberties are. This constitutional monarchy that practises some democratic principles is not set up to protect the subjects of Liz Windsor, but facilitates and perpetuates the rule of the unelected head of state, its Lords and other hangers-on in the circle sometimes referred to as “the elite”.

We in Scotland must now wake up to what are the excesses of a privileged circle, a minority that in all truth would have been ousted decades ago in any other European country. For their survival, the elite have the Channel to thank. It has saved them all these years.

As we edge towards our independence referendum, can well-versed, alert, media-savvy voters honestly look at their families, their loved ones, their friends and say: “Yes, let us stay with Westminster.”?

UK plc is only heading one way, and that is down into the bottomless swamp there to reside with all the other failed populist administrations.

Good folk of Scotland, it is time for change. It is time to end the Union. Our future is bright; Independence is right.

Cliff Purvis

Veterans for Scottish Independence 2.0