Sheer hyperbole

It is usually obvious when a contributor resorts to intemperate hyperbole that they don’t have much of a coherent argument.

So it is with Richard Allison (Letters 12 August), when he says that all the Scottish government’s activities are “failing disastrously”. If Scotland is failing so disastrously, how would he describe what is happening in the rest of the Union he is so desperate to preserve, a place where 63 per cent of the population would rather see Scotland go than lose out on their disastrous Brexit.

Even though the UK government has treated Scotland with derision, a significant number of Scottish citizens cling to an outmoded concept that the majority elsewhere in the RUK are happy to jettison.

Mr Allison makes much of the difficulties surrounding the Ferguson shipyard. Naturally, in his haste to attack the Scottish Government, he carefully avoids the considerable complications which surround the finance and possible rescue of the yard, including EU procurement law. As this week develops we will see how competent the government is in resolving the issues and his criticisms may prove premature.

Mr Allison criticises the Scottish Government for financing the rescue of the yard in the first place and no

doubt would criticise again if it compliantly accepted Jim Mccoll’s demand that the government buy a stake, possibly an illegal procedure.

He talks of independence costing “thousands of jobs” but is yet another contributor in denial of the fact that a nodeal Brexit is the major threat to our economy. He says the case for independence is “economically illiterate”, but can’t explain why self-made billionaire Jim Mccoll supports it.

Mr Allison has joined the unfortunate group of people who can’t abide to see the First Minister acting as an ambassador for Scotland and would prefer to see her micro-managing the entire administration of the country. It’s quite usual to see the leaders of small countries presenting a representation of it in a variety of ways. Why is it so irritating for Richard Allison?

GILL TURNER Derby Street , Edinburgh

No one with a basic command of the English language, and who is familiar with Gill Turner’s contributions to the Scotsman’s letters page, could disagree with Alan Thomson’s view (Letters, 7 August) that Ms Turner is conducting “an unrelenting campaign to discredit Britain and everything British”.

Ms Turner has for many years hungrily devoured the tiniest morsel of news which she feels assists the case for independence, while totally refusing to accept any criticism of the independence movement or the calamitous performance of the Scottish Government. She also refuses to accept the result of any poll she does not like, most importantly the poll in 2014.

This might be regarded as just about within the bounds of fair comment if her outpourings stopped there, but she cannot resist adding personally directed insults at anyone who dares to disagree with her views. She is someone who takes (and I quote from one of her previous

letters) “delight at the smell of fear of Unionists” (whatever that means) and uses similar derogatory phrases in her constant diatribes.

In Ms Turner’s response to Mr Thomson (Letters, 9 August ) I sense a certain lack of self-awareness in someone who constantly presses the claims of a minority language at the expense of French,

German and Spanish, feeling it necessary at the end of her letter to use the fact that Mr Thomson lives in a remote and sparsely populated (although staggering beautiful) part of Scotland as a barb to belittle what are clearly sincerely held views. For the avoidance of doubt and to forestall Ms Turner’s anticipated rejoinder that I am a Tory, Empire(as

obsessed, right wing, Boris loving Colonel Blimp – I am a Liberal Democrat and fervent Europhile who identifies as both Scottish and British.

JOHN DONALD Essex Road, Edinburgh