KELLY Given’s article on the potential of the appointment of Murray Foote as chief executive of the SNP (Foote can bring needed fresh perspective to SNP, Aug 24) envisages the benefits that can be had if the members get behind the new team that will be fighting future elections.
The critics are already out in force, as the new chief was pro-Union and the architect of The Vow.
He was one of the quarter of the population who were pro-Union at the start of the referendum campaign and are now supporting independence. The Vow was scuttled by its signatories.
READ MORE: Former Daily Record editor Murray Foote named new SNP chief executive
The SNP have shown that they can run an effective devolved government and even under the restrictive grip of Westminster have made Scotland a better place to live.
It is the time for change, as the UK Government is taking unprecedented action to block devolution and an independence referendum.
Old faces are going – some to a well-earned retirement, others to grumble in other places – and new faces are appearing that are hopefully the generation that will lead the party as it takes Scotland to its place alongside all the other free nations in the world.
John Jamieson
South Queensferry
THE appointment of Murray Foote as the new chief executive of the SNP is beyond parody.
Murray resigned as SNP spin doctor this year after giving out false membership numbers. He was author of the notorious “Vow”, the most prominent lie that the Unionist campaign vomited up in 2014. To this day Foote insists that the “Vow” was implemented.
The SNP leadership now want voters to believe Foote has suddenly had a Damascene conversion to the truth. Murray Foote is the Unionist establishment personified. He is now at the heart of the alleged independence movement in Scotland.
READ MORE: Who is Murray Foote? SNP name ex-Record editor as chief executive
That the hapless and weak leadership of the SNP thought he was the most appropriate candidate for this position shows the direction of travel they are going in.
Under the current leadership it is indisputable independence has been abandoned. Devo max is now the unofficial policy. The current leader has ruled out any deals with the independence-supporting Alba party. But not the Unionist Labour Party.
This is the poisoned legacy of the Sturgeon era. Toxic identity politics and the vilification of opponents.
Unless the “continuity” candidate and all the other Sturgeon lackeys are removed from positions of influence, the SNP is looking at an electoral drubbing.
In order to ensure that people who actually wants independence can express this through the ballot box, it is important that candidates who support real independence are standing in every seat at the Westminster election.
It is crystal clear that going into the 2024 General Election that will not be the SNP in its current incarnation.
Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee
READ MORE: Humza Yousaf ‘delighted’ to have Murray Foote as SNP chief executive
REGARDING the letters from Messrs Baird and Crawford in The National “doun dingin” the poor wee Green Party, I have only one question: what if they are completely wrong? Perhaps the are so unwilling realise the scope of the whole green movement that they cannot see that the minor examples that they quote are but preliminary signs of the root-and-branch changes we are going to to have to make to our whole society.
There are many experts describing the alterations we have to make in our relationship to the environment, politicians foreseeing the changes arising from of the rebalancing between rich and poor and economists telling of the downfall of the capitalist system.
However, I can only tell of the world that existed in my childhood and which I think we will have to return to. Nobody had a car and everybody used trams and trains; nobody flew to their holiday; where I lived there were few pubs or restaurants; cobblers mended our shoes and our mothers our clothes. Sweets were rationed. There was no obesity or junk food, plastic or supermarkets.
A phone could be found in a booth. When Macmillan announced that we had never had it so good, we followed like sheep into the modern world. Soon we will see the overarching folly of our civilisation, which is not the creation of the Green Party.
Iain WD Forde
Scotlandwell
NEVER in my wildest dreams did I envisage agreeing with Douglas Ross, but very reluctantly I have to say that he is right with his drugs use comment (Ross ‘exposes ignorance’ with ‘ill-judged’ claims, Aug 23).
We are being pushed by politicians into accepting that drug abusers should be given facilities to take illegal drugs. This misguided plan doesn’t just put illegal drug abuse on a par with other illnesses – it prioritises it over, for example, cancer.
The Unionist media have been using Scottish drugs deaths as a spurious excuse to condemn the Scottish Government for years, knowing full well that when an individual decides on a course of drug abuse it is not the fault of politicians.
READ MORE: Fact check: Douglas Ross's drug decriminalisation claims are wrong
They have railroaded certain SNP politicians into this misguided plan, yet will be the first to tell us that Scottish taxpayers’ money is funding drug-taking should this policy come into being.
We live in a culture where personal responsibility for the consequences of our actions has become a thing of the past, as if we are all collectively to blame for heroin or cocaine abuse.
The methadone programme was supposed to help. Politicians don’t like to talk about it as it has proved to be a disaster. Giving drugs addicts more drugs – did we really think that was the answer?
Rest assured that this proposed policy will be a huge vote-loser if it happens.
Jim Butchart
via email
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