It pains me to say, but Regan should rejoin SNP

SOMETIMES the worst situations can throw up extraordinary opportunities and provide startling road-to-Damascus-type clarity. As a vocal critic of Alba and writer of strong condemnations of Salmond and his destructive ego and his acolytes, I am about to make a suggestion I can hardly believe I’m tapping into my keyboard.

Ash Regan and Humza Yousaf should pull the rug from under both the corrupt and incompetent Conservatives and the limp Labour Party. In the light of destruct buttons being pressed at Holyrood by both party leaders (well, Sarwar’s puppet master did say he’d be prepared to press the red button!) they should re-find their common ground – settle/schmooze/sidle up.

There, I said it.

In the interests of Scotland, Ash Regan should rejoin the SNP – no holding Scotland to ransom.

In the interests of Scotland, Humza Yousaf should invite her to do so. No strings attached.

I’d happily say good riddance to all the Alba bad apples but I know politics should not be akin to the playground though sadly it sometimes is.

Let’s face it, one of the reasons the Conservatives have dominated the political landscape for so many awful decades is that they have, until David Cameron’s last catalyst-of-chaos administration, held their noses and danced the two step with diŽcult personalities when needed.

They no longer do it and they will be history at the next election.

Right, I’ll go have a cuppa and a lie down now ...

Amanda Baker Edinburgh

UNDER the threat of any forthcoming confidence vote against Humza Yousaf, shouldn’t we note that he doesn’t stand alone, it’s not him personally on trial here; rather it’s the SNP government administration?

I suggest the red and blue Tories, and the Greens who have spat their dummies out, may well have shot themselves in the foot by trying to dig Yousaf out; a futile exercise in any case given it will do nothing to quell the burgeoning support for independence.

At any confidence vote, SNP members should abstain, allow the vote to carry and call an immediate de facto referendum on Scottish independence.

SNP should strike a deal with Alba: first vote SNP, list vote Alba. This would deliver an irresistible majority in the Scottish Parliament for independence.

This would confuse and defeat the Unionists, and their sycophantic media stoolies, all hoisted by their own petard.

Exciting times. But only if we seize the moment handed to us.

Jim Taylor Scotland

IT’S been a tough year for Humza Yousaf and the SNP.

Yousaf is a thoroughly decent guy, but following in the footsteps of the politically savvy, diligent and wellrehearsed Nicola Sturgeon was always going to be a hard act.

Humza Yousaf seems to have made a miscalculation that in ending a powersharing deal with the Green party by sacking both Patrick Harvie and

Lorna Slater at an urgent meeting at Bute House, he was making an astute political move. In fact, he has made a spectacular

mea culpa in pre-emptively ridding himself of the perceived destabilising influence of the Greens. In e™ect, he has destabilised his position as First Minister and made a rod for his own back.

At First Minister’s Questions, we had to endure the nauseating sight of Douglas Ross crowing as he baited Humza Yousaf and called for a vote of no confidence, behind him rows of smirking and sneering Scottish Conservatives.

Now Yousaf finds himself in a weakened position of being at the head of a minority government and having to go cap in hand to enlist the support of SNP defector Ash Regan of the Alba Party. Somewhat ironically, Yousaf once said that Regan’s defection from the SNP was no loss! Regan will have the whip hand, who knows what concessions she will demand for her party.

How the not-so-mighty has fallen. Sandy Gordon

Edinburgh

THE British Labour Party have announced that if they form the next government, they will nationalise the railways under the name of GBR (Great British Railways!) making it similar to the majority of railways throughout Europe.

As a Scottish taxpayer, I wonder how this will a™ect the already nationalised ScotRail, which they haven’t addressed. Paul Gillon

Fife

HARVIE and Slater were handed a get-out-of-jail-free card by Humza

Yousaf and they thank him by threatening to bring down his government. Let’s be clear, the less-than-dynamic duo were clinging to their ministerial posts and likely facing being given their political P45s by their own membership for supinely just rolling with the abandoning climate change target punches. But now they find themselves able to take up the role of e™ective opposition which they were telling us only days ago was not the best way forward.

The Greens would be foolish to bring down the government in what would be little more than an act of petulance to distract from Slater and Harvie’s dismal failings. If they do so, I predict that it will end badly for them. Hopefully there are some grown-ups in the Green parliamentary room. Mark Ruskell comes to mind.

Michael Collie

Dunfermline

I WRITE a¢er completing a training

nd course to which I was involuntarily enrolled by being infected with a particularly nasty virus which had the party trick of making me incredibly unwell in an incredibly short time.

A¢er a week and with no improvement my wife sought intervention from Banchory Group practice, where a locum doctor a¢er checking me out arranged immediate admission to ARI. And at 2.30am the next morning, I was further admitted to Ward 106b ICU Medical High Dependency Unit.

There, this highly skilled team of multi-disciplinary individuals, from all over – Scotland, Ukraine, Syria, Poland, England, Ireland, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal and so on, immediately set to work to stabilise me. I had a “very bad” double pneumonia with attendant dangerously low blood oxygen levels.

The unit had the technology to get industrial-grade levels of oxygen into me, e™ectively a gale up each nostril. Fortyeight hours of that, with intravenous antibiotics and so on, sorted me out. I was then transferred back to Respiratory Ward 107 where the professional team

there completed the job. I was discharged on Wednesday. I will be eternally grateful to them; they undoubtedly saved my life.

So I have completed my course, and now I am fully qualified to have a valid opinion on “Scotland’s Failing NHS” and assess the views of those such as Unionist MSPs – particularly of the Tory variety – and the appalling bumptious self-important low-lifeform idiot that is Stephen Kerr – he of a brain the size of a puy lentil – whose main purpose in life apparently is to take cheap pot shots and do down his country and its performance on a daily basis, as well as making his fellow MSPs’ lives, particularly the female ones, a misery.

What do the professional teams based at ARI bring to the community? Well, they save lives on a daily basis with style, working day and night, planning, inducting, treating, discharging. They do a brilliant job but they need our support with no quibble over money!

And what of the likes of the naysayers, like the aforementioned slug Stephen Kerr, unflushable, just keeps bobbin’ back up. What’s his contribution to our community? A similar contribution to that of the agent that infected me – severely negative. He should be enrolled on my course to refine his opinions. Would it e™ect a change in heart? No, the puy lentil would remain immune. He should tak a black, burnin’ shame tae himsel’.

Is our NHS failing? No! Aberdeen, be proud of what you have in Foresterhill! It saves lives on a daily basis!

Ken Gow

Banchory

AT a time when the world is confronted with a genocide in Gaza and when the Scottish SNP leadership have taken up the most progressive policy in the UK to oppose this genocide in direct opposition to the Tory UK Government which is supporting the it, the Scottish Greens have decided to support the Scottish Tories in an attempt to bring down the SNP Government.

The leaders of the Greens pretend to be progressive and le¢-wing, but, if it suits them, they are prepared to support the extreme right as they propose to do now.

They have been working in Government with the SNP. They even had the cheek to interfere in the internal leadership election in the SNP to insist on Humza being elected. Now, in a childish hu™ because Humza has brought the present agreement to an end, before they could do so, they are going to vote

down Humza’s government and use the Tory and Unionist opposition to stab Humza in the back.

They could have abstained in this Unionist vote, but no, they want to cause maximum damage, irrespective of the wider political damage.

I hope the Scottish electorate are watching this, and I hope that many of them who, like myself, have given the Greens their second vote in the Scottish elections, will change their view on that and refuse to give them a vote in any election in the future.

Andy Anderson

Ardrossan

ON Friday the First Minister visited a housing project in his home city of Dundee. While there he announced an £80 million investment in housing projects (spread over two years).

This announcement has since been trumpeted on social media, radio, TV and the press. As a former local authority convener of housing, I welcome this announcement.

However, only a few weeks ago the Scottish Parliament agreed to cut £200m from its housing capital budget. The rather obvious questions arising from the announcement are:

1. Which other budget did the £80m come from?

2. Is the £80m just a part of the £200m being restored?

If this is simply a net reduction in the housing budget cut from £200m to £120m, perhaps it should be represented as such.

To imply that £80m fell from the branches of a magic money tree is the kind of political spin that gets all politicians, of every party, a bad name. Brian Lawson

Paisley

The Greens bringing down the government would be an act of petulance

I AM a member of the SNP but I like the Green Party – and what they stand for.

Unfortunately their latest policies were dropped – the HPMAs and the Deposit Return Scheme. Because of what?

The SNP dropped their climate target and the Greens threatened to drop the Bute House Agreement by a vote of their members. Who called that vote?

Presumably their leaders would have a hand in that.

What was Humza to do? Be at the mercy of everything the Greens do not like and their voting to end the agreement, or end it himself?

As Ash Regan may hold the fate of the First Minister in her hands, is it time for Humza Yousaf to swallow his pride and accept the former SNP MSP’s conditions?