NEIL Mackay comments that "many of Scotland's leading political voices and their cheerleaders in the media ... obsess on the inner workings of the SNP while the country – and the world, evidently – falls to pieces around them" ("In these grim times, where is the vision for real change?", The Herald, February 23) .

He laments the upsurge of job losses and notes: "During the recent snows, pictures emerged which should shame this country: images of 200 people queuing at a soup kitchen in Glasgow in freezing temperatures."

While these awful events, and more like them, are fuelled in part by the pandemic, the responsibility for handling them lies at the doorstep of the Scottish Government, which, right now, and for the foreseeable future, is the SNP.

It is entirely right that the civil war inside the SNP should come under extensive media scrutiny. The media is the only lens under which the people can review the actions of those who rule. Once readers and viewers have sifted verifiable fact from opinion and spin, they have at least some idea of what's going on.

To see those at or close to the top squabbling over personal power during a massive emergency is hardly building confidence for the future, a future that will most surely be influenced by the outcome. It should be remembered that the national decision-makers are, at the end of the day people, and that after the May election, with a likely SNP victory, those same individuals, quite likely the squabblers from the winning side, will be running the country.

It is therefore very much the duty of the media to keep a close eye on the party's internal battle.

Jim Robertson, East Kilbride.

INDIE MUST TAKE SECOND PLACE

IT is extraordinary in the strange world of politics that as we approach the Scottish elections, we have a party, the SNP, which the polls tell us will win a working majority. Yet all past experience and historic evidence tells us a political party that is so riven with division and infighting rarely seen in the public domain and which has a diabolical domestic policy record would take a beating at an election.

Add in the extraordinary spectacle of a man who has spent his whole life in the political world fighting for his sole aim of gaining “independence” for his country, putting to one side this lifelong ambition to bring down his successor and consequently inflict serious damage to his party. This aspect of proceedings is definitively the most damning and as people approach the ballot box to cast their vote, they must pause for a moment, use their heads not their hearts and ask whether, like with Alex Salmond, independence must take second place to electing a government that will improve their daily lives by looking outwards and not focussing on their own narrow-minded parochialism.

Richard Allison, Edinburgh.

* IT'S hard to believe, but even after the huge help which the Treasury has given the Scottish Government to fight the coronavirus crisis, nationalists are still working hard to break up Britain. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has transferred £9.7 billion in furlough money to Scotland and in addition £3.5bn in further Barnett Formula consequentials.

An independent Scotland without a central bank, no currency reserves, zero credibility on the international money markets and burdened with a huge deficit would be in the same mire as Scotland was in 1707 when it formed the Union with England to save it from economic disaster.

Nicola Sturgeon's instruction that the EU flag be flown daily over all Scottish government buildings is a reminder of how parlous our vaccine roll-out would have been had we been trapped in the EU vaccination programme. While the UK has vaccinated 28 per cent of its population, Germany has managed only seven per cent and France six per cent. The SNP's acolytes may delete the word "Oxford" from "Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine" but the fact remains that our membership of the UK is the reason why vaccination has been so successful.

Leaving the world's fifth-largest economy, out of the UK single market, out of the EU, and ruled by an incompetent administration, an independent Scotland would indeed be in a dangerous place.

William Loneskie, Lauder.

SO WHO CAN I VOTE FOR?

I NOTE two excellent letters from Celia Judge and Douglas Crowe (February 22) highlighting – so starkly once again – the failings of the Scottish Government. How many times do these have to be repeated in your columns before supporters of independence realise that this is not a land of milk and honey and black gold under the SNP?

When devolution came about, Scotland was given “the opportunity to deliver effective change” (Lesley Riddoch’s headline on the same day) and was promised a political climate so different from Westminster: in those days, there were politicians of some honour and stature to start us off and lead and mentor those MSPs new to national politics, but their places have not been filled by the same quality. Previously prominent leaders have been embroiled in expense irregularities and two public individuals are involved now in a public enquiry.

Currently, as an undecided voter, I have to emerge in a few weeks’ time from the “middle ground”, as Mark Smith has described it: what choice do I have? On the one hand, I could vote for a ruling party which has poured so much money into failed companies and ventures that health and social services are suffering, or I could vote for one of the four opposition parties, all of which have proved to be thoroughly ineffectual in holding the SNP to account. If they are so bad at that, what will they be like in government?

Help.

William S Cooper, Strathaven.

HYPOCRISY FROM THE FM

NOT so very long ago Nicola Sturgeon was feigning what can only be seen now as faux outrage, that her Government was "not being consulted" and "was being ignored" and "disrespected by the UK Government", yet Ms Sturgeon walks out of a four nations call to appear on TV in her own daily briefing show in order to trot out further statistics of infections and deaths, a task that could easily be delivered by a health official ("Sturgeon defends leaving officials to take four-nations Covid meeting as she does TV", The Herald, February 23.

BBC Scotland is too feart to stop her.

Not so very long ago Ms Sturgeon also asked the Scottish electorate to "judge me on education" yet used her BBC daily briefing last week to ask the Scottish electorate to "judge me on my handling of the pandemic", clearly trying to shift the focus from our failing education system on to a firmer footing of the pandemic, where she feels her local popularity against the posh Tory bogeyman will fool the fickle voter.

How much longer will the people who keep Ms Sturgeon in power turn and look the other way, while she waffles on being "open and honest" and having "adult conversations" while treating the Scottish electorate as fools?

Allan Thompson, Bearsden.

THE SYSTEMS ARE BROKEN

IN his thought-provoking article on the need for real change in the body politic Neil Mackay issues a challenge for real change .

Independence of itself is of no value unless you say and outline what you intend to do with it. The harsh fact is that both the Holyrood and Westminster systems are broken and indulge themselves in a cosmetic confrontation over Scotland's independence when there are equally strong calls for a complete reorganisation of central governments in these isles with a greater emphasis on returning more political and economic power to communities. Power up, not power down.

Mr Mackay, of course, is right. The slaying of the pandemic is of first priority and one of the key elements of real change is creating an all-embracing public health service that covers systems to deal with a situation like Covid should it ever, God forbid, happen again. We need a system that listens to the front line, for example GPs, and one that recognises the creation of a responsible care system that is part of that service and is long overdue.

Real independence means creating an economic structure that stimulates small businesses and social enterprises as well as ensuring employees in larger organisations having a role in decisions and also having a fair holding of some of the shares in the company that employs them. It means also that Scotland can play a role with associated countries via the likes of the Nordic Council, a recreated British Isles Council and having meaningful trade relationships with them and others like the EU, like Switzerland, without being subservient to the political vagaries of over-centralised bureaucracies where the people have little say.

Chic Brodie, Leader, Scotia Future, Ayr.

Read more: The SNP will win in May, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory