As campaigning gets underway for a June general election that will be Scotland’s seventh vote in three years, it will overlap the campaign for the sixth: our local council elections in May. Meanwhile, various political figures have made calls for more respectful political debate, but recent exchanges do not auger well. Too often politicians choose the most strident form of delivering their message, only to have to ramp up the rhetoric ever higher to get the same effect.

What message does it deliver when those who are supposed to be leading us set such a bad example, casually delivering insults without care for the impact on the general tone of debate? Is it not possible to explain why your party’s approach differs to others without using derision, exaggeration and caricature?

Keith Howell

West Linton