Scottish Tories think they can treat us like fools

Dear Editor, Recent performances by the Tories beg the question of how competent they are to ever get near government in Scotland.

In September, Ruth Davidson claimed doctors had warned the Scottish NHS faced ‘pockets of meltdown’ this winter.

The quote was from Dr Mark Holland in a report of 94 acute medical units across the UK - only three of which were in Scotland.

She was complaining about the NHS where her own party run it.

And as the Christmas period showed, it was the English NHS which the Red Cross said was having a “humanitarian crisis”.

Two weeks later she complained that the Scottish Government wasn’t doing enough to produce energy to go into the National Grid.

Yet it’s her party’s government in Westminster which cut subsidies to the growing renewables industry - and in which Scotland has a massive natural advantage.

And it’s also her party’s government which fails to change the electricity charging regime that sees electricity produced in Scotland charged more than that around London.

Then in December, we had new Tory MSP Jamie Greene - the Scottish Tories’ Connectivity spokesperson - tweeting that mobile phone coverage was awful under the SNP.

He then quickly deleted the tweet when it was pointed out that mobile phone coverage is a power held by his party’s government in London.

Now we have Tory finance spokesperson Murdo Fraser claiming the Scottish Government is making cuts when the fact is that his party at Westminster controls the overall level of Scottish spending and the independent Fraser of Allander Institute say they will have cut it by £1.6bn by 2021! It’s an emerging pattern that either suggests that they are incompetent or think the public will blame the SNP for the mess their party is actually making.

It’s like they think they can get away with treating voters as fools and get away with it.

Andrew Stuart, by email.