Don’t miss out on a winter fuel payment if you are entitled to it

This cut will impact greatly on those on low incomes who rely on this payment each winter. Even more so in the Highlands, where we have colder winters and higher energy costs.

READ MORE: Scots are being left in the cold by a government failing to put up a fight

Your article rightly states that it will be replaced with a means-tested benefit and only available to those on Pension Credit and other income-based benefits.

Official figures show that up to £20 billion in means-tested benefits and tax credits goes unclaimed in the UK every year, with more than a million pensioners who could receive Pension Credit missing out, so the message to those who are not claiming the benefits to which they are entitled should be: claim now in order to still qualify for the winter fuel payment.

There is the need for much better publicity and a proactive stance from the Scottish Government. Some information is available on government websites and also on AgeUK (age.org.uk) and Martin Lewis’s website (moneysavingexpert.com). In addition, local Citizens Advice Bureaux can give free and confidential advice regarding Pension Credit and other benefits and can offer support for the application process.

Don’t miss out on the Winter Fuel Payment if you are entitled to it!

Kate Kirk
Social Policy Co-ordinator, Skye and Lochalsh Citizens Advice Bureau

TOMMY Sheppard represented the SNP in Westminster for the past nine years. With a fair bit of that time being spent in London he possibly missed the changing views of his constituents, who eventually removed him from office on July 4, wiping out his 10,419-vote majority from 2019 and replacing him with a Labour MP by a majority of 3715.

Almost 40 of his parliamentary colleagues suffered a similar fate. In a council by-election last week the SNP candidate gained less than 20% of the vote. In a coming council by-election in North Ayrshire the SNP have failed to even field a candidate.

READ MORE: Tommy Sheppard: These obvious changes would put SNP on a better footing

In Monday’s National, in response to these electoral disasters, Mr Sheppard suggests the SNP should revise the method it uses to select delegates to its conference, in order to make it smaller and reduce the number of vice conveners on its National Executive. As a former member of the National Executive I can certainly agree that there are too many vice conveners and representatives of, in some cases, small minority groups to whom independence is a secondary issue.

However, I am fairly sure that these internal SNP issues are not high in the thoughts and minds of the wider Scottish electorate. I suspect most of them are more concerned with the usual mixture of jobs, cost of living, education, transport and the like. SNP supporters were, and still are, to say the very least disappointed in the party’s lack of progress on its principle aim of independence.

Mr Sheppard went to the House of Commons in 2015 “not to argue the case for independence” and certainly kept that promise. In the meantime the SNP and the Scottish Government faced a wealth of policy and performance failures – most of their own doing. On July 4 the electorate passed its judgement by either voting Labour or simply not voting for anyone.

May 2026 is fast approaching, and tinkering with the SNP’s constitution will not save us from another defeat, Mr Sheppard.

Brian Lawson
Paisley

MANY thanks to Councillor Tom Johnston for drawing our attention to “La Marche des Soldats de Robert Bruce” in his excellent letter of August 15 – perfect anthem material (if still a fraction slow for me in most renditions). As Mr Johnston points out, this glorious tune is, shamefully, heard more in France and elsewhere than in Scotland. I have little doubt it is played alongside the Saltire that flies 365 days a year in St Valery en Caux, where the 51st Highland Division were abandoned to Rommel’s troops by Churchill in June 1940, but are not forgotten by the inhabitants of this little port.

Those who agree that Scotland needs a proper, dignified and uplifting national anthem should speak up.

David Roche
Blairgowrie

TOM Johnston and David Roche mount a strong case for the adoption of Scots Wha Hae as a Scottish anthem. However, maybe this reflects my view on life, but, “Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled, Scots, Wham Bruce has aften led; Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victory!” is a touch too brutal for me.

I much prefer the more thoughtful “But we can still rise now and be the nation again that stood against him, proud Edward’s army and sent him homewards tae think again!”. As to decrying the common folk as arbiters for an anthem, I can’t think of a more appropriate group of people. Maybe it’s because I’m one of them.

It also occurs to me that, if another song was adopted as an official anthem, carefully selected by “official arbiters”, the crowd would still sing out Flower of Scotland at Murrayfield.

Tony Perridge
Inverness