SNP’s grievance agenda all encompassing passion

Sir, - Soon after Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement that she will be seeking a second independence referendum, a wag on Twitter commented that it was a fine way to bury the bad news about education in John Swinney’s constituency.

The Courier reported earlier in the day that the principal of Blairgowrie High School has written to parents to ask if any can step in to provide cover for missing maths teachers.

Of course, the tweeter was joking. After all, no day passes without some damning statistic or story about the SNP’s failure to improve, or even halt the decline in, public services in health, education or policing and the corresponding growth in inequality in Scotland.

But the serious point is that the SNP have always used the issue of independence and the grievance agenda to distract everyone, including themselves, from the everyday business of government: the creation and implementation of policies which will improve people’s lives.

Now Ms Sturgeon has blasted a second referendum to the top of the political agenda at Holyrood and Westminster, supercharging the distraction until autumn 2018 or spring 2019 or even later.

On the doorsteps, people are vehement that they don’t want a second referendum.

They’ve had enough of referenda, enough of the uncertainty and division they engender and enough of the SNP neglecting the day job. Even nationalists are unhappy.

Of course, May’s council elections will now be dominated by the referendum.

The SNP are already treating the election as an opportunity to support an independence referendum. It is no such thing, of course. Rather it is the opportunity to select councillors whose sole job is to represent the residents of their wards in local government.

Put another way, it is the job of councillors to create and implement policies which will improve people’s lives (within the limitations of local government power of course). Real success at that job is likely to elude those obsessed with agitating for independence.

The SNP have been notoriously slow in selecting their local government candidates, and are known to discourage too much involvement in local issues on the grounds that it could damage a vote based on nationalist grounds alone.

Certainly the poor attendance record at Fife Council meetings and community councils, and sparse engagement in local issues, by some SNP councillors in Fife bears this out.

Teacher recruitment isn’t just a serious problem in Mr Swinney’s constituency.

It affects schools across Scotland.

In Fife I was shocked to discover that subjects like art and geography could not be offered at Higher level at one school because it could not find anyone to teach them.

Resource constraints meant the same school could also only offer one foreign language, French.

Some people may feel this doesn’t matter much, but if your child is a budding linguist or wants to pursue art as a career or geography as a degree, it’s grim.

And it is certainly not acceptable for a state education system in an advanced economy in the 21st Century.

Linda Holt. Dreel House, Pittenweem.

EU, Saltire and Union flags wave above the Scottish Parliament.