Scotland’s shipbuilding industry will surely be scuppered if independence ever comes to pass
ALARM bells must surely be ringing at Holyrood given that defence giant Babcock has suggested it would consider moving its fabrication facilities from Rosyth to England in the event of not being welcomed in an independent Scotland. How many other major defence companies will be beginning to feel the same way with the resultant loss of specialist skills to the Scottish workforce?
It’s hard to imagine that ships for the Royal Navy will continue to be built in a “foreign” country and equally for taxpayers south of the Border to continue to pay for naval vessels to be built in Scotland at the expense of their own yards. A separate Scotland may well have a naval force but it will be small in comparison to the Royal Navy, with any new ships probably being consigned to the likes of Ferguson Marine for building.
Many minds in the SNP still think things will carry on the same way after independence, but I have serious doubts whether that will happen in reality. Bob MacDougall, Kippen.
SNP could grasp pensions nettle
NICOLA Sturgeon has used the ongoing old age pension debacle to take a swipe at the amount currently paid in the UK – comparatively low in European terms – and infers, in Holyrood, that pensions would be much higher in an independent Scotland.
But why wait? Holyrood has the power to levy different tax rates to elsewhere in the UK. Indeed, the SNP has already made Scotland the highesttaxed part of the UK. Ms Sturgeon and her Scottish Greens allies could easily increase income taxes for all workers to enable a “Scottish premium” to top up the UK state pension to around 900,000 over-65s in Scotland.
So, why doesn’t Ms Sturgeon use the powers she has to put our money where her mouth is? Easy. It would be a massive vote-loser in local, Holyrood and Westminster elections – to grow pension levels beyond even a token amount would place an inconceivably huge additional burden on Scotland’s 2.5 million taxpayers. Plus, it would give a terrifying foretaste of what would lie ahead, were Scotland ever to leave the UK.
Martin Redfern, Melrose.
Election results show indy support
I NOTE your report on the SNP and the Greens’ plans for a second independence referendum in 2023 (“Greens to contribute to ScotGov’s Indyref2 plan”, February 13).
The move has been attacked by the Scottish Conservatives who say the SNP has an “obsession with independence”. It has obviously escaped the notice of opposition parties that the whole reason for the founding of the SNP was to campaign for independence, nothing more, nothing less. It has never been a hidden agenda, it has always been open on its raison d’etre.
The fact there has been an SNP administration for 15 years shows that enough of the Scottish electorate are in favour of independence, otherwise the party would not continue to be elected into government.
The fact the Greens are working with the SNP is a positive step, as it shows the Scottish Government is serious about fighting against global emissions, unlike the Westminster Government under Boris Johnson.
Mr Johnson is too busy having parties and acting as the lapdog of the aggressors in the White House to bother about governing.
Margaret Forbes, Kilmacolm.
Party owes pair a huge debt
I WOULD like to thank Robert McNeil for his excellent article on the inspirational Winnie Ewing, Madame Ecosse, who served with great distinction in the Scottish, UK and European parliaments (“Peerless political firebrand was independent of mind”, February 13). Mr McNeil rightly points out the significance of Mrs Ewing’s sensational win at the Hamilton by-election, which Professor Richard Finlay described as “the beginning of modern politics in Scotland”. Since that by-election in November 1967, the SNP has always had at least one MP at Westminster and now holds the majority of all of Scotland’s Westminster seats.
The Hamilton by-election result did not come out of nowhere. Just months before Hamilton, in March 1967, there was another significant by-election, this time in Glasgow Pollok, where the SNP candidate, the dynamic George Leslie, took almost 11,000 votes, and just over 28 per cent of the poll. Such a result was unheard of in Glasgow in those days, and Scottish politics was electrified. The late James Halliday, author, historian and former chairman of the SNP, wrote that “the Pollok by-election was the beginning of the modern SNP”.
Throughout their political careers, both Mrs Ewing and Mr Leslie won respect from across the political spectrum and made a huge contribution to the SNP and the independence movement, which stands today on the shoulders of giants.
Ruth Marr, Stirling.
Johnson could sink the Union
AS an almost exact contemporary of Patsy James (Letters, February 13), I endorse her views regarding Charles and Camilla. But aren’t we forgetting something here? Another who might never have risen above middle management in ordinary life is the present occupant of 10 Downing Street.
If his current antics are not stopped soon, there might not be a United Kingdom for Prince William to be monarch of once he loses his grandmother. Readers will no doubt have their own views about whether this is a good thing.
We could not hold a fourth birthday party for my grandson in January 2021 because of a lockdown imposed from a house in London whose inhabitants did not observe it themselves.
This is unimportant in itself compared to the suffering of so many in the last two years. We made it up to him on his fifth birthday. We were among the lucky ones.
My grandson’s dog is older than both of Carrie Antoinette’s bairns, and we all (including Vladimir Putin) need reminding of the works of Burns. I’d start with To a Mouse. I do hope this provokes discussion.
Norrie Forrest, Kincardine.
The purpose of prayer
I NOTE the letter from Simon Calvert, depute director of the Christian Institute (February 13). Some language about banning prayer intrigued me because prayer is listening to God in silence and preferably in solitude.
I twigged it eventually. People are worried about what is uttered in public prayers. So am I sometimes, and I’ve been a practising Christian since the late 1960s. In some styles of worship, there is ugly and ignorant speechmaking in the guise of prayer. People who do that often don’t know what Jesus said. I read the New Testament every day and
have done for many decades. Hell isn’t a teaching of Jesus. His couple of mentions of Gehenna were folksy references to the hellish incineration ground outside Jerusalem for discarded animal parts. Gehenna was in those days an image in popular preaching of a rough imaginary afterlife, but is not a doctrine of punishment after death.
The parables of Jesus, like destitute Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom and the rich man tormented in flame are exactly that: parables, picture language. But of course we should pray that we’ll be kind to those who need kindness.
Hell had never been a religious teaching of the Jewish people, of whom Jesus was one. A follower of Jesus and major teacher of the Christian way, St Paul, writes that the dead sleep until the end of time and wake up to help the Lord in his enquiries. Or her enquiries since God is only in imagery a male.
Conversion therapy? Jesus said nothing at all about homosexuality but lived in a society which believed the law of Moses, and the law of Moses was written down by the regular guys of old Israel. That which neither heterosexuals nor homosexuals should do when seeking happiness is to place unscrupulous pressure or coercion on other persons. That can be trauma and agony, especially for the young and adolescent.
St Paul criticised certain indiscriminate debauches in some pastoral letters to be found in the New Testament. Christians lived or spent time in community in those days, so things might possibly get a bit out of hand. Marriage and divorce? Divorce was regarded as a luxury of the rich which could be used lightly to trade the old model in. Divorce was only at the disposal of the male, and there was apparently no defence against a husband’s decision to divorce. Things would certainly have got unfair under rules like that.
Mr Calvert writes that Christians have a purpose in mind when they pray. Well, that purpose is neither to instruct God, nor to create him or her in our own image. Neither is the purpose of prayer to instruct those lucky enough to hear our prayers, although King Charles II succeeded splendidly in doing just that. He stage-managed himself to be overheard in fervent thanks for the National Covenant.
The foremost purpose of prayer is to listen to the love and mercy of God and to seek understanding of scripture, of those who need us, and of the universe and all infinity.
Tim Cox, Bern, Switzerland.