ROBIN McAlpine absolutely hit the nail on the head with his comment piece in Friday’s National. The SNP rightly installed John Swinney to try steady the ship in incredibly stormy waters after the party’s idiotic idea to appoint Humza Yousaf as leader during their “Anyone But Kate” campaign.
Humza is a very decent man but was never even remotely capable of being a strong, decisive leader. John Swinney was brought in to try to stop the massive losses in membership, not to try to start growing membership numbers, and that in itself sums up everything that is so wrong currently about the SNP.
Seeing our elected government display absolutely no fight, fire or passion whatsoever, having promised us the world, and meekly accepting one damaging decision after another for us all, is incredibly frustrating, enraging and heartbreaking. It gives us all the feeling that we have been well and truly sold down the river.
READ MORE: John Swinney says it’s ‘time for SNP to step up’ in conference speech
We all have to be brutally honest here. There needs to be a massive change in the SNP from top to bottom with a stiff broom taken to rid the party of the masses of dead wood and career opportunists, including some very well-kent names who do far more damage than good with the meek and delusional columns we have to suffer in your pages each week.
Idiotic policy decisions allow the Unionists to have a field day, blowing holes in the SNP’s complete and utter naivety.
Nicola “Promise the Earth” Sturgeon resigned after many years of ignoring the huge income we could attain by actually taxing our huge lands properly and completely ignoring the massive opportunities to drive indy support through the roof by speaking at the huge rallies All Under One Banner held a few years back.
She also then refused to work with Salvo and the other indy-supporting organisations regarding looking at legal route to bypass a Westminster-run referendum.
What Scotland needs so badly is a firebrand first minister with an abundance of intelligence and integrity who can see clearly what is needed to make Scotland the nation is so badly needs to be; someone who will challenge the lies coming from the media and Unionist politicians; who will refuse to accept, never mind publish the deliberately manufactured, anti-Indy GERS figures (Greedy Etonians Rigged Statistics); and who will produce our own annual report to fight this nonsense every step of the way.
We need someone who will fight fire with fire and will point-blank refuse to accept a dismissal of our sovereign right of our nation to decide our own future, someone who will fight to block any pipelines being built to take away Scotland’s energy; someone who will not accept that we have no say in the way we fight our Westminster-created drug problem; someone who refuses to accept that we cannot borrow money and cannot have our own national broadcaster; and who will demand we stop being ignored.
The really sad thing is the SNP already have the very person needed within their ranks, one of the very few shining lights in an ocean of complete and utter mediocrity.
They have a potential political superstar in their ranks and continue to attack her at every opportunity for having the audacity to have a belief system that doesn’t match their pie in the sky ideals and start realising this young lady is a an absolutely life-changing political diamond.
Imagine the catastrophic losses if Kate Forbes decided she had had enough of being made a scapegoat within the SNP, being constantly attacked by party members and of having her obvious and huge talents being ignored and overlooked for the top job, then having to watch it being given to people who couldn’t tie her shoelaces never mind run a country better than her?
It’s time for the SNP to wake up if they are actually still serious about ever recovering from the last few years of broken promises and spineless timidity.
Iain K
Dunoon
WHY are Labour so worried about money? In 1997, when they took office under Tony Blair, the national debt was £350 billion. When they left in 2010 it had risen to £900bn.
It is now a staggering £2750bn but nobody has shown the slightest concern about this huge increase. Neither does this money have to be repaid because it was created from thin air by the banking system, and for as long as we can pay them the interest on it, all is well. No need to deny people their cold weather payments.
Malcolm Parkin
Kinnesswood, Kinross
THE mean daily temperature in Aberdeen in January is 3.5C according to Wikipedia. In London it is 5.9C. How can it be considered fair by the Westminster Government to cut off the winter heating allowance without, at the very least, considering how harshly it impacts Scotland in comparison to southern England?
It was ever thus. Energy-rich Scotland is unable to use its massive resources of oil, gas and wind for the benefit of its people. In this case, as in many others, “Better together” benefits only England.
James Duncan
Edinburgh
RECENT letters about speaking Scots reminded me of a long-ago story from a small country school, where a teacher had an uphill job trying to instil “proper English” in children who heard and spoke mostly Scots at home.
On a freezing cold winter day, a wee boy put his hand up and requested, “Please Miss, can ah pit oan ma jaikit?” In severe tones, the teacher asked “James, what is it called?”, to which the boy replied, “Aye, Miss, it’s no hauf cauld!”
P Davidson
Fakirk
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel