Has First Minister finally got her act together over strategy for independence?

If I read her speech correctly, Nicola Sturgeon has at last adopted the policy that myself and a few others have been advocating – no action on Indyref 2 before the full Brexit position is known, forget illegality, exercise patience and use time between now and 2021 to build the broader movement.

In effect, thinking rather than marching for what cannot be obtained at present.

Perhaps now that common sense has landed, we can see the two SNP parliamentary groups act as they should be doing in their respective spheres: the one in Holyrood tackling as its priority the problems in education, NHS, deprivation, and finding through imagination how to assist business create jobs for the 100,000 who are unemployed; while the one at Westminster engages in detailed monitoring of the trade negotiations the UK government will conduct with the EU and other states, and do so objectively.

JIM SILLARS Grange Loan, Edinburgh

The angry hiss of six years’ worth of 2,584 words of hot air escaping from Nicola Sturgeon’s over-inflated Indy balloon became a sharp intake of breath at word 254 with her momentous observation that the SNP’S task now is to ... wait for it ... “persuade a majority of people on Scotland to back independence”.

Then 700 words later she said: “We mustn’t let the Tories turn a positive, persuasive and invigorating discussion about the best future for our country into an arid and bitter argument about process and procedure” – then proceeded to do do just that!

Legal challenges, citizens’ assemblies, material changes in circumstances, mandates, wildcat referendums, claims of rights and constitutional assemblies were the acne spots that punctuated the rest of Ms Sturgeon’s “Statement on Scotland’s Future”.

No word of using her devolved powers in education, housing, health, social care and local government to halt the decline and get Scotland in shape for the 21st century, never mind independence.

If ever there was a busted flush it’s Nicola Sturgeon. Don’t take my word for it – ask the All Under One Banner diehards who have trudged the streets in her honour for the past three years.

The game’s a bogey – Joanna Cherry’s in the lobby.

ALLAN SUTHERLAND Willow Row, Stonehaven