Holyrood had no option but to implement Westminster cuts to block grant

There is none so blind as those who will not see. That sums up Brian Monteith’s scathing indictment of the First Minister and SNP (“The audacity of Sturgeon’s ‘Hope’ leaves me

with very little”, 15 October). On funding, he has a laundry list that would cost much more tax than that he attacks for doctors – in any event, that increase was required to fund the Westminster iniquitous benefit cuts on bedroom tax and the third child benefit.

As with whatever party was in power at Holyrood, the SNP had no option but to implement the Westminster cuts to the block grant, required to repay the accumulated budgetary deficit run up by Labour from 1997 to 2010.

Regarding any extra funding for local government, by how much does he reckon council tax would have to rise? The paradox is that while opposition spokesmen and commentators snipe away at the NHS, a Radio Scotland phone-in produced a plethora of callers with nothing but praise for the treatment they had received. Towhatextentdoesgratuitous criticism about public services adversely affect recruitment?

Scotland is thirled to what happens south of the Border, where public services are in a mess. Recruitment here is a problem – notably, graduate doctors are emigrating to Australia. Does Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson have any answers to that? She is a policy-free area – at the last general election she obsessed about independence with 28 references (many more than the SNP!), but not a squeak about her vision for Scotland.

Were she ever to achieve her ambition of becoming First Minister, my guess is that her first port of call would be to get more powers for Holyrood – because that is the root of the trouble. The economy in particular is a matter reserved to Westminster.

Mr Monteith assumes the SNP would govern an independent Scotland but it would be up to other parties to upstage them, which they have studiously failed to do – effectively, they handed power over to the SNP.

His comment that “we are not idiots” seems to imply that those who vote for the SNP in greater numbers than for any other party are idiots – such as the 62 per cent who voted to remain in the EU in line with SNP policy and in line with Ruth Davidson’s pre-referendum campaigning.

There is a contradiction when she promotes a policy of Scottish individuals taking responsibility for themselves, but that a collection of such people could not sustain independence.

DOUGLAS R MAYER Thomson Crescent,

Currie, Midlothian

Brian Monteith’s article is a splendidly incisive destruction of our First Minister’s mendacious obliteration of political reality to the extent of ignoring any pretence of public service in favour of her obsession with independence.

Presumably, Ms Sturgeon must totally disagree with all of Brian Monteith’s points, which seem to me to be incontrovertible.

Hence, if she is sincere, she should surely respond by refuting his points logically, one by one, through a column or letter in The Scotsman, thereby explaining her thought processes for the benefit of Scottish citizens (also taxpayers).

DAVID HOLLINGDALE Easter Park Drive, Edinburgh