SNP must not shelve their core mission in order to pass a budget

Where would this leave us?

With the party’s core mission shelved to maintain power, and power to what end – a devolutionist leadership that believes good governance and the inevitability of the country’s demographics will deliver in time?

READ MORE: SNP slam 'anti-democratic' Alex Cole-Hamilton after indy comments

There are positive measures that can be taken now which would restart a wider discussion on the future for Scotland: a citizens’ convention, encapsulating the whole of Scottish civic society, funded by our government. It hasn’t escaped my notice that the LibDem funding red line could be aimed at preventing the citizens’ convention getting off the ground. No surprise, as enabling the Scottish people to talk about their needs and wants could be dangerous to a Union which is extractive rather than facilitative of our wants. Wherever you are placed on the indy continuum, “mebbes aye, mebbes naw”, it’s clear the constitutional impasse is harming Scotland and her people and needs resolution.

Where does that leave us? Surely good governance and a ferocious drive for independence (including funds for that citizens’ convention) aren’t mutually exclusive! It is not only possible but the only practical means to re-elect a SNP government with a majority of independence MSPs in Holyrood ’26, when independence-supporting Scots are polling at 50% and the SNP polls are showing 30%. Give us something to aim towards for Holyrood ’26.

Dr Jacqui Jensen
via email

SHOULD the two main Unionist parties decide to inflict a long-term, fatal blow to the SNP in the Holyrood election in 2026, and agree to split the seats between them, is there anything to stop them winning every seat?

With SNP in the polls presently getting around 35%, and the Unionist support about 70%, wouldn’t it be an idea, now, for the SNP elected representatives to excite the electorate seriously with something for the nation’s future, and go into the election with 60% support?

Gordon G Benton
Newburgh, Aberdeenshire

SWEDEN’S Civil Contingencies Agency is mailing an updated version of the “In case of crisis or war” brochure to five million households in the country. It is double the size of the previous brochure issued six years ago.

As recent world events unfold, I am beginning to regret that my current home has no basement. I now wonder where I will sit out the weeks and possibly months after a nuclear retaliation by Russia. Should I be hiring a large van to transport and stockpile fuel, canned food and drink in preparation? How many toilet rolls should I panic-buy? Should I be replaying the old “Protect and Survive” films from the 1960s? Perhaps I should already begin removing my internal doors to form a basic shelter.

READ MORE: Vladimir Putin threatens UK with new ballistic missile retaliation

With the apparent blessing (God help us all) of the Scottish Government, the use of the UK’s cruise missiles against Russian territory, at a cost of £2,000,000 each, has raised the threat level to Scotland. The submarine base at Faslane will clearly be among the first targets should Mr Putin decide to push his nuclear button.

It is no secret that the Storm Shadow missiles now being sent to Ukraine and fired at Russia are assembled in Beith, Ayrshire, only around 20 miles from the centre of Glasgow. Mr Putin could easily justify a more limited strike on this facility with a “small” nuclear device.

The only comfort I can see from this scenario is that, with the total collapse of civilisation as we currently know it, I could possibly avoid payment of my large – and increasing day by day – heating bill.

Every nuclear cloud has a small silver lining.

Iain Wilson
Stirling

BOTH the founder and the official “leader” of the so-called “Reform” party are wealthy wheeler-dealers raised in wheeler-dealer families in the Surrey stockbroker belt. Neither of them ever had a real job in their privileged, wheeler-dealer lives.

The “Reform” party was founded by Richard Tice, who was very rich from the moment he was born into a wealthy family. Tice went to an expensive posh boarding school, then after getting a degree in quantity surveying he got a job in his grandfather’s “property developing” company. He was then made chief executive officer of the family company. Later, Tice became CEO of the “property investment” firm Quidnet Capital Owners.

READ MORE: Scottish venue rejects Reform UK conference booking

Tice founded the Reform party; but he thought it would be a clever trick to get the more populist Nigel Farage as frontman for that outfit. Nigel was the son of a stockbroker – somebody whose job was buying and selling stocks on the London Stock Exchange. Young Nigel was sent to the very posh and expensive Dulwich College; after leaving school, he got a job as a stockbroker. Neither him nor Tice have any experience at all of actual work at any kind of productive or useful employment.

Despite having no solid base in Scotland, but cashing in on Nigel’s pal (another born-rich wheeler-dealer who never had an honest job in his entire life) having some success in the USA, these two dodgy wheeler-dealers are planning to hold some sort of Scottish “conference” at the Royal George Hotel in Perth this coming Saturday.

The message should go out loud and clear: this “party” is a con trick by men with lifetime records of con-tricks. They are enemies of the working class.

Dave Coull
Findowrie