Let indyref2 push wait for a 50 per cent-plus SNP win in 2021

I NOTE that Alex Neil, former member of both the Labour Party and the Scottish Labour Party before joining the SNP, is now calling for another independence referendum whether or not the UK Government agrees (“SNP veteran calls for civil disobedience if Indyref2 denied”, The Herald, January 20) and for illegal forms of protest. It is difficult to understand what he is seeking to achieve with such exhortations at this time other than to secure media headlines.

To call for civil disobedience is, in effect, an incitement to break the law. Moreover, even if such an illegal referendum were to be held, the result, if in favour of independence, would be virtually meaningless and receive scant recognition, because many voters of a Unionist persuasion would decline to take part in what can only be regarded as an exercise in political futility.

Mr Neil and the rest of the SNP should revisit the question of seeking the consent of the UK Government after the Scottish Parliamentary elections to be held next year, in the event of the SNP receiving in total more votes than the sum of the votes of the parties which as a matter of policy wish to maintain the Union (“Sturgeon defies PM to push on with plans for Indyref2”, The Herald, January 22.

I would suggest that Boris Johnson, Minister for the Union as he professes to be in an alter ego, would find that difficult to resist and at the same time retain credibility.

Ian W Thomson, Lenzie.

WHAT is the Prime Minister trying to do?

This is puzzling. I read the Prime Minister’s response to the First Minister’s formal request for powers to hold a referendum in Scotland. He was predictably against allowing people living in Dumfries and Galloway and the rest of Scotland from voting to determine their own future. So far, no puzzle.

His letter finished with a statement that it was time we all worked together to unleash the UK’S potential. This is where the puzzlement comes in, because Mr Johnson felt it necessary to insert a paragraph specifically criticising the work of the Scottish Government in key areas, including the Health Service, over the last 10 years.

So he was saying that Scotland’s democratically-elected government, responsible for a measurably better performing Health Service than the increasingly privatised one in England and vastly better than those in Wales and Northern Ireland, is in fact not very good.

This paragraph, whether it comes from Mr Johnson or his advisor Mr Cummings, is gratuitous and inaccurate and insults the Scottish Government, all who work in the

Health Service in Scotland and indeed all our citizens. The paragraph was totally unnecessary.

The Prime Minister is very keen to harp on about defending the Union, yet agreed to separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK by keeping Northern Ireland in line with EU trade and environmental standards, thus necessitating a border in the Irish Sea.

He now feels the best way to keep Scotland in the Union is to insult Scottish voters who elected a government to serve us in devolved areas such as health and social care.

If you haven’t read the letter – it is available on heraldscotland.com – I would urge you to do so. If Mr Johnson’s aim is to keep the UK together, then gratuitous and inaccurate criticism of our government, presumably driven by party-political point-scoring, is a very puzzling way to go about it. Stuart Campbell, Moffat.

NICOLA Sturgeon’s current grievance du jour that EU nationals already in the UK are being treated abominably by the UK

Government doesn’t cut the mustard.

True, it’s been a stressful time for resident EU nationals – made worse by Ms Sturgeon’s scaremongering. Theresa May and Boris Johnson have repeatedly confirmed that no EU citizen from elsewhere in Europe must leave, and have emphasised how valued they are and are welcome to stay.

The reality is that, despite Ms Sturgeon’s rhetoric, other parts of the UK are the more popular choice for EU citizens compared to Scotland. Perhaps that Scotland has, thanks to the SNP, two constitutional crises to cope with is a factor?

Martin Redfern, Edinburgh EH10.

THE first of the two “major errors” which Alasdair Galloway (Letters, January 22) identifies in his argument about Proportional Representation is in itself wrong. The Alternative Vote method (AV) is not a PR method, much less the “simplest method of PR there is”. The only people who describe it as such are opponents of PR or those who don’t know any better.

The fundamental flaw with non-pr methods, such as AV or First Past The Post (FPTP), is that they only elect one person, who is supposed to represent the whole range of views held by those who vote. AV ensures that at least 50 per cent of those who vote get some kind of say in the single person who is elected, but FPTP does that on the average anyway. I am happy to see AV consigned to the scrap heap. It’s not PR.

Thomas G F Gray, Lenzie.

Letters to the Editor, which should not exceed 500 words, must include a full address (not for publication) and contact number for verification. Email letters@theherald.co.uk, or post to Letters, The Herald, 200 Renfield Street, Glasgow G2 3QB. We may edit submissions.

IN your cryptic crossword on Monday (January 20), the answer to 14 across was “nuclear reaction”. Thus my efforts to distract myself from the horrors of today’s world were interrupted as my mind jumped to the Doomsday Clock and its setting date, 23.01.20.

For those who need reminding, in 2019 a group of eminent scientists set the clock at two minutes to midnight because of the dual threats from nuclear weapons and climate change.

There are world leaders who are prepared to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield (that is, distant countries well away from their own population), believe planting “a trillion trees” will allow endless excess in use of oil, precious minerals and destruction of the natural environment (“Trump blasts climate change ‘prophets of doom’ at Davos”, The Herald, January 22) and are supported by, presumably, people who do not or prefer not to believe the views of the vast majority of scientists.

Decades have passed since Petra Kelly founded the Green Movement, Jacques Cousteau warned about damage to the oceans, Greenpeace and the Rainbow Warrior took to the seas, Friends of the Earth started campaigning and many brave individuals defended forests, trees and rivers.

Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough are now carrying the baton. A teenager and a man in his nineties should not have to do this. We elect leaders, they declare a climate emergency and either do very little or are hamstrung by unsustainable economic patterns. A new system of values is needed.

No arms dealing, no nuclear weapons, no excessive salaries salted away in tax havens, shared knowledge to help heavy polluters like India and China, help for the people fleeing from war, famine, fire and floods, care for our own deprived families – the list is endless and there are those with more knowledge than mine whose ingenuity can and must save this planet.

Sandra Phelps, Glasgow G20.

THERE is a lot of misinformation about the proposed “Red John” pumped hydro scheme in your article (“Public inquiry into £625 million green energy plan at Loch Ness”, The Herald, January 20).

In its description of the scheme the article uses the words “huge” and “massive”, but the vital statistic of gigawatt hours stored is omitted. And Brian Wilson states that pumped hydro “is the obvious answer in Scotland” to the uncontrollability of wind and solar output.

The reality, as Sir David Mackay, former Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change calculated would be that Britain would need thousands of pumped hydro schemes to stand a chance of smoothing out wind and solar energy.

Mark Wilson of ILI, the company behind the scheme, makes a similar disingenuous statement. He says wind and solar “can provide constant power when backed up by storage”. The amount of storage that Britain could feasibly deploy in the foreseeable future could be totally discharged in minutes if our future wind and solar capacity were to be dependent on it for constant power.

Energy doesn’t like to be stored; it likes to be distributed throughout the universe.

Geoff More, Alness.

THE proposed “Red John” pumped storage hydro power at Loch Ness has been refused planning permission. You quoted Brian Wilson describing the need for back-up because of the intermittency of renewable generation. But nearly all forms of generation show a mismatch between generation and demand, as can easily be seen on Grid Watch (gridwatchtemplar.co.uk).

It would be equally correct to say that back-up is needed because of the inflexibility of nuclear and coalfired power – described by Professor Win Rampen (Professor of Energy Storage at University of

Former California Governor Jerry Brown, left, and former US Secretary of Defense William Perry unveil the Doomsday Clock during The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists news conference in Washington DC on January 24 last year. What will it be set to today?

Edinburgh) as “intransigence”. Either way we need to expand energy storage. Whatever happened to the proposal to double the size of the storage facility under Ben Cruachan? Neill Simpson,

East Dunbartonshire.

I RECEIVE regular updates from The Taxpayers’ Alliance of waste in the public sector and how it is not only highlighting it but also forcing the guilty to change their ways. I was astonished at its most recent disclosure under the heading Air Passenger Duty (APD) where it was confirmed that APD is not and never has been an environmental tax although the Greens would like it to be and trebled to “save the planet”. But the real disclosure which gave me pleasure, and no doubt the climate brigade nightmares, was that global aviation only produces around two per cent of all human CO2 emissions. The climate change apostles should look at the world population, which is 7.7 billion now and will be 10bn by 2050.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow.