NICOLA Sturgeon thinks the onus is on Ed Miliband to make a deal with her or else he will be responsible for letting David Cameron back into Downing Street ("Miliband snubs Sturgeon's offer to lock out the Tories", The Herald, April 17).
The onus is in fact on the SNP. The SNP can either vote with Labour in the House of Commons or against Labour and with the Conservatives. Ed Miliband will either be Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition. Nicola Sturgeon can choose whether she supports Mr Miliband or not, but I doubt her supporters in Scotland or the rest of the UK will forgive her if she fails to do so after all her anti-Tory rhetoric.
Linda Holt,
Dreel House,
Pittenweem,
Anstruther.
IT was David Cameron's decision not to attend the latest Leaders' Debate on the BBC, and as Mr Cameron's partner in government, Nick Clegg was also not there, the debate comprising of the leaders of five opposition parties. However, immediately following the debate, the BBC gave significant air time to William Hague from the Tories and the Lib Dems' Danny Alexander, enabling them to criticise the policies of the other parties without having to debate their own.
Up on the platform, Ed Miliband showed his desperation when he produced the hoary old chestnut about the SNP helping the Tories into government in 1979. If Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan had put the whip on his own MPs to implement their own piece of legislation, The Scotland Act, there would have been no need for a no confidence vote. So who brought down the Labour Government in 1979? The Labour Government, that's who.
Ruth Marr,
99 Grampian Road,
Stirling.
IN its reportage of the Leaders Debate, the BBC voice-over narrative declared "the Labour leader said the nuclear deterrent should be kept, the SNP leader said it should not". On the face of it this declaratory statement appears to be a model of objective reportage, while in reality it is anything but.
The existence of nuclear weapons cannot be denied unless they are Israeli but the term "deterrent" is of course a contested term.
For the BBC to, once again, put the word "deterrent" after nuclear is, once again, an abrogation of journalistic objectivity that BBC, and to be fair many other journalists, so often remind us is lacking from certain media outlets in other parts of the world.
Bill Ramsay,
84 Albert Avenue, Glasgow.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article