Notice board Devolution is failing, in exactly the way it was designed to
l Jim Cuthbert, economist and former chief statistician at the Scottish Office, will give a talk at 7pm tonight at Edinburgh Newington-Southside SNP’s meeting at Priestfield Parish Church. John Mason MSP, a member of Holyrood’s finance committee, will also participate in the discussion titled Scotland’s Fiscal Settlement.
l The Radical Independence Campaign (Edinburgh branch) is hosting a public meeting on Scottish Independence and Internationalism from Below at 7pm tonight at Augustine Church, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh. There will be speakers from the campaign against the arms trade, SNP Trade Union Group, and Ukraine Solidarity Campaign.
l Author Kate Foster will be talking about her new book The Maiden, which is Waterstones’s Scottish Book of the Month, at 6pm tonight at Waterstones in Perth. The novel is a 17th-century-set whodunnit revolving around a noblewoman accused of murdering her lover. Free, all welcome.
l Screenings of To See Ourselves, Jane McAllister’s documentary about the 2014 independence referendum, are taking place at 7pm on Friday at Ayr Town Hall; 7pm on Saturday at CCA, Glasgow; 6.30pm on Friday, March 22 at Strathearn Arts, Crieff; and 2pm on Sunday, April 7 at Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh. Each screening will be followed by a Q&A. For details of how to buy tickets see toseeourselves. film/see-the-film
l Edinwfi are marking IWD24 at their meeting on Saturday from 2-4pm at Edinburgh Central Youth Hostel, with guest speakers in person and zooming in from the USA and Jordan. The topic for discussion is Women & Conflict: Surviving then Thriving, which will cover the current conflict areas Ukraine and Palestine. Details and Zoom link from edinburghwfi@gmail.com
KARL Rosie parades before your readers a wandering list of many of the problems facing the Highlands and Islands (It’s time for Highland communities to take control of own destiny, Mar 11). All of them can be addressed if we had a democratically elected and progressive government in an independent Scotland.
At local level, here in Caithness, one of our main problems is that our politicians are just not up to the job. The cabal of “independent” Caithness councillors have proven time and time again to be worse than useless, partly due to the arithmetic of the Inverness-based Highland Council and partly due to their conservatism.
Currently our MP is the LibDem Jamie Stone, who is the equivalent of the ghost at a wedding. Whatever he says, he says nothing. Our MSP is Maree Todd, who is an honest and hard-working individual, but her constituency is the size of a small European country, as is the Highland Council area, which is not local nor particularly democratic. To hold up Fergus Ewing as an “inspiring political hero”, as Karl does, is baffling as he is a political reactionary who in my opinion is in the wrong party.
Land ownership, housing, energy, education, transport and the NHS are all crucial issues which a devolved government operating within a fixed grant from Westminster, with limited tax-raising powers and no ability to borrow, can only crisis-manage.
Devolution was designed to fail and it is failing all across Scotland. Those who voted No in 2014 and Leave in 2016 and who resign from or who will not vote for the only party which can deliver independence need to own their choices. I would suggest to Karl Rosie that there are indeed many holes in the A9, which stretches from Scrabster to Perth, and that Alba is just another one.
George Gunn
Thurso
I WAS disappointed in Leah Gunn Barratt’s letter, “It’s clearer than ever the Ukrainian conflict is a proxy war” (Mar 6). She speculates whether the Ukrainian war has been engineered by Nato and the West in order to push Russia back. Putin claims the same. But we should be careful to steer round conspiracy theories.
A little knowledge of recent Ukrainian and Russian history does help explain why Ukrainians are fighting for their lives at the front.