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The Herald Scotland

Shame on the SNP for pandering to the extreme left

Cancer patients in Scotland are not being treated promptly whilst our government is bailing out failing festivals and universities ("Ministers use powers to grant new cash bailout to university", The Herald, June 25). How will the SNP defend these facts on the doorstep at next year's election? Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow. • Rebecca McCurdy reports that '[(Scottish Government] ministers are to use unprecedented powers to issue Dundee University a further £40 million bailout amidst an ongoing financial crisis at the institution' – a crisis which it appears has been of the university's own making through complete and utter mismanagement and incompetence. Contrast that, and other wasteful governmental expenditure on virtue-signalling projects such as further Gaelic schools, when only around 1% of the population of Scotland actually speaks the language, with the complete failure to, at long last, do the right thing by the Isle of Mull and fund the extra capital required to provide the island with a secondary school in a location which would enable all of the island's children to receive the education they deserve without those from the south and west of the island having to board in Oban, away from their families, for most of the school week. It's high time this disgrace was finished. Bob Hamilton, Motherwell. Read more letters Why we're better off out of the UK Ian McConnell, The Herald's remoaner par excellence, campaigns incessantly for the UK to rejoin the EU ("Are Brexit revelations a mandate for Labour to take UK back into the EU?", The Herald, June 25). Yet we were always a net contributor, latterly to the tune of some £9 billion annually, the equivalent of over £150 per adult. That sum would be significantly higher if the ultimate basket-case, Ukraine, were granted accession, a long-standing aim of the Commission. Ukraine is 108th in tables of per capita GDP, way behind the poorest member state, Bulgaria, in 59th place; it is also notoriously corrupt, 105th in Transparency International's table. Add to that the EU's no longer sneaky but now blatant militarisation, and the UK is far better off out. George Morton, Rosyth. The case against Trident Ian Murray this week revealed he's ditching his 'lifelong' opposition to nuclear weapons and will look into removing his name from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) pledge. Why his Damascene conversion? Like other unionist parties, Labour is bankrolled by the nuclear lobby. It also knows that without nuclear power, there'd be no weapons programme. Nuclear power is needed for nuclear bombs. A 2017 University of Sussex study found that the costs of Trident would be 'unsupportable' without 'an effective subsidy, from electricity consumers to military nuclear infrastructure'. Consumers bearing the costs of uneconomic nuclear power (the private sector won't invest without government hand-outs) are also subsidising nuclear weapons. And the nuclear "deterrent" doesn't even work. Trident has failed two tests in a row. Yet the UK insists that it 'remains the most reliable weapons system in the world.' Then there's the Special Relationship, something the British Establishment via its latest cypher, Sir Keir, is keen to maintain. In July 2024, Labour amended the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement (MDA), a treaty under which the US provides the UK with nuclear weapons material and expertise without which Trident couldn't function. Officials deleted a long-standing sunset clause that required Parliament to renew the agreement every 10 years. The UK's nuclear arsenal is now permanently dependent upon the US, making a mockery of the UK Government claim that its nuclear weapons are 'operationally independent'. Finally, the UK nuclear deterrent is based on the Clyde, not the Thames, because Westminster doesn't want the South-east of England to be polluted by these nuclear rust buckets. Nor does it want its northern colony to actually know how badly they're polluting the land and water. In 2017, the MoD stopped publishing annual reports from the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator (DNSR), its internal watchdog, after the reports for 2005-2015 flagged 'regulatory risks' 86 times, 13 of which were rated high priority. Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh. • This week we have had more evidence that the UK Government dare not gainsay the USA because it relies on it to maintain the UK's ludicrously designated 'independent' nuclear weapons. How much longer will it be until a significant majority of Scottish voters realise that Scotland would be far better off as a small and truly free country within Europe? Ireland is doing well as an independent state and in the past 60 years many European countries with similar or smaller populations have also successfully become independent states: Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Croatia, and Slovakia. None of them would vote to revert to servitude. Denmark, a country with a population similar to Scotland but with fewer natural resources, will be assuming the presidency of the European Union next month. Small countries do not start wars: they seek co-operation for the common good. Peter Martin, Perth. Jets deal is wrong for Britain What happened to our great strategy that was going to see a big increase in jobs from defence spending? The first thing we do is buy USA ("Britain to expand nuclear deterrent fleet of new fighter jets", heraldscotland, June 25). We had dual-role aircraft in the past but gave that up. What a hypocrite we have for a Prime Minister. He can find money to keep in with President Trump while cutting welfare. I agree that welfare needs reform but it needs to be done very carefully. I also agree that the RAF probably needs aircraft of the type they are buying, but could we not have done something like with the V bombers and asked our own manufacturers to design and build quickly? That way we might have got the growth to pay for the welfare. Jim McAdam, Maidens. • Is this island of Britain now once again to be an American aircraft carrier to launch nuclear weapons? I was puzzled when I heard that the Labour Government would purchase F-35A and associated nuclear bombs, given Russia's undoubted military failure in its 'seven day' war with Ukraine. But it turns out that Congressional documents from 2022 show the US wanted Britain as a 'special weapons' site. The RAF having the same nuclear weaponry as America (same as Trident, a controlling US leash), and based on adjacent English airfields, might help minimise the threat of huge protests outside RAF Lakenheath that we saw two decades ago. However this absolutist Labour regime now thinks that any public show of dissent is akin to terrorism, so I suspect the next announcement will be for building new prison capacity to house all those who don't conform to Labour's right-wing Trump-enabling agenda. GR Weir, Ochiltree. Ian Murray (Image: PA) Will protest be outlawed? So now we know. If you kill 56,000 Palestinians, injure and maim around 120,000 more and leave over 40,000 children orphaned neither Sir Keir Starmer nor David Lammy will call you out as a terrorist state. However, if you stage a protest against all this at an RAF base and smear a couple of planes with paint you will be proscribed as a terrorist organisation – by a Labour government. It is surely only a matter of time before Sir Keir moves to classify pro-Palestine marches and demonstrations terrorist as well. After that who knows: Waspi Women, Scottish independence campaigners? Once Government ministers begin to crack down on civil liberties the UK will be well and truly on the way to becoming an authoritarian state. No doubt Donald Trump would approve, Alan Woodcock, Dundee. Better news for Scotland Among all the bad news, what a pleasure to get to page 8 of today's Herald (June 25) and read the caption under the photograph headlined "The Big Picture". According to research done for the Big Issue, child poverty is down 12% in Scotland while it's up 15% in England. So some good(ish) news for Scotland and yet more bad news for England and however many Keir Starmer supporters there are left. Patricia Fort, Glasgow.