Scottish people don’t need government protection from imaginary bogeymen
Nicola Sturgeon has again sworn to “protect Scotland from the Tories”, who are obviously still the Thatcherite bogeymen of her formative years and a necessary Other to her supposed progressive ambitions.
However, the SNP have spent the last decade attempting to protect children from their families and people from themselves, with no real improvement. They have blamed Westiminster, Trident, oil revenue (or the lack of), Brexit – everything apart from themselves.
Themajorityofsnpschemes place the onus on other agencies above the individual, thus relegating them to mere actors without agency or free will, and yet, after over a decade in power in Scotland, health issues, addiction and poverty have actually risen.
Perhaps the people of Scotland don’t need protection. What we need is a government with realistic proposals, a realistic view of the issues and policies that treat the individual as an independent agent with rights as well as responsibilities, rather than something that constantly requires “protection” from themselves and outside forces.
DAVID BONE Hamilton Street Girvan, South Ayrshire
C Preston (Letters, 27 November) infers that those opposed to another Indyref are claiming some sort of multi-decade immunity from the democratic process, yet the party devoted to breaking up the UK is in the grip of a Referendumitis epidemic. The symptoms of this unfortunate, self-inflicted condition can best be summed up as an addiction to ballots, the total inability to accept unfavourable results and paranoid Wewuzzrobbedia.
As for the outcome of the forthcoming election, I predict that no matter how the seats fall the SNP will attract less than half the popular vote and less than 30 per cent of the totalelectorate.amandatefor the constitutional status quo, in other words.
ANDREW KEMP Mossbank, Rosyth, Fife
Nicola Sturgeon has now admitted Scotland would be out of the EU if we voted for independence. She has no idea of the timescale of re-entering and it is obvious there are many hurdles that would be in the way of a quick entry.
Not for nothing does the EU set conditions for accession to its club, and an iscotland would meet very few of these. Who would take the risk of being excluded permanently from the UK and for a long time, at least, from the EU?
The SNP have no track record of economic development – quite the opposite, in fact – so Scotland would experience an “ice age” that it might never recover from. At least the FM’S acceptance of exclusion makes that picture clear.
KEN CURRIE Liberton Drive, Edinburgh