Pragmatic politics
Needs must? My, how Nicola Sturgeon has changed her
tune ( “Sturgeon: I’ll work with Corbyn to oust Johnson”, 16 August) Until now, Labour were as “toxic” as the Tories to the Scottish National Party. This sudden change of heart is a rather refreshing change for the SNP. The pretence that anything other than independence matters is blown away – not that we did not really know this before.
In a scenario like this, where a political party is willing to sacrifice any integrity to get
its way, is the SNP not actually signalling that independence has to be rushed through at an opportunistic moment rather than having the gravitas of a reasoned and logical argument behind it?
The SNP dislike Labour intensely and vice versa. Jeremy Corbyn is a toxic figure to many and now Nicola Sturgeon is joining his club.
Politicians are currently enjoying little trust from the public. Nicola Sturgeon has
miraculously stayed slightly out of this, until now. GERALD EDWARDS Broom Road, Glasgow
Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he will build 10,000 more prison places – but the Tories announced that in 2015 for that year’s general election. They didn’t do it. They announced it in 2016, but they didn’t do it then either. Then they announced it for 2017’s election. They still didn’t do it. So now Boris announces it for a fourth time.
He’s also announced an £85 million increase for the Crown Prosecution Service – but the Tories cut the CPS by £100m, and Boris voted for that cut. He’s also announced an increase in police numbers, but the Tories cut the police by 23,000, and Boris voted for that cut too.
So who can now believe PM Johnson when he blames the EU for the UK not leaving by now. The Leavers have had three years to come up with a plan, and have failed to do so. It is about time they accepted responsibility.
PHIL TATE Craiglockhart Road, Edinburgh
Be afraid. Be very afraid. The prospect of Jeremy Corbyn joining Patrick Harvie in Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘’patsy politicians’’ top pocket moves ever closer.
The irony, and there is always irony when it comes to the SNP, is that in the heart of hearts of the nationalist zealots, Brexit and its consequences mean nothing whatsoever. Their Holy Grail comes light years ahead of the social and economic wellbeing of the people of Scotland.
ALEXANDER MCKAY New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh
ble saviour could have been – or could perhaps still be – to have the area of the battlefield named a World Heritage Site but competition for this accolade is fierce. It seems that even in Scotland Culloden is behind the peatlands of Sutherland and Caithness in priority for this honour.
It should be kept at the front of public authorities minds that, writing in their contribution to Culloden: the History and Archaeology of the Last Clan Battle (2009, Pen and Sword Military, edited by Tony Pollard), Elspeth Masson and Jill Harden commented that “even now the Trust cares for even less than 50 per cent of the area that constituted the battlefield”. So far as I am aware, nothing has changed in that respect.
Similarly, they mentioned that “today the trust aspires to a further rerouting of the road, so that it no longer crosses the field of conflict at all”. No progress has been made there in the last ten years.
Saddest of all is to read the astonishing comment by Professor Murray Pittock in his contribution to Oxford University Press’s Great Battles Series, Culloden (2016).
Referring to the green mounds marked with headstones with clan names there engraved, which are well accepted for sound historical reasons, as well as the sight of your own eyes, to be graves of the clansmen who fell that day, he writes: “These monuments bore only the most tenuous relationship to who (if anyone) was actually buried under them..
If anyone? When a wellrespected historian can make such a comment, what future for Culloden?
BILL MACDONALD Harmony Court, Bonnyrigg