HAVING been a permanent critic of BBC Scotland’s output, I was very pleasantly surprised to see two episodes of the programme Who Owns Scotland?
Martin Geissler very ably heads up a programme with a collection of land experts including the amazing Andy Wightman.
This is a wonderful piece of investigative television for everyone, including lefties who may have (misguidedly, in my view) gone back to their Labour roots in the last election. The second episode includes optimistic presentations of community buy-outs in Huntley and Langham with enthusiastic support from local people who genuinely know what will benefit their local community.
READ MORE: Huge spike in objections to Flamingo Land Loch Lomond development
I took three things from the programme. Firstly, it is vital to keep educating ourselves about the world around us. I am grateful to SNP members who educated me about so much during 2014, and I haven’t stopped learning from others since.
Engels commented on the marvellous capacity for working-class organisation in the UK in the 19th century but complained about the failure to value theory. We need to do much more in the indy movement to develop a critical capacity to debate without rancour and finger-pointing. And we need to keep learning about what is deliberately hidden from us by those who exploit us.
Then, our next stage of campaigning for indy should be around progressive community projects that will genuinely transform neighbourhoods and bring clear benefits to us all. Salvo and Liberation (liberation.scot) have a lot to teach us in this regard. The difficulty comes from communities that lack confidence and feel powerless, and we all know how that has come about. Professor Alf Baird has done much to expose the different stages of colonisation that strip us of the will to act or the confidence to do it.
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Lastly, land is at the centre of everything, whether you live in a city or a rural area.
The wonderful call of the land depicted by Chris Guthrie in Sunset Song is at the heart of everything, although like much else it has been very obscured. Graeme McCormick has been a tireless campaigner for land valuation and for the use of public land that has been allowed to lie undeveloped. Graeme’s capacity to keep going in the face of endless rebuffs by the SNP leadership is a wonder to behold.
Those of us who support the call to independence must find new and innovative ways to make the call and those who are resistant should try to open their minds a bit to new ideas.
Maggie Chetty
Glasgow
I SUPPOSE we can all appreciate the dilemma faced by the Scottish Government when awarding the contract for seven new electric ferries. Should they put it out to competitive tender, or face possible legal action and award the contract to Ferguson’s of Port Glasgow despite Ferguson’s appalling record on the two ferries still to enter service after many years of delay and many hundreds of millions of pounds of overspend.
It appears a compromise of sorts has been reached, with the electric ferries going out to tender and a further Scottish Government investment of £14.2 million in Ferguson’s in the hope it can continue to live on, possibly as a sub-contractor of BAE Systems.
READ MORE: Kate Forbes 'optimistic' about Ferguson Marine's future
There appears to be no further news on the Auditor General’s attempts to find out what happened to £128.25m as yet unaccounted for in the current ferries contract. Presumably it exists somewhere – either in the fabric of the two ferries or in a number of bank accounts somewhere! Is this money simply to be written off by the Scottish Government?
Is the further £14.2m to be paid regardless of the unaccounted £128.25m? In addition, is the £14.2m dependent on a clear salary and bonus structure for senior management of the yard, including the current managing director who resides in Canada?
A recent survey found that only 47% of people now trust the Scottish Government to work in Scotland’s best interests, down from 61% in 2019. The Ferguson’s ferry fiasco is surely part of the reason for this.
It feels like the 2026 election campaign is already under way. This saga needs to be brought to a conclusion long before May 2026.
Brian Lawson
Paisley
READ MORE: Ferguson CEO says 'unfair competition' will hurt ferry contract bid
I’VE thought for the last few years that the SNP in government and the SNP leading the independence movement was never going to cut it. Any issues in government have been maximised and blown out of all proportion by Union supporters and of course by 90% of the media. This may not be the reason for the catastrophic General Election result but it certainly was a factor.
The only way to move the independence cause forward is to reform the Independence Convention movement, and thankfully that is what Believe in Scotland is doing. I would urge all SNP and Alba supporters as well as all other Yes supporters to check out the BiS website. Let’s all get involved in this; time is of the essence.
C Tait
Largs
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