I FIND photographs of the Green Party leaders posing with the newly elected leader of the SNP with big grins on their faces just a tad sinister. They look like the proverbial cat that got the cream.
The Greens were not elected to power, they were gifted it by the previous SNP administration. Their undue interjections into the SNP leadership campaign demonstrate that they aspire to exert influence disproportionate to their electoral standing.
They remind me of the Liberal/Liberal Democrat parties of old that sought only to hold the balance of power so as to be able to manipulate the government of the day; remember how that worked out when it actually happened.
Evidently the Greens have a somewhat distorted sense of democracy and I hope Humza Yousaf is able and willing to withstand any expectations that he owes the Greens a favour for helping him to get elected as SNP leader.
Ni Holmes
St Andrews
I RECENTLY read, with much disdain, Kevin McKenna in the Sunday National (Reminder why newspapers are not democracies, Mar 27).
You will no doubt notice by the end of this communication that I am no journalist, with many an error along the way, but I try my best.
Kevin McKenna is a journalist and by his trade, he feels that he has the right to write about anything he chooses and write about anyone he chooses.
He believes that because someone is in the public eye then they should be subjected to scrutiny.
On this I fully agree with him, but according to Kevin should this not include journalists. Michael Blackley, who writes for the Daily Mail, only writes bile about the SNP but according to Kevin, he will not say anything bad about him.
The philosophy of Kevin McKenna is that we can write any nonsense we want about anybody, but journalists have not to be touched.
Yet who write all the bile, all the hateful-attention grabbing headlines, but journalists?
They are also in the eyes of the public and should be treated the same as anyone else in the public limelight.
D Matson
Glenrothes
I READ what Kevin McKenna had to say in Tuesday’s National (What now for SNP and indy?, Mar 28) – I often read McKenna, even though he usually infuriates me.
On this occasion he hit the nail on the head regarding the leadership election – we got the second-best candidate due entirely to the work of the SNP elite. We lost the opportunity of putting our brightest spark into the hot seat.
Kate Forbes would have cut through some of the trendy lefty froth some choose to call progressive. She would have tried to give Scotland what Scotland really needs and she would have been a real match for the neo-fascists of Westminster.
As elected leader Yousaf has my support, not that that is worth much. I will be delighted if my assessment of his abilities is proven wrong.
Robert Mill Irving
Gifford, East Lothian
I NOTE that Stewart Hosie, the SNP’s current economics spokesman at Westminster, thinks that telling people the truth about the currency will create another bout of “Project Fear” which the Unionists will exploit.
Stewart should know that the Unionists created “Project Fear”, they named it, and they are still working on it. They never stopped, or even paused, in exploiting Project Fear and there is no sign that they are likely to do so.
Project Fear works by exploiting general ignorance about issues like currency, banking and pensions; so the very best way to expose Project Fear is the spread of knowledge and enlightenment in the Scottish public about these issues, not to pretend that the present situation is fine and that it need not be addressed.
If Stewart believes that the present status of the pound Sterling as an international exchange currency is stable and secure, then he must have been in a coma when the Liz Truss government was brought down by international money markets. If Stewart didn’t notice that, most Scottish people did, and they are not as naive as he thinks they are.
Using an international exchange currency like Sterling is much more risky than having our own domestic currency – surely Stewart must know that if he knows anything about economics, and he should know that having massive reserves is more relevant to an international exchange currency than it is to a domestic currency with a strong balance-of-trade position.
So come off it, Stewart: an independent Scotland moving quickly to establish its own currency is by far less risky than telling people there is no problem with Sterling and that this will be true for the foreseeable future. To do this is not based on any reasonable economic grounds, it is just an attempt at misleading the electorate, and Scottish people will see it for the nonsense it is.
Andy Anderson
Ardrossan
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