April comes early

It was too early for April Fool’s Day yet reading Alex Salmond say Scotland needed more politicians to handle increased powers of independence, it seemed the clocks did need changing! Political offic- es have been one of the few growth areas in Scotland!

Self-governing New Zealand currently has a one-chamber Parliament with 122 members and introduced the mixed member system before devolution brought it in at Holyrood.

The former First Minister serves at Westminster but if worried about increasing standard of committee scrutiny at Holyrood he could suggest the more-often effective smaller committees and reducing the number of cabinet secretaries and deputies, thus making a few of them available to do committee work and find out where and how they fail to run their departments effectively!

JIM CRAIGEN

Downie Grove, Edinburgh

Astonishing though it is, Alex Salmond is right.

The Holyrood election Regional Lists should be replaced by a National List. What’s the point of introducing a proportional representation element and then adding a dose of first past the post unfairness by regionalising it?

The current regional system unjustly rewards geographical concentration of support, while setting the bar too high for viable yet small new