IN a letter which I submitted recently for your consideration (for publication), I hypothesised a new strategy, which seems to have been adopted by our current Tory Government. That strategy is to commit any future government to binding and (for that other government) disadvantageous contractual arrangements with commercial companies. I am thinking here of the contracts recently announced with large oil and gas companies regarding the extraction of existing reserves of these resources in the North Sea which would also be the source of further greenhouse gas emissions.

To these contracts, we can add a recently stated intention to involve more private medical facilities in the provision of NHS treatments.

It may be purely coincidental that all these commercial companies might then be able to pay large dividends to investors – who might also then feel inclined to give generous donations to the political party who made possible those lucrative returns.

What is not clear to me, however, is just how easy or difficult it would be for any incoming new government to alter any such contracts. In my letter, I asked for experts in international law to enlighten myself and your other readers.

I would like now to ask those experts an additional question.

If Scotland were to obtain an indisputable support for independence at the next election, and was then able to introduce a new interim written constitution, could the terms of that constitution make it possible for the new independent Scottish Government to nullify these contracts without having to pay exorbitant compensation?

That is particularly relevant and important if it could also be shown that the balance of probability indicates that the future prospects of the general population of Scotland depends upon that being done. Upon that also depends the future prospects of the general population of the entire world – indeed its very existence (which population, I may add, includes those very rich investors) – or does that not really matter in a formal legal context?

Hugh Noble

Appin

IN his Saturday column, Mike Russell states: “All sorts of issues go to make up the current toxic mix of over-the-top anti-Green rhetoric but the sneering commentary about a perfectly sensible Scottish Government plan for heat pumps to help as part of a much wider emissions reduction strategy has revealed a nasty and ultimately self-harming streak of climate sceptic populism even within the Yes tent.”

I was first thinking of responding “If the Scottish Government is not careful, some of our population might end up living in a real tent unable to find the money to live Mike’s green dream”. However, that kind of rhetoric does nothing to heal the increasing tensions in the independence movement. The heat pump debate is linked to the Scottish Government’s current consultation on Energy Performance Certificates. It is clear that the type of heating in your home will soon have a major impact on the assessment outcome and therefore the value of your home.

Green minister Patrick Harvie has recently insisted that millions of homes will need to replace heating systems “at a pace and scale that is consistent with Scotland’s legal climate targets”. One of the biggest challenges is replacing gas boilers in homes with so called “climate-friendly heating-systems” such as heat pumps, with Mr Harvie previously admitting the costs could total a staggering £33 billion. He has not been forthcoming with an answer to the obvious question of who pays for this.

Scotland produces around 0.1% of the world’s CO2 while China is adding 20 times that in fresh emissions each year. China now emits more greenhouse gas than the entire developed world combined. If Patrick Harvie and Mike Russell could wave their magic wands together and grant us all a heat pump for free tomorrow it would do absolutely nothing to stop global warming.

Perhaps Mike could inform us all of how those of the population who cannot afford to pay their current energy bills will find around £10,000 to replace their heating systems with a heat pump? How will Scotland’s local authorities and housing associations finance the installation of heat pumps? As a former local government convener of housing, I would love to see the financial case in detail.

EPC is set to follow GRA, HPMA and DRS as policies promoted by the Scottish Parliament and born to fail. Policies with good intentions, badly thought out, not able to be implemented and more importantly helping to destroy the credibility of the independence movement. If I were a Unionist candidate at the forthcoming Hamilton by-election, I might be tempted to suggest to homeowners that the Green/SNP policy on heat pumps could render their homes unsaleable at their current value.

Maybe in next Saturday’s column, Mike could give us at least an inkling as to how the £33,000,000,000 (yes that is the correct amount of zeros) can be found and if so why it should take priority over, for example, funding our Scottish Health Service.

Brian Lawson

Paisley

HOW low can humanity get?

Apparently, the answer is the Facebook group that wishes to ban the RNLI from bringing “Illegals” to UK shores.

Now there will not be many within the independence movement and beyond that have ever seen me lost for words but I am on this one!

Well, not so much lost but reluctant to use the ones that are itching to be typed. The ones that would have the racist bigots of the group playing the victim card.

Pathetic, illogical statements head the group’s social media site and it only gets worse the further you scroll down.

Well done to Johnson the inebriated and his successors for letting loose the latent racism stored up in the minds of the few bigots able to type.

Well done to the propaganda papers of the Fascista for stoking up the fires of intolerance.

But most of all well done to the bigots and fools for coming out into the sunlight so that we can see your true form and pour salt on it.

We need out of this nightmare Union.

Our future is bright, Independence is right.

Cliff Purvis

Veterans for Scottish Independence 2.0

I WATCHED, and really enjoyed, a programme called, Robin Williams, Come Inside My Mind about the late, great man himself.

He told a joke, many years ago, while doing stand-up, that made me think. He said in his own inimitable way, of course: “A nuclear bomb. It’s basically a man’s way of saying I’m going to f**k up the Earth, yeah! A woman would never make a nuclear weapon. They would never make a bomb that kills you. They would make a bomb that makes you feel bad for a while. That’s why there should be a woman president. Don’t you see, it would be a wonderful thing! [To much applause from mainly the women in the audience.] It would be an incredible concept that. There would never be any wars, just every 28 days there would be intense negotiations. That would be a good thing, yeah?”

Ok, many nowadays would think the end part of that joke to be sexist, and I wouldn’t disagree, but for me it doesn’t detract from the crucial overall point Robin made so cleverly and perceptively. Clearly there will be exceptions, like the obvious one, Maggie Thatcher and her role in the Falklands war. However, on a general basis, surely the world would be in a much better state now, not just in relation to conflict but also about climate change, if it was run mainly by women, not men (and that comes from a guy!).

Far too many male politicians just can’t get over their ego, feel they have to be the archetypal alpha male and are born narcissists. Think of Trump, Johnson and Putin, but many more. Personally, I’ve had my fill of that lot but as we know, unfortunately that type of politician is popular for many, particularly men.

A good example of the difference between the genders regarding attitudes to going to war was in respect of the massively controversial decision for Tony Blair’s government to drag Britain into George Bush’s war on Iraq. The Pew Global Attitude Survey of 2003 found that in Britain 53% of men were in favour of the war compared to just 34% women, almost a 20% difference!

As for climate change, Pew Research found in 2015 that in answer to the statement, “People will have to make major lifestyle changes to reduce the effects of global climate change”, 60% of males in the UK agreed, compared to 74% of women. Given current events, I feel the difference will be even higher now.

For me, aw this proves youse women should be left tae rule the roost, protect the planet and its inhabitants, and leave us lot tae dae what oo dae best. Scratch oor backsides!

Ivor Telfer

Dalgety Bay

JOANNA Cherry, once again, writes a first-class article in Friday’s National.

Joanna is absolutely right, what Scotland needs is the type of Keynesian policy based on significant public investment which the Attlee Government pursued between 1945 and 1952. Scotland needs such a policy for the significant benefit of the people and Scotland can afford such a policy.

Of course, today this would need to be directed towards renewable energy and sustainable development, as Joanna suggests.

We will not win support for independence, or for the SNP, if people are not sure where independence will take us, or what the SNP stand for. The best way to demonstrate this is to show it in policy terms.

To be fair to the SNP, under their new leader, they have done this to a limited extent by supporting working people trying to get a reasonable increase in their wages after being hit by the inflation tsunami which wrecked their standard of living. This has been particularly significant in the NHS where they have prevented disastrous strike actions, which would have further undermined the poorly prepared health service.

We all know however that the Scottish Government has extremely limited revenue allocated to it by the Westminster Government and that the resources needed for our public services are much greater than we will get from a Tory or Labour government any time soon.

However, we can’t wait to get independence to resolve this problem for us, we need to act now. The SNP Scottish Government should be addressing this issue now, even if much of it will have to be in the planning stage due to lack of revenue, because there is some progress that can be made with our limited resources, and there is some scope for increasing our resources, and there is much planning to do which does not require much resources at this stage.

The SNP should take Joanna’s advice and look seriously at a different economic model.

Andy Anderson

Ardrossan