QUESTION Time from Fort William last Thursday had me trawling my lexicon of verbal obscenities to spit at the TV screen!

I listened as Jackie Baillie spouted her claptrap – “Scotland must vote Labour, not SNP, to get the Tories out of Westminster” – when past history shows that when Scotland returned 50 Labour MPs to Westminster, we still had a Tory government and Labour did nothing!

READ MORE: Question Time: Fiona Bruce slammed for 'unacceptable framing' of SNP

Follow this with Boris’s boy, Malcolm Offord, listing the increasing value of Scotland’s food and drink industry without pointing out that the revenue for this industry goes directly to the Westminster Exchequer! Further disappointment accrued when listening to Mairi McAllan talking about the SNP’s route to independence being a Section 30 Order when it’s blatantly obvious that no Westminster-based government, of whatever branding, is going to risk losing the golden goose that is Scotland and therefore will never, ever grant one! Getting support for independence beyond 60% will make no difference! Given that Scotland has routinely been denied democracy, no percentage number is going to change that!

This show reminded me of what I taught my children regarding politics. One: all politicians LIE! Two: your job, come elections, is to try and work out who is telling the most absurd lies and respond accordingly. And three: don’t look for the “best”; try and work out who is “the least worst”!

With this in mind, I’m much in favour of living in a country which has its entire governing body within the bounds of that country. This way, it’s much easier for the electorate to lay their hands to the throats of the miscreants who have betrayed them and have them answer for their misdeeds!

Ned Larkin
Inverness

WHY are the SNP constantly asking for permission to hold a referendum? We are an ancient nation with a proud history which the SNP are apparently ignoring.

This obsession that we must comply with Westminster rule is not going to change anything. Disruption and walkouts in Westminster are required regularly. Salvo will deliver if the SNP don’t acknowledge our sovereignty of rights, which Westminster cannot deny.

Isabel Cooney
via email

IN the week that the Liberal Democrats’ leader in Scotland launched an attack on Scotland, Joanna Cherry’s article in The National on Friday was a welcome interjection (There is a reason why identifying as Scottish is so important to us, May 19). She rightly criticises a desire expressed at the National Conservativism conference to see Scottish identity subsumed beneath a “British” identity.

However, I cannot agree with her suggestion that claiming a Scottish identity is an “act of defiance”. It is my right under Article 15 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights to have a nationality and, if I wish, to change my nationality. I have no British identity, I do not adhere to the “British” values that I see espoused by the government in London and I cannot identify with a conflation of British and English; I am a Scot, pure and simple. 

Furthermore, under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Minorities I expect the government in London to respect my national identity and to uphold and foster the national culture and values that relate to that identity.

Finally, given substantial historical evidence that Scotland was colonised by our neighbours following the defeat on Drummossie Moor in 1746 with extensive measures imposed to suppress Scots culture and values, I believe UN Resolution 1514 applies and so I expect that in due course Westminster will withdraw its control over Scotland and allow us our international right to self-determination.

Ni Holmes
St Andrews

MANY people accuse the SNP’s senior figures of putting party before cause and I’m afraid Pete Wishart’s article on Saturday is a prime example (Convention would help to bring Yes back together, May 20).

The comment piece starts off well enough; there should be a constitutional convention, everybody should be civil to each other, etc.

But then we get to his core argument, that only SNP candidates should stand in elections because the dumb voters wouldn’t understand what a Yes candidate stands for. Really? Is that how we unite the movement and persuade everyone to get behind a pro-independence unity candidate? Honestly, I despair...

Neil Caple
Braemar

LAST week’s damning report on safeguarding failures in the Church of England, the contents of which have been shamelessly rejected by Archbishop Sentamu, reveals a disturbing insight into the clerical mindset of the so-called “national” church.

As we saw with King Charles’s coronation, when there’s a royal personage to be crowned, baptised, married or buried, the Church of England bishops swarm around them like moths around a flame.

But when investigating their paedophile clergy colleagues, the bishops’ enthusiasm for this task is found wanting, at the expense of the victims of sexually abusive clergy. Prayers and apologies are hardly an adequate response.

And yet their Lordships continue to bask in their royal patronage and keep their seats in the House of Lords from which to lecture us on morality.

Is it pertinent to ask what their Jesus would do?

Alistair McBay
Perth

KEITH Brown’s promise that independence will be at the forefront of next year’s UK election (National, May 20) is missing something. What if Yes crosses the threshold? Ash Regan is right: the ballot box is our referendum, not just once but every time.

Robert Fraser

Edinburgh