AFTER reading Mike Russell’s article on Rishi Sunak’s behaviour over the Elgin Marbles, I think that the majority of people must surely be embarrassed by the attitude of the Prime Minister and several other ministers last week (Sunak has lost his marbles if he thinks UK can hold on to sculptures, Dec 2).

They revealed the extent of their belief in the superiority, entitlement and international sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament by claiming that under its own 1816 British Museum Act the museum has the legal responsibility to preserve all collections in its possession for worldwide audiences.

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These political dinosaurs are still hankering after the era when the act was passed, where the world map was encircled by the pink of the Empire with the British Museum as the showcase of its global dominance to the rest of the world.

Scots must not disown Westminster’s folly and get carried away by self-congratulations over this situation – after all, it was a Scot who removed these treasures from where they had survived for thousands of years. Although our Scottish museums have handed back a few artefacts, the attitude that possession outweighs origin persists. Even within Scotland many others (such as the St Ninian’s Isle silver hoard) still lie in the National Museum of Scotland, albeit with replicas on show in local museums.

John Jamieson
South Queensferry

LLOYDS of faraway London have disgracefully decided to close the local Bank of Scotland branch here in Dunoon, where nine times out of ten you have to queue out the door to be served as it’s so popular. This action is absolutely disgraceful on every level as there are always older people with disabilities sitting being helped by staff, and some faceless clown in an office in London cares not a jot about these people’s plight all across our land.

The Scottish Government could move the dial hugely in favour of independence if they would take over the lease of several hundred of the now vacant premises that were our banks for decades and start up an actual Bank of Scotland and not one Scottish in name only. Apart from it making sense on every level, it would be a huge help to people right across our land.

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I will finish with something I encountered last Thursday. I was helping an old lady with her shopping by carrying it to her car and she noticed my shoes, which have a small red tartan panel. She said she liked them but hoped I wasn’t one of “those SNP people”, and when I said I am completely committed to Scotland coming out of the 18th century and taking control of our own affairs, and that people need to wake up and stop buying papers like the Daily Mail, which she had in her bag, and start buying The National, and then they would start to realise they are being absolutely hoodwinked.

We had a friendly chat and were laughing over our diametrically opposite opinions when she said “The latest thing the SNP are going to do is get rid of the Girl Guides, Brownies, Boys’ Brigade and the Scouts and start a new Youth of Scotland organisation” – as her friend told her. The levels people will go to try ensure their own weans never prosper is absolutely incredible.

We agreed to disagree and she even told me she liked me but my politics stunk. This from the wee wummin with one of the worst state pensions on earth, complaining she had to wear extra layers to try keep warm, which shows you just how brainwashed so many people really are.

Iain K
Dunoon

IT seems that Stan Grodynski found my recent letter “greatly disappointing” (Letters, Dec 2). He claims he saw an absence of examples of the cronyism, corruption and incompetence of our “Westminster masters”. I did not think readers of The National needed me to come up with examples of these.

I note, however, that he was not willing or able to contradict the facts contained in my letter, when I equated the huge cuts to Scottish Government’s budgets with the vast overspend at Ferguson's shipyard. The numbers do not lie. We are all about to find out that the Scottish Government cannot spend the same money twice. The approximately £500 million overspend (about £100 from each of us) is money that cannot be spent on, for example, local government or our health service.

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In the words of the old saying, “two wrongs don’t make a right”. We cannot continue to point a finger at Westminster and the likes of Matt Hancock, or the HS2 project, and simply say “look – we are just not quite as bad as them”.

There are unfortunately too many folk in the independence movement who do not want to see, or hear, how the very apparent lack of competence from the Scottish Government is bit by bit, day by day, eroding support for both the SNP and the Scottish Government. In the next year there will be a Westminster election. Sadly, “independence YES or NO” will not be on the ballot paper but the SNP and its candidates will be. They will be judged on their record and will be punished for what the public see as a lack of good governance.

The 10-15% of the population who we probably still need to convince of the merits of our case for independence are also becoming aware of the fact that, as Stan himself admits, “taxpayer funds have not been spent wisely”. They can also clearly see the broken election promises like the very clear promise to provide all our schoolchildren with a laptop and the dualling of the A9.

There is little point in us campaigning for an independent Scotland if it is simply to become an imitation of the current Westminster government wrapped in a tartan scarf.

Glenda Burns
Glasgow