SNP’S failings

Alexander Mckay (Letters, 15 September) hits the nail on the head in wondering if it would be better if the SNP left the administration of Scotland to real politicians. Their lack of effective performance over the last ten years in areas such as health, education, transport and the police is certainly of grave concern.

For example, the formation of Police Scotland was ill-conceived and poorly planned and given the string of high-profile failures has hardly been a resounding success. At least Deputy Chief Constable Iain Livingstone should be commended for putting off his retirement to try to prevent the service from going to hell in a hand cart. It is probably too late to reverse the process, but it is not too late to abandon the merger of the British Transport Police into Police Scotland, as this can only be another disaster in the making.

It is also worrying that the SNP may at some stage propose varying the rate of income tax in Scotland. It is arguable that such tax rates should be the same throughout the UK.

LBTT (stamp duty by any other name) is now different in Scotland than the rest of the UK. However, less revenue has been brought in than forecast and the property market, particularly at the upper end, is stagnating, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of the SNP’S financial prowess.

Mr Mckay and I will continue to live in hope, but I suspect the SNP are unlikely to do the decent thing and fall on their swords.

GORDON LAWSON The Pillars, Dornoch, Sutherland

According to Mary Thomas (Letters, 16 August) the reason why the SNP won the last seven elections in Scotland was due to Westminster wasting billions in Scottish oil revenues, running up a high national debt and taking Scotland out of the EU against our democratic wishes. Really?

First, she should know that the rise in the popularity of the SNP was primarily due to the discovery of oil in the North Sea and the blind belief by the nationalists that prices would continue to rise indefinitely and that somehow the extent of the reserves had been suppressed by the Westminster government.

It is no surprise then that their popularity has plunged (500,000 fewer votes at the last general election) with the lower prices and the £50 billion cost of decommissioning now underway.

Her comment about the socalled wasting of oil money is equally misinformed when one considers that the figure of £330bn over five decades often used by the pro-nationalist Business for Scotland was more than compensated by the union dividend (£1,500 per capita per year) over the same period – all of which was spent in Scotland.

Furthermore, it is worth pointing out to Mary Thomas that the UK’S national debt per GDP ratio (although not good) is better than US and France and not far behind Germany, as these countries all adopted a policy of borrowing money to prevent the Great Recession becoming the Great Depression of the 1930s – a wise move.

Finally, as a Remainer I accepted the democratic vote of the recent Uk-wide referendum to leave the EU, especially now that Jean-claude Juncker has unveiled his plans for a superstate driven by France and Germany.

IAN LAKIN Murtle Den Road, Milltimber, Aberdeen