Enhancing our reputation

IT is sad, but predictable, that Jill Stephenson (Letters, May 12) should decry Nicola Sturgeon’s visit to the United States, where Ms Sturgeon will deliver a keynote speech at the influential Brookings Institute think-tank in Washington, and hold talks with company executives. Scotland has strong trade ties with the US, and one of the purposes of the First Minister’s visit is to further build upon and strengthen those ties.

Ms Sturgeon’s initiatives in the US and around the world which enhance Scotland’s reputation abroad are to be welcomed. Ms Stephenson and other unionists give the impression that they want Scotland to know its place, and to stay in it, as a provincial backwater of the UK, its interests “championed” by Boris Johnson. What a terrible thought.

Ruth Marr, Stirling.

ALISON Rowat (“Don’t forget to send a selfie from America, First Minister”, The Herald, May 12) writes of the Scottish Government’s grandly-titled Global Affairs Framework( GAF). Have the authors of this document not realised the irony in the pronunciation of this new acronym?

David Miller, Milngavie.