SNP has numerous achievements
Sir, Donald J Morrison’s unpleasant letter last week ( The Oban Times, March 23) was peppered with personal insults and slights against Nicola Sturgeon but contained little of substance about the real reasons so many Scots continue to demand a referendum for Scottish independence.
Mr Morrison’s theme, which has already been given a good airing by Ruth Davidson, national newspapers and others, is that Scotland is ‘sick and tired’ of the calls for another referendum and that the SNP government should ‘get on with the day job’. Both complaints are bluster and false outrage.
The mandate for another referendum is crystal clear. Circumstances have changed dramatically since 2014. The choice is no longer between a supposed secure continuity (including continued membership of the European Union) within the UK and the alleged uncertainties of independence, which the No campaign advocated in 2014.
The choice is now between one change and uncertainty and another change and uncertainty: the change to a hard-Brexit UK separated from the largest single market in the entire world, or to a Scotland free to continue its growth as a progressive and successful independent nation.
The SNP manifesto that returned 56 of 59 MPs to the Westminster parliament explicitly included the promise of a further referendum if circumstances changed so dramatically that one was required. The circumstances have changed, and continue to change with alarming rapidity. The status quo is no longer an option, and it is mischievous and misleading to suggest that it is.
The SNP government has also been getting on with the day job very successfully, so to claim otherwise (especially without any specifics) is again misleading. The government’s approval rating is about 50 per cent, which, after 10 years in administration, is exceptionally high.
Clearly, there are plenty of people who are not as ‘sick and tired’ as Mr Morrison and Ms Davidson would like to pretend.
The full list of this government’s achievements literally takes pages, even in brief summary, but the following few highlights will find many readers nodding in agreement that these are substantial and welcome improvements to life in Scotland, especially by comparison with some of the truly worrying developments which have taken place in England over the same period.
Record funding for the NHS – more than £13 billion in 2017, £3.6 billion more than when the SNP took office.
Free tuition protected, saving students in Scotland up to £27,000 compared to the cost of studying in England.
Prescription charges abolished. In England, patients are forced to pay £8.40 per item.
More than 60,000 affordable homes have been completed, with a further 22,000 households supported into home-ownership.
Recorded crime in Scotland at its lowest level in 42 years.
All children in primaries 1-3 – around 135,000 pupils – now benefiting from free school meals, saving families around £380 per child per year.
Youth unemployment at its lowest rate since records began, and the second lowest in the EU.
Presumably, Mr Morrison would not approve of that list, or of the literally hundreds of further achievements I could substantiate and provide evidence for, if there were space. That is his privilege. He is entitled to his opinion, and if he wants to make sarcastic and derogatory personal comments about Ms Sturgeon, free speech also gives him the right to do that.
But all of us who are living and working in Scotland also have the right to our own opinions, and to express them. The 62 per cent of us who voted to remain in the EU, and who were promised a referendum by the Scottish Government if Westminster tried to take us out of Europe against our will, have the right to hold Holyrood to their promise. That is the pledge Ms Sturgeon gave, and will honour.
I have spoken with many people who are not SNP members, or particularly fond of Ms Sturgeon, but who respect her determination to give the people the opportunity to express their opinion and to make their own choice. This is not about Nicola Sturgeon and her dreams. It is not even about the SNP.
It is about the people of all parties and none, whatever their opinions, who have the right to make a real choice about Scotland’s future, as the government promised them. It is about democracy. Yowann Byghan, Ardmaddy View, Clachan Seil.