BOTH of the letters (January 30) in response to the estimable Alex Gallagher (Letters, January 29) are guilty of a serious and fundamental error: they equate the status of a referendum with that of an election.

An election is part of an ongoing democratic process which holds political parties and their leaders to account. On the other hand, a referendum is a single-issue vote, designed to settle a question once and for all, or at least for a generation or a lifetime. This was signed up to unambiguously, freely and solemnly by the First Minster of Scotland in the Edinburgh Agreement. It was repeated many times in the referendum campaign by both the then First Minister and his deputy, now herself the First Minister.

Now, both of these have shown their duplicity in turning their back on these undertakings by calling the referendum "a dry run" and refusing to rule out a further referendum.

In doing so, they have made the idea that a referendum puts an issue to bed redundant and meaningless. In fact, they have made an extremely good case for why there should be no further referendum: if September 2014 was not definitive, why should any further referendum count for anything at all? Better not to bother.

Peter A Russell,

87 Munro Road,

Jordanhill, Glasgow.

LIKE all good politicians, Ian O Bayne (Letters, January 29) should check the facts before going in to print. I am sure Simon and Garfunkel would love the royalties from Joni Mitchell's hit Both Sides Now.

Archie Burleigh,

Meigle,

Skelmorlie.

ALISON Rowat's column ("Two parties with so much and yet so little in common", The Herald, January 30) comparing Labour and the SNP was interesting and balanced.

However, along the way she mentioned the old Labour grievance of "SNP MP's helping to bring down the Callaghan government in 1979, this beginning the Thatcher era". This story is so regularly repeated by Scottish Labour supporters that many people believe it to be true.

It is correct that all 11 SNP MPs voted against the Government, surely a reasonable reaction to Labour's amendment setting the virtually impossible threshold of 40 per cent in the Scottish Parliament referendum, thus delaying our parliament by almost 20 years. However, no less a political analyst than Jim Callaghan himself in his memoirs, singles out the 34 Labour MPs who supported the no- confidence vote as being responsible for precipitating a General Election at an unfavourable time for the Government. That no-confidence majority of 15 votes, impossible without those Labour rebels, did indeed then usher in the Thatcher era, for which we are all still paying.

Dr Ron Dickinson,

12 Kirklee Gate, Glasgow.