Isn't it time the SNP got on with the issues that really matter?

The Herald Scotland

4 hours ago

The SNP administration needs to start dealing with the issues that actually make this country of ours function on a daily basis. The time for navel-gazing about issues that are of little consequence to the vast majority of our citizens is not now. Too often our FM tries to smoke-screen his way out of the glare of public scrutiny by virtue-signalling one peripheral issue after another, meanwhile 'Rome burns' metaphorically. Our omnipresent challenges continue to grow and become more acute. I don't need to list these, as anyone who reads these columns and is au fait with current news will easily be able to pen their own list.
I suggest that we should be more engaged with the issues that affect the quality of life for the nation, rather than wasting time in anguishing about, for example, who uses which toilet. Leave that to the law makers.
Colin Allison, Blairgowrie.
We need to talk about pensions
In February to April 2025, the employment rate for people aged 16-64 in the UK was 75.1%.
The projected percentage of the population of working age in 2050 is 60.5%. Based on today's employability figures that would mean in just over 20 years only 45% of the country in work paying the vast majority of income tax for the welfare benefits of the day.
The amount of pensioners to working-age people is projected to be 393/1000 by 2070. That means there will be fewer than three people in work for every pensioner. It was 4:1 in 1970 and 5:1 when the state pension was introduced.
Successive governments have ignored the incoming time bomb of a population that is getting older with fewer working-age people to sustain it.
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Previous governments have tinkered with schemes such as NEST (National Employment Savings Trust) and auto enrolment but the reality is that this provides a pensioner a fraction of what post-war generations have enjoyed in the form of good occupational pensions and the current state pension.
I am currently projected to get my state pension when I am 68. I have no doubt that this number will increase but governments kicking the issue into the long grass will only result in more pain passed on to the next generation who will see the sharpest decline of pensioner living standards in history.
That is the most distressing part of Labour's welfare reforms – which are targeting some of the most vulnerable – as there is the need for a national conversation on what the Cura Annonae should look like in the years to come and importantly how it will be paid for.
Christopher McEleny, Gourock.
Death with dignity
The headlines in newspapers, TV and radio will be the vote on the assisted dying bill in England and Wales ("MPs vote to pass assisted dying bill at Westminster", heraldscotland, June 20). For those Scots with short memories, similar legislation passed its first reading in Scotland last month.
Opponents are now questioning the lack of palliative care available for patients with terminal illnesses. Only about 25 per cent funding comes from the Government, the rest from charitable donations.
My wife, former BBC Radio Scotland host Annie Webster, died in February and was a staunch supporter of assisted dying. She was in agony for much of the last six months of her life. But she was fortunate to get a place at the Beatson Cancer Centre in Glasgow for two weeks which she loved. The most important thing for her was to be pain-free. The care and laughter and craic from the doctors, nurses, orderlies and volunteers was unbelievable. Eventually she was in the Marie Curie Hospice (the place she insisted she wanted to die) and I was able to stay with her for her last eight nights. I will be eternally grateful, and she would be too.
Yes of course this support should be available to all and funded by the Government. But if it's not and someone gets to the stage they've simply had enough we have to let them die with dignity.
Andy Stenton, Glasgow.
Tourist tax will sink Glasgow
Fifty years ago the film Jaws put Amity Island tourist resort in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. No one wanted to visit. Now we find Glasgow City Council adopting a "head in the ocean" stance with its introduction of a tourist tax ("Glasgow 'tourist tax' approved as visitors face £4.83 tariff per night from 2027", The Herald, June 20).
Glasgow right now looks near derelict, particularly the city centre. The council has chased commerce and leisure away with high costs and a very car-unfriendly approach. Taxes only force folk to go elsewhere, just like the shark.
Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.
UK's record is shameful
Doug Maughan (Letters, June 20) refers to the UK's role in the overthrow of the democratically-elected Iranian government in 1953.
To go back much further, during the First World War the French and British divided the map of the Middle East into states that cut through ethnic and religious communities and at about the same time the UK infamously promised Palestine to both the Jews and the Arabs.
What is more, some 75 years ago Britain secretly supplied 20 tons of heavy water to Israel which enabled it to make nuclear weapons. Now such weapons are in the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu.
And then the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the USA, backed up by our then Prime Minister, was justified by the fabricated insistence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of 'weapons of mass destruction'.
What a sad story of greed, cruelty and deceit and I have not dwelt upon the terrible suffering, for the past 77 years, of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israelis, Israel being seen, ironically, as an outpost of western 'civilisation'.
Of our history in the Middle East we should be profoundly ashamed, our contribution to the never-ending suffering of the Palestinians and the Iranians displaying little in the way of caring for the consequences.
I say, on behalf of the Iranian population, 'Thank you Britain for so many years of suffering. It ought to have been so different. We ought to be being remembered for so very many contributions to the civilised world in the fields of art, architecture, poetry, science and technology, medicine, philosophy and engineering and not the rule of the Ayatollahs which you and the US imposed upon us'.
John Milne, Uddingston.
The test of Trump's character
Ever since the convicted felon DJ Trump was elected 47th President of the United States of America, the daily routine for many includes an anxious search for his latest outrageous acts and utterances to discover 'What Donald Did Next' .
Sophie Robinson's article ("Starmer urges Trump to step back from military strikes in Iran", The Herald, June 20) reports attempts by Keir Starmer to rein in the President's aggressive tendencies. It seems likely that Mr Trump fears being thought weak were he not to send in the bombers, and the impact of others, including our Prime Minister, to alter that view is likely to be minimal. DJ Trump is arguably the most powerful man in the world and his ability to shock and harm millions shows no signs of slackening. It is disquieting to acknowledge that, in light of his advanced age and previous pattern of behaviour, flaws in his personality and the quality of his decision-making are unlikely to improve.
We would do well to reflect on the saying attributed to Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the US. 'Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power".
Bob Scott, Drymen.
Will the tourist tax drive people away from Glasgow? (Image: Newsquest)
Celebrate the greats of our history
The recent outpouring of heartfelt admiration for Walter Scott in these pages has been nothing other than a delight. These letters and Rosemary Goring's article ("He is Scotland's greatest novelist but no-one reads him now. Why?", heraldscotland, May 24) read as a celebration of the rich and varied voices that compose Scotland's literary heritage. They stand in sharp contrast to the narrow-minded silencing of diverse voices at the Edinburgh Book Festival.
I was reflecting on this situation the other evening, walking from Queen Street Station to Central, when the two statues that I passed, Sir Walter Scott and the Duke of Wellington, reminded me that next week marks the 210th anniversary of the victory over Napoleon.
Having liberated Portugal and Spain, whose independence today seems entirely natural but was in fact paid for with the blood of British soldiers, Wellington's victory secured almost 100 years of European peace. Liberty was indeed in every blow. As the British ambassador in Paris, Wellington zealously attempted to persuade the French authorities to abandon their policy of colonial slavery, and later, as Prime Minister, he again marshalled his forces to secure the passing of the Catholic Relief Bill. He was, as his biographer Richard Holmes concludes, a great man built on a grand scale. There is no present-day British public figure that comes even close to his greatness.
Reading Scott's three works, based on his almost immediate pilgrimage to the battlefield, is time well spent. He was a war poet with all the connotations that that phrase evokes for war's victors and victims alike. Scott's Dance of Death poem with its mystical lines are my personal favourites:
…there are sounds in Allan's ear,
Patrole nor sentinel may hear,
And sights before his eye aghast
Invisible to them have pass'd.
Audible and visible only to an old soldier and perhaps the poet himself. But when, on Saturday June 24,1815, news reached Edinburgh of Wellington's victory, everybody heard. Scott tells us that every church bell in the capital rang for the whole of Saturday. Perhaps those in the proximity of the Scott Monument might close their eyes and hear those victory bells echo down through the centuries.
In light of Mark Smith's recent article ("No more Edinburgh Book Festival for me – where did it go wrong?", The Herald, June 14), perhaps it is time to consider an alternative Edinburgh literary festival. This alt-festival would not only celebrate what is great in our history, but would recognise the role that all Scotland's businesses play in making a literary society possible. Such a festival would always be open to debate the legacy of great men like Scott and Wellington.
Graeme Arnott, Stewarton.
Water Scott's immortality
To those errant schoolboys, like David Hay's brother (Letters, June 19), please note that you too were an easy target of fun for the great writer Sir Walter Scott himself. Here he describes a teacher looking forward to the close of day but who has toiled with "controlling petulance, exciting indifference to action, striving to enlighten stupidity, and labouring to soften obstinacy; and whose very powers of intellect have been confounded by hearing the same dull lesson repeated a hundred times by rote, and only varied by the various blunders of the reciters". Those are from the opening lines of Old Mortality, a cracking tale about the rise and fall of Covenanters. It had me from page 1.
Peter G Farrell, Glasgow.