We're back to the bad old days where profits matter more than the poor

Like Thelma Edwards (Letters, December 15) and Gordon Berry (Letters, December 14) I also have memories of my parents lighting fires and dressing with multiple layers of sweaters and scarves to go to school. At eight years old my school journey was to take my five-year-old sister to catch a service bus to Shettleston, where we boarded a tram to take us onward to Parkhead and back again in the afternoon. A while after this the Corporation put on hired buses until new schools were built in the schemes.

Just why are we returning to these times, including the provision of food and heat banks, and why is it happening in the 21st century? Is it really all down to shareholder needs where profits are maximised at the expense of those who don't actually matter – at least not to politicians and big business?

I would also like to ask what has happened to the recent University of Glasgow and the Glasgow Centre for Population and Health report that estimated that there were more than 300,000 avoidable excess deaths links to Tory austerity with people in the poorest areas hardest hit? Has this been buried by politicians? Could such devastation be covered by the 2007/8 Corporate Manslaughter Act (corporate homicide in Scotland)? Regardless of my questions, the verdict has to be "shame on them" – all of them, regardless of party.
Ian Gray, Croftamie

Fairy tales of Better Together

ALLAN Sutherland (Letters, December 15) claims that the SNP “having won the right to have a referendum, its leaders realised they wouldn't win it unless they injected some grievance and fairy tales”.

If we are going to talk “grievance and fairy tales” it has to be recognised that Better Together ran one of the most negative campaigns in living memory. As Nicholas Watt wrote in the Guardian a few days before the vote, “Better Together has won full marks for outlining what it is opposes but no marks for outlining what it supports”.

Moreover, during campaigns commitments and promises get made. It’s in the nature of politicians. During the 2014 campaign, Scotland was regularly "love bombed". Perhaps the best example was David Cameron’s “Don’t leave us Scotland. Lead us”, which perished early in the morning after the vote, when he announced EVEL.

Promises too can sometimes be well-intentioned. A particularly notorious one, as it turned out, was the Better Together tweet, “What is process for removing our EU citizenship? Voting yes”. This might have been perfectly sincere at the time, but it is also true that it worked out as badly as it could have done.

Like Adam Tomkins ("The time is coming for SNP’s young guns to take control", The Herald, December 14), it would have been Mr Sutherland’s preference, after September 2014, for the SNP to “actually start the transformation of Scotland, show what can be done and explain what could be done with independence”.

He says he is against fairy tales, so how does Mr Sutherland imagine Scotland could have been transformed when the Westminster Government was set on a policy of austerity? For instance, the NHS Support Foundation recently reported that “between 2009-2019 the NHS budgets rose on average just 1.4% per year”. Given the link between funding in Scotland and England, how was a positive transformation possible during a decade of real-terms cuts?

Lastly, in his customary cri de cœur, Mr Sutherland laments that the electorate keep voting for the SNP, and that “there's obviously not enough of 'us' to vote them out of power”. But rather than express regrets about this, I suggest he would do better to try to understand this.
Alasdair Galloway, Dumbarton

Devolution has been a disaster

DEVOLUTION has for me been a huge disappointment. I voted for it thinking it would be an opportunity to improve our lot with decisions being made nearer to the population. So what has devolution done for us? As far as I can see it breathed oxygen into a moribund if not comatose organisation called the Scottish National Party. The outcome has been huge division among the voting public which has become quite unpleasant. Instead of focusing on getting decent-paying employment we have had to endure years of stagnation. I look at my home town of Greenock, and that of my wife, of Port Glasgow, where the loss of our basic industries has trashed the local economy over the last four decades. I feel we are like the lost tribes of Israel, 40 years in the wilderness. Where are you, Moses?

I should have listened to Tam Dalyell when he warned us not to vote for devolution.

The situation is the same in every other town in west/central Scotland, from Kilmarnock through Irvine, Ardrossan, Greenock, Port Glasgow, Paisley, Johnstone, East Kilbride, Hamilton, Motherwell, Airdrie, Coatbridge, Clydebank, Dumbarton and our main city of Glasgow. The Proclaimers need to rewrite their lyrics. Decay is all around us. It is not all the fault of Westminster, though I have to concede that politicians there have not done any favours in recent times for those who support the Union.

In conclusion I am not in favour of further moves to "improve" devolution whether as suggested by Gordon Brown or anyone else. The incumbents of Holyrood, present or future, need to get on with it or else do away with this talking shop.
John Findlay, Greenock

Empty promises from the SNP

WHILE addressing education leaders in August 2015, the First Minister said: “Let me be clear – I want to be judged on this. If you are not, as First Minister, prepared to put your neck on the line on the education of our young people then what are you prepared to? It really matters.”

Nicola Sturgeon is now being accused of abandoning her promise to close the attainment gap ("Scottish Government accused of breaking classroom support pledge", The Herald, December 14). I disagree with this accusation. She is not abandoning it now, she abandoned it the minute she left the room where she’d made the pledge.

As long as the SNP is not focused on education, health, transport, the economy and the things that matter to the public, the most deprived pupils, those who suffer poor health and those who want safe roads or businesses which need a thriving economy will always be an afterthought.

All we hear from the SNP are empty promises, mealy-mouthed words which are meaningless. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, just as there is no hope of the SNP ever concentrating on what really matters to those of us who live here.
Jane Lax, Aberlour

Time for Labour members to reflect

WHILE the leader of the “Red Tories”, Sir Keir Starmer, has identified that removing the exemption from paying VAT for private schools will help his Labour Party win back seats in England’s “Red Wall”, one wonders how much discussion he has had with those running the party’s branch office in Scotland?

Like Tony Blair, Anas Sarwar, Jackie Baillie and Baron Foulkes all attended private schools so presumably are uncomfortable with a move that could possibly lead to the closing of private schools altogether. Perhaps, like abolishing the House of Lords, this may not happen in the foreseeable future, if at all, but it does raise the question of how likely it is that such an entitled triumvirate can truly represent the day-to-day concerns of most of Scotland’s state-educated citizens, or their future aspirations.

With Scottish parliamentary democracy effectively blocked by the Anglo-British Parliament and a new year imminent, is it not time for Labour Party supporters in Scotland, especially the growing number who support independence (now a third of party members or more), to reflect on their political allegiance? Surely even the most diehard supporters must recognise that the Labour Party of Keir Hardie no longer exists, so going forward it makes sense to support political parties honestly working towards self-determination and the genuine prospect of a fair and egalitarian society?
Stan Grodynski, Longniddry

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