NICOLA Sturgeon and her backroom team played an absolute blinder on Tuesday by telling the whole world she was playing it by the rules and taking it straight to the Supreme Court. What was really interesting was the responses by the “leaders” of the three shades of Tory up here.

Douglas Ross on cue as ever harped on in his own inane way about division when we should be trying to concentrate on his own party’s abysmal failings which have hugely escalated the current misery we are all having to ensure, when deep down even this clown knows fine well the only separating going on these days is the Tories separating Scotland from the EU and our hard-earned money. Next up was red Tory Anas Sarwar who by the day shows that, like Douglas Ross, he is nowhere near bright enough to be a leader of the Scottish Branch of the Red Tories.

As for the genuinely horrific, horrid wee leader of the Yellow Tories up here – words fail me. In him we have a wee posh laddie from The Shires – Hertfordshire this time – screaming at Nicola Sturgeon demanding we never break away from arguably the most corrupt government on earth so we can at last build a fairer, far, more prosperous land. Could you imagine if we had Scots in Westminster telling the English to sit down and shut up and stay under completely failing, crooked, Scottish control? No, I didn’t think so. Long live wee Nicola, who will hopefully go on to be the person who delivered to us a far, far better wee country.

The rest of the world wills it, so it’s time we all did too and become friends and neighbours, the way it should always have been, and not this current abused partner in a failing marriage we find ourselves playing, time after time, after time.

Iain K

Dunoon

Recent announcements in Holyrood are interesting indeed. However the pace of the move towards independence for Scotland is lethargic, to put it charitably. I return to an idea that I articulated some time ago. The people of Catalonia showed us the way forward. Here goes: the Scottish Government should be campaigning now on the benefits of independence rather than focusing solely on the misdeeds of generations of Westminster misrule. Then, in the next year, a referendum is held whether Boris Johnson allows it or not. But this should be done under the following conditions:

1) A minimum of 2/3 of the electorate must take part in the vote,

2) For independence to become real at least 70-80% must agree on Scotland becoming independent,

3) If Westminster thwart the clearly revealed will of the Scottish people then Holyrood should declare UDI and then wait for the storm to break.

All this will sound idealistic and it is certainly an approach that is fraught with danger. Westminster may well respond in the same way that Madrid responded to Catalonia. But if the will of the people is thwarted we could then view Westminster as an occupying power to be dealt with appropriately by a campaign of civil disobedience.

Revd John Nugent

Wick

Totally agree with the points raised by Frieda Burns on the AUOB (All Under One Banner) marches (Letters, June 27).

I organise buses to the marches through the Brechin Hub. We took almost full 50-seater buses to the COP26 march in November last year and to the Glasgow march earlier this year.

The organisation for the COP march was a complete shambles. Stuck up on a hill and almost the last contingent to leave. The “Tory, Tory, Tory, out, out, out” chant went on throughout the whole march and I and a good number of our marchers left it and walked to Glasgow Green independently to get away from it.

There is, I’m afraid, a tiredness permeating the AUOB marches. They should be joyous occasions. We need more relevant music. We need some positivity in our slogans and chants. Sadly. I think another section of the indy movement should take up the organisation and running of our marches.

Vision and ambition and energy presently is lacking. The foot sloggers of the indy movement need and want better.

D Smart

Brechin

I cannot be alone in having a deep-seated, grinding anger at the incompetency and duplicity of the UK Government which rampages across many different media platforms.

I watch with jaws agape at the vacuous statements from UK Government ministers which go unchecked by erstwhile churnalists’ fawning subservience to their fear of “missing out” or being blocked from interviewing UK spokespersons. Where is the modern day Robin Day asking a Tory minister why he should believe a “here today, gone tomorrow politician” over the actual evidence before him?

This media obsequience occasionally infiltrates The National, so inured to trade union bashing (for example) that it only reports on the high-end earners in a trade union dispute and not the folk at the bottom of the pile.

Let us be very clear, no matter your stance on independence, we are in the midst of a politically engineered economic collapse designed to suppress the incomes of the vast majority to preserve the massive profit taking of the few, mostly Tory bank rolling super rich and corporations. After the Toryisation of the Labour Party, by Blair, they are no different, while the LibDems are reduced to gnawing on bones thrown from the top table.

If we are going to secure the end of the Treaty of Union, next year, the time for speaking softly is rapidly coming to an end, it is time to start wielding the big stick.

I expect The National to be in the lead on this.

Peter Thomson

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