I HAVE just been watching the Ten O'Clock News on BBC television (January 6) which was almost wholly devoted to immensely serious and deeply moving reports about the great human tragedies of southern Asia. We then cut to the Scottish News, where the lead item - yes, the lead item - was a demand from the terminally unelectable Nicola Sturgeon that Jack McConnell should make "a personal statement" on where he went his holidays.

Isn't it a little ironic that those of us who feared what would be done to Scotland by pygmy politics and parish-pump media are now trying to make devolution work - while some of its leading participants seem ever more determined to bring it into disrepute for the sake of their next kindergarten sound-bite?

Brian Wilson, MP, House of Commons.

IFANYONE ever wondered why so many people with talent leave our shores then the vilification of Kirsty Wark should be held up as a classic example.

Since I wrote a letter in her support which appeared in your columns, various replies from her critics have appeared which either largely fail to make any real charge against Ms Wark but concentrate on various actions carried out by others which they seek to "attach" to Ms Wark, or worse they take the opportunity of the fracas to seek publicity for their own publication and their failure to win a contract from the BBC. Ah yes, the politics of envy are alive and well in our country!

Kirsty Wark is guilty of one thing and one thing only and that is having a loyalty to a friendship that was created before either Kirsty Wark or Jack McConnell were in the positions they hold today. It is a friendship broader than their own and is shared by their partners and their children.

Has the Scottish Parliament created rules that the children of politicians and broadcasters can no longer share holidays together?

The above is no joke; on Thursday night I watched in astonishment a Newsnight programme where Tory MSP Bill Aitken suggested that an MSP staying with his or her mum for a week in her house would be an infringement of the rules if it weren't declared. The lunatics are clearly in charge of the asylum!

If some of the arguments are to be taken seriously, Kirsty Wark, by accepting an invitation to take part on a competition panel from Donald Dewar, long before a single brick was laid on the Scottish Parliament, is now largely responsible for all the subsequent disasters associated with the building.

Many people are already very disappointed in the calibre of the MSPs in the Scottish Parliament and vilification of people such as Kirsty Wark will do nothing to change that opinion; worse, it will further persuade the most capable and talented in Scotland to have nothing to do with MSPs or the parliament. This will leave MSPs further cocooned and speaking to themselves at the expense of the wider community. This can only lead to further disasters. The MSPs behind these attacks on Ms Wark are opening up a real can of worms.

To give but one example, Tory leader David McLetchie, one of Ms Wark's fiercest critics, augments his MSP salary to the tune of around [pounds]30,000 a year doing legal work. Does he declare, on an individual basis, each transaction he is involved in, naming each individual client? Somehow I doubt it!

Iain M Lawson, 27 Ben Lui Drive, Paisley.

SURPRISE, surprise! Jack McConnell sees nothing wrong in taking his family to share a winter break in the company of Kirsty Wark and her family at the Wark holiday home. Is he serious?

If the first minister is genuinely unable to see how this situation compromises him, given the previous involvement of Kirsty Wark in the selection of the design for the Scottish Parliament building and the sponsoring of Wark Clements to produce a documentary history of the project, then he really is even less perceptive than his many critics had previously thought.

Those of us who welcomed the setting-up of the Scottish Parliament did so in the expectation that the politicians would be true to their predictions of a new kind of politics. Clearly, as the latest disgraceful McConnell episode shows, the old habits of nepotism, mutual favours and treating the electorate with contempt are going to take a long time to die.

John Kelly, 65 Hunter Road, Milngavie.

ALL political journalists/broadcasters have their beliefs and views; they would not be doing that particular job and would not do so ably if they had no interest in the subject. But the professional journalist will not let their views get in the way of a good interview or piece of work. Perhaps Ms Wark should read The Visegrad Guidelines? which are a series of ethical guidelines which have been described as the definitive set of media guidelines in Europe.

I was not a fan of Ms Wark and what I see and read seems to confirm my opinions. The Gathering Place should make interesting viewing and we can all then judge if we have received value for money from this governmentsponsored project. I suspect not but then the executive do not know the meaning of prudence.

Liz Macnab, West Barns, East Lothian.