Over the top

Ahead of the May council election, Pol Yates states that Scotland “needs to move away from the criminal, racist and cruel government in Westminster and gain independence” (Letters, 25 April). Really?

Criminal? The UK enjoys the rule of law without favour, and has done so in England since Magna Carta in 1215, which warrants that not even the monarch or the government, or the Prime Minister, is above the law.

Racist? The UK cabinet is the most diverse in history with the major offices of state held by ethnic incumbents. There are 896,00 Indians, 682,000

Poles, 456,000 Pakistanis, and 312,000 Nigerians living in the UK, the overwhelming number of them in England. England is bursting at the seams, with education, health, and social services stretched above the limit. That is why the government wants immigration controlled.

Cruel? Boris Johnson galvanised the world's first national vaccination programme against Covid, saving thousands of lives. He is leading the West in its response to Vladimir Putin's criminal, racist and cruel war against the Ukrainian people. The UK government is spending £5 million every day in accommodating illegal migrants in hotels.

Nationalists should focus on Scotland's needs. For example, children living in Nicola Sturgeon's constituency are the poorest in the UK, with a poverty rate of 69 per cent.

Glasgow’s streets are overrun with over a million rats thriving on waste, a fact dismissed by Glasgow’s SNP council leader, Susan Aitken. Contract documents on the CMAL ferries were rushed through before an SNP conference, according to Jim Mccoll, the yard owner. Now Audit Scotland cannot find a paper trail about where the money went. And after ten months the police are still investigating the disappearance of £600,000 of SNP member donations.

WILLIAM LONESKIE

Oxton, Berwickshire