Sir, At first I couldn’t put my finger on what it was about Allan MacDougall’s letter, Ostrich-like ‘aye beens’ may decide it (May 17), I found offensive. Then I realised he had divided those saying “no” to independence into two extreme categories: rogues who flouted democracy and wanted power at any price and stick-in-the-muds who could not think for themselves and were afraid of change.
I shall be voting “no” and I fit into neither category. I know of many other Scots who will think and act along the same lines. We do not regard ourselves as a separate nation, but simply a region and integral part of the UK. We therefore see a Labour or Conservative Westminster government as democratically elected by British citizens.
It would be of great advantage to my party the Conservatives if Scotland were to gain independence. England would then almost certainly have a Conservative government for evermore. Unfortunately, as a Conservative living in Scotland, I should see myself ruled for eternity by a Labour, if not a Communist, government!
Like many Scots, I am politically and patriotically British, but sentimentally Scottish. Unfortunately, too many Scots cannot tell the difference. Nor do the Scots who voted Alex Salmond in and intend voting for independence in September realise that the SNP is possibly more left-wing than the Socialists hence Allan MacDougall’s concerns about Conservative Westminster governments.
Those SNP members and “yes” voters whose way of life and outlook is far from Socialist are in for a shock if Scotland gets independence. They will realise too late that they have burdened themselves with a permanent left-wing administration which will immediately start taking action against their interests.
We are better together.
George K McMillan. 5 Mount Tabor Avenue, Perth.
Equally absurd “no” reasoning
Sir, I was bemused by the letter from Alastair Stewart (May 6) regarding his grandchildren being brought up in a foreign country should there be a “yes” vote in September.
I left Scotland in 1963 to serve as a police officer in the Met, returning to Scotland in 2006. My wife and I brought with us a daughter and two grandchildren with a third born in Scotland two and a half years ago. I have three further children, eight further grandchildren and six great grandchildren all still living in London. The only two of my family born in Scotland were myself and my two and a half year old granddaughter.
Is Mr Stewart seriously suggesting that should Scotland vote “yes” my wife and I have to regard our family living south of the border as foreigners? How dare he! Does the same logic apply to the many relatives of Scots living in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or for that matter Europe. Or does he just have a problem with foreigners if they are not British?
I agree no one should vote “yes” just for the hell of it (if that is what was implied by an earlier contributor) but, equally, to suggest that a good reason to vote “no” would be to avoid families on both sides of the border being foreign is equally absurd and irrational.
Bill Prentice. 21 Burns Street, Crossgates.
We subsidise their “sport”
Sir, In the past month Westminster has almost doubled the subsidy to the owners of grouse moors in the UK. Much of Scotland’s highlands comes into this category of game production and more than 95% of Scotland is owned by absentee landowners who spend most of the year in milder climates leaving estates in the hands of gamekeepers.
The subsidies exist to provide landowners with our taxes to maintain great swathes of the highlands from the start of the year in the proper condition for the breeding, laying of eggs, feeding and fattening of chicks of game birds including grouse partridge and pheasant. To receive this subsidy, it is necessary to call game livestock.
Unfortunately, for these birds, they are released from their breeding pens on specific dates and then termed wildlife. Absentee landlords appear en masse on their estates with friends and customers and slaughter those defenceless birds for their own gratification.
You would think the cabinet might be a little more sensible in their appropriation of subsidies to their fellow well-off.
Jim Thompson. 6 Prospect Place, Dundee.
Just climate alarmism
Sir, Mr Hinnrich’s letter of May 15 was an example of climate alarmism. He translates a localised warming in a relatively small area of the Western Australia shelf as an impending disaster while ignoring the fact that the Antarctic ice in the latest survey (April 2014) is shown to have reached 3.47 million sq. miles the highest on record showing a general lowering of temperature.
Why ice should be increasing in the Antarctic while reducing in the Arctic is one of these scientific anomalies that calls for further serious examination, by scientists who have remembered they are scientists not environmental campaigners whose cherry-picking biased alarmism gets better press (and grants).
The question of ice behaviour is very complex. There are fundamental differences between land ice and sea ice. The disaster theories are based on the supposed behaviour of under ice melting flows, which are beyond detection. There appears to be a current recovery in Arctic ice, with 104,000 sq. miles more than in 2007. Nothing is inconsistent with the cooling/ warming cycle that has been the Earth’s fate for the last 500 million years. Had the early IPCC forecasts been accurate, we would now be living in an arid desert.
Bill McKenzie. 48 Fintry Place, Broughty Ferry.