The local residents are the first to suffer, as their national identity is sacrificed to political agendas.
Glaswegians have to cope with pothole-ridden roads and filthy streets because there is not enough budget for public services.
The city no longer has the resources to cope with the wave of asylum seekers and is in the grip of a housing emergency.
It is the Labour Party that is doing everything in its power to turn Scotland against London.
Let them now reap the fruits of years of inaction and devaluation of our problems.
No surprise that ignoring the Scots has led to a sharp drop in opinion polls for Sir Keir’s team, while Nigel Farage‘s Reform UK, in turn, is receiving unprecedented support from voters.
Iain Brocklebank, Shawlands, Glasgow.
More letters…
Farage will win because he speaks for the silent majority
Nicola Sturgeon will discover she has fewer allies than she thinks
Letters: NHS governance structure is not fit for purpose
The broom of the system
Neil Mackay’s latest reflection on his shifting view of the SNP was an interesting exercise in political rehabilitation – not of the party, but of the reader’s patience (“Politics is such a mess right now there is only one option for Scots like me”, The Herald, October 16).
Mr Mackay rightly catalogues the SNP’s many failings under its recent leaderships: Nicola Sturgeon’s hollow promises of imminent independence, Humza Yousaf’s policy bungles and years of missed opportunities.
Yet, remarkably, we are asked to believe that John Swinney’s arrival should be enough to wipe the slate clean.
Mr Swinney is no new broom. His long record in government is hardly one of transformation.
Indeed, his political reputation has long carried the sting of that old quip about being “savaged by a dead sheep”.
Not through malice, but because he inspires little more than weary indifference.
To dress up managerial competence as virtue speaks more to our diminished expectations than to any SNP revival.
Then, just as Mr Mackay appears to offer a balanced critique, the mask slips.
His tone veers from measured reflection to a diatribe against Reform UK and anyone daring to question the damage done by “woke” politics or government pandering ineptitude.
Legitimate concerns are casually dismissed as “far-right racism and thuggery”. Really?
Such labelling may play well in the comfort of moral certainty, but it stifles reasoned debate and alienates the very voters Mr Mackay claims to understand.
Ian Lakin, Milltimber, Aberdeen.
Fresh idea: politicians please electorate
Neil Mackay’s article confirms what I’ve always believed, namely that most sane people vote for the party that they feel will do them the least damage (“Politics is such a mess right now there is only one option for Scots like me”, The Herald, October 16).
This is because we all know that the inbuilt incompetence of politicians, who have no idea of what goes on in the outside world, guarantees that whoever gets into power is going to blame everything on the previous administration and then proceed to add to the misery of everyone in the country.
It’s happening right now at Westminster, and the appalling record of the current Scottish government is there for all to see.
Wouldn’t it be nice if politicians of all parties got together and gave a thought to the electorate, and what is good for the British public, rather than thinking about what is good for themselves and their parties?
Alan McGibbon, Paisley.
Right is wrong for Scots
Robert IG Scott claims the SNP is on a “hiding to nothing” at the 2026 Holyrood election (Letters, October 16).
Recent opinion polls tell a different story.
Only last month the Herald reported the latest opinion poll indicating the SNP with a 20% lead over Labour, translating into 63 seats.
This is only two short of an overall majority and close to the total of all other parties combined.
Scotland is currently witnessing a race to the right by both Labour and the Conservatives, each trying to catch up with Reform UK.
Here in Scotland the right has been rejected time after time, with no Conservative majority since the 1950s. I have no reason to believe this will change soon.
Scotland is a left of centre voting country. That’s why the SNP has been in power for almost two decades and why Labour are no longer the party of Scotland.
Catriona C Clark, Banknock, Falkirk.
The generation game
Jack Robertson repeats the weary trope that we have heard since the 2014 referendum (Letters, October 15).
He suggests that if the SNP do not win a majority in the Holyrood elections next May they should drop the issue of independence altogether.
Presumably he would urge the Conservative party to drop its support for free market capitalism, and the Greens to abandon any attempt to persuade the electorate that we have to safeguard the environment, on the basis that neither of them won the last election.
This is primary school logic: if you don’t win you are sent to a corner to suck your thumb.
In the real world, a political party is founded on a belief, which is made into policy and the party exists to persuade the electorate that it should vote for that policy.
If it doesn’t succeed this time, it will try again. And again.
And again, regardless of whether Mr. Robertson believes they should give in, go home and give up.
How many elections did it take before the Labour movement actually won an election? Just as well they didn’t follow Mr. Robertson’s logic.
It would be nice to think that we hear no more of this weary, illogical trope, but I am not going to hold my breath.
Mr. Robertson and his ilk will have to put up with the SNP campaigning for independence, and perhaps even another referendum.
Given that generations are reckoned in fourteen year time spans (Millennials 1980 to 1994, Gen Z 1995 to 2009 etc) another referendum must be due sometime soon.
Ken MacVicar, Lesmahagow.
Grappling with debt
The UK is fast approaching a £3 trillion (tn) national debt.
It also owes at least £2.1tn to holders of British government securities, of which approximately £745 billion is owed to the Bank of England (BoE) and £1,355 billion to external investors.
These are 2022 figures, but nevertheless with the £3tr national debt and £2.1tn gross debt that’s £5tn.
Also, these figures don’t include what is referred to as ‘off the book’ debt in the form of what it owes pensioners etc in the form of National Insurance payments and the like.
The majority of the £3tn national debt is in the form of gilts and bank securities etc.
But it’s the secretive BoE money that is more interesting, since who underwrites this?
Is it, for example, underwritten by the likes of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, rich Saudis and China?
Doug Clark, Currie.
Buck stops with NHS
Cathy Baird asks if Sandie Peggie has given a thought to the resources NHS Fife could have provided for its patients with the hundreds of thousands it is currently having to spend (Letters, October 16).
It was not Sandie Peggie’s choice to be suspended by her employer, NHS Fife.
David Clark, Tarbolton.
Medical training is time-consuming behemoth
Calum Steele queries the conclusion of the management consultants’ report that a reduction in staff would go some way to easing the problems experienced by NHS Grampian (“I’ve got an idea to improve the NHS – just cut more staff?”, The Herald, October 15) .
As a registered medical practitioner of 51 years standing, I offer a couple of suggestions:
1. I spent the first nine years of my career in General Practice (GP), having successfully completed GP vocational training, before crossing over to Occupational Medicine (OM), where I have spent the following 42 years (and counting) with 37 at consultant level, following successful completion of specialist training.
Looking back, my training in both GP and OM was positively feral, compared to the way in which current trainees seem to be micromanaged.
While some of the training aids available make me green with envy, postgraduate medical training has morphed into a huge empire, whose costs affect not only NHS health boards, but also the medical and surgical Royal Colleges and their faculties.
2. The response to the Harold Shipman scandal was to make medics who wished to remain on the Medical Register (and thus continue to ply their trade) participate in a five yearly cycle of revalidation.
If we can show five acceptable annual appraisals (each one an interview with a peer who is at some professional distance from us) then we are likely to make the grade.
Two or three years ago, in the pre-appraisal small talk, my appraiser told me that I was one of ten allocated to him, and he had to allocate two hours to go through the material that I had submitted, 1.5 hours interviewing me, and a further hour to write up his conclusions about me.
In other words, 45 hours lost to a mixture of patient contact/junior staff or personal training/service administration/committee work.
This has created another behemoth, of questionable benefit.
Finally, I wonder if Mr Steele would agree with a definition that I have heard of a management consultant:- ‘A person who takes your watch and uses it to it to tell you the time.’
Christopher W Ide, Waterfoot, East Renfrewshire.
Oil jobs lost
At last Britain has banned the import of cheap refined oil products which originated in Russia.
Such a pity it didn’t happen before INEOS killed off Grangemouth, resulting in all the oil from our nation being refined in another country, killing off our jobs and making our GDP appear worse.
It would have been nice if the same effort had been expended to Grangemouth by the UK government as that for the Lindsey oil refinery.
Iain McIntyre, Sauchie.
Go west (it’s best)
Reading Mark Smith’s article, I found myself nodding in solemn agreement (“Universities need to speak out more against bias on accents”, The Herald, October 11).
However, I can’t help suspecting that if I, or even Mr Smith, were lying on a hospital bed, we might just be the teeniest bit discombobulated, were we to hear the consultant physician and the consultant surgeon discussing the impending procedure in East End London rather than West End Glasgow accents.
Robin Dow, Rothesay.
Cash and carry: It’s the Rod Stewart ethos(Image: Newsquest)
Money… Rod canny say no
I noticed an appearance by Rod Stewart in The Herald (Letters, Oct 16).
Which reminds me that he has some ‘previous’ in charging exorbitant amounts for tickets.
In January 1977 I nearly choked when I bought tickets for his first solo concert at the Glasgow Apollo. It cost five pounds!
Quite incredible, considering just two weeks earlier I paid £2.50 to watch Rory Gallagher (a better concert by the way).
Ah, Sir Rod. Ever the canny Scot.
Roy Gardiner, Kilmarnock.