ALAN Sangster (Letters, May 14) thinks climate change threatens our very existence and that the Green Party should put it at the top of their agenda.

I was under the impression that the health of the Earth was the Greens' raison d'être, but during their General Election campaign they droned on mostly about the bogeyman "austerity".

I studied one of their flyers: a spendaholic shopping list that made me wonder why this party so recklessly risk alienating hard-headed voters who would otherwise be sympathetic to their core concerns for the planet.

Engaging seriously with climate change and sustainable energy alone could swallow every last pound in the Treasury; but the Greens' throwaway promises on benefits, housing, employment and education defined and condemned them as a pressure group, not a credible party - or partner - of government.

If your core project - planet Earth - is going to cost the earth, shouldn't you, in the wake of the world's worst recession, be tightening the belt in other areas? Isn't racking up hundreds of billions in additional debt like bulldozing our garbage under landfill? As surely as our children, and their children, will have to disinter our discarded plastic from the soil, so also will they have to pay off that equally toxic plastic we flash so freely today.

The left-leaning spenders and borrowers were rejected at this election. The Greens, as much as Labour, need a makeover.

Martin Ketterer,

Tavistock Drive,

Newlands, Glasgow.

I DO wish that William Thomson (Letters, May 14th) had read my letter more carefully and not countered arguments I did not make. I have never contended that the SNP result in Scotland gave us a Conservative government. What I did say was that Nicola Sturgeon's constant insistence that the SNP would form an alliance with Labour drove many potentially Labour voters in England into the arms of David Cameron, thus ensuring a Conservative victory.

Mr Thomson also seems to have missed my point regarding the need for something more than a mere majority in any future referenda. If, as was initially agreed, the decision taken in September last year was to hold good for a generation, somewhere between 25 and30years, then reluctantly one could accept that even the tiniest of majorities might suffice. However, if we are to be asked every other year to validate our 300-year-old Uunion, then surely something much more conclusive must be achieved by the separatists. After all they only have to win once. To compare this scenario with parliamentary elections is both fatuous and spurious.

Jim Meikle,

41 Lampson Road, Killearn.

IT is clear already that the Lion King, aka Shakin' Alex Salmond ( "we will shake Westminster to its foundations" ) is going to be the main focus of SNP media attention at Westminster ("Salmond already causing controversy in his new job", The Herald, May 14 ).

If only it had been a Scottish bear that roared we might at least have been able to look forward to hibernation.

R Russell Smith,

96 Milton Road, Kilbirnie.

IT is a popular misconception that the ice age may have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, but I have just thought of another reason. It was Westminster. I was unsure of this at first, but it must be true; everything that has ever gone wrong in the world is their fault.

Gordon Bannatyne,

8 Rowan Avenue, Milton of Campsie, Glasgow.