BOTH of the letters (January 30) in response to the estimable Alex Gallagher (Letters, January 29) are guilty of a serious and fundamental error: they equate the status of a referendum with that of an election.
An election is part of an ongoing democratic process which holds political parties and their leaders to account. On the other hand, a referendum is a single-issue vote, designed to settle a question once and for all, or at least for a generation or a lifetime. This was signed up to unambiguously, freely and solemnly by the First Minster of Scotland in the Edinburgh Agreement. It was repeated many times in the referendum campaign by both the then First Minister and his deputy, now herself the First Minister.
Now, both of these have shown their duplicity in turning their back on these undertakings by calling the referendum "a dry run" and refusing to rule out a further referendum.
In doing so, they have made the idea that a referendum puts an issue to bed redundant and meaningless. In fact, they have made an extremely good case for why there should be no further referendum: if September 2014 was not definitive, why should any further referendum count for anything at all? Better not to bother.
Peter A Russell,
87 Munro Road,
Jordanhill, Glasgow.
LIKE all good politicians, Ian O Bayne (Letters, January 29) should check the facts before going in to print. I am sure Simon and Garfunkel would love the royalties from Joni Mitchell's hit Both Sides Now.
Archie Burleigh,
Meigle,
Skelmorlie.
ALISON Rowat's column ("Two parties with so much and yet so little in common", The Herald, January 30) comparing Labour and the SNP was interesting and balanced.
However, along the way she mentioned the old Labour grievance of "SNP MP's helping to bring down the Callaghan government in 1979, this beginning the Thatcher era". This story is so regularly repeated by Scottish Labour supporters that many people believe it to be true.
It is correct that all 11 SNP MPs voted against the Government, surely a reasonable reaction to Labour's amendment setting the virtually impossible threshold of 40 per cent in the Scottish Parliament referendum, thus delaying our parliament by almost 20 years. However, no less a political analyst than Jim Callaghan himself in his memoirs, singles out the 34 Labour MPs who supported the no- confidence vote as being responsible for precipitating a General Election at an unfavourable time for the Government. That no-confidence majority of 15 votes, impossible without those Labour rebels, did indeed then usher in the Thatcher era, for which we are all still paying.
Dr Ron Dickinson,
12 Kirklee Gate, Glasgow.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article