WHAT a nasty little letter from Anne McLaughlin (March 25) on Tommy Sheridan.The facts are these: Tommy takes only half his parliamentary salary and gives the rest and all his other earnings to the SSP. His column for the Daily Record earned him (pounds) 300 a week and that was donated to keep open a community centre in Pollok threatened with closure by Glasgow Council. His wife's earnings are her own affair or does Anne McLaughlin think that wives should hand over their earnings to their husbands?
Tommy does all this because he is a socialist and because this is SSP policy. We believe that MSPs should not get too far away from the people they represent. In April we shall be publishing our annual accounts in full and we are challenging all other parties to do the same. These will show that the SSP unlike all the other parties is not funded by donations from big business and the rich but from the sacrifices of all our members including Tommy Sheridan. Anne McLaughlin may not like our politics and she should feel free to debate them rather than engaging in the snide innuendo she presented on Monday.
Hugh Kerr,
press officer, Scottish Socialist Party,
The Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh.
I wholeheartedly agree with the point made by Anne McLaughlin.
As I understand matters, Tommy Sheridan accepts the full pay of an MSP, not that of ''the average worker''. What he then does with his generous MSP's salary is his business. As it happens, I understand that he chooses to forward a percentage of it to the party he is a member of - the very vehicle that obtained him his employment in the first place. Hardly ''giving the money away''. Certainly not ''putting the money back''.
I, too, am employed in the public sector and make regular donations to a political party, as is my right - to spend my money as I choose. Given that I have been approved as a parliamentary candidate for that same party, I recognise that I myself may be a direct beneficiary of my ''generosity''.
Allan R M Steele,
26 Torburn Avenue, Giffnock.
WHEN I heard the oft-repeated claim that Tommy Sheridan refused to accept that part of his MSP's salary in excess of that received by the average skilled worker, I naively assumed that the remainder was returned to the taxpayer.
However, it turns out that Tommy does, indeed, claim his full MSP's salary, donating the ''excess'' to his party. I would like to point out, therefore, that Robin Harper, since his election to the Scottish Parliament in 1999, has similarly been donating (pounds) 500 per month from his salary to the Scottish Green Party. Robin is by far the largest donor to the party.
Although in a full calendar year Robin's donations exceed the (pounds) 5000 threshold required for reporting to the Electoral Commission, our registration as a political party last year took effect on April 4. For this reason, there has not yet been a requirement to include Robin's donations to the Electoral Commission.
Ian Baxter,
treasurer, Scottish Green Party,
62-64 Candlemaker Row, Edinburgh.
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