Big changes needed in Westminster… dump the driftwood

Indeed, his top priorities are a reshuffle and Lords reform.

Is it asking too much that his reshuffle will bring us a new PM, new deputy PM and a new Chancellor of the Exchequer?

Furthermore, is it asking too much that in any reform of the Lords, the number of peers will be reduced by at least fifty per cent, the 26 bishops will be removed, and the modus operandi of electing members is democratised?

Doug Clark, Midlothian.

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Keir Starmer is getting more like Margaret Thatcher every day

Chancellor’s latest intervention is akin to using a pea shooter against an elephant

Westminster has now truly shown its contempt for Scotland

Playing the percentages

The new Scottish Green co-leaders have been elected, and what a result it was (“Greer and Mackay to lead Greens”, The Herald, August 30).  

With 7,000 members, the total votes cast amounted to 950. Fewer than 15% of the Scottish Green party members could be bothered to vote. 

The two politicians elected, Gillian Mackay and Ross Greer, amassed 322 and 317 respectively, not even 5% each. 

Is this democracy in action… or inaction?

Jane Lax, Aberlour, Moray.

Green for go (away)

What a ludicrous suggestion from Brian Taylor that the Scottish Greens could be some sort of “antidote” to Reform UK (“Can the new leaders of the Scottish Greens really be the antidote to Farage and the right?”, The Herald, August 30).

One is a party riding high in the polls with growing public support; the other is a fringe sect obsessed with toilets, gender dogma and punishing aspiration.

To equate the two is crass in the extreme.

The Greens have almost no democratic mandate yet have been handed disproportionate influence in Holyrood.

Their agenda is not about the environment but about envy, class warfare and hostility to enterprise.

They offer no credible plan for growth, only policies that drive away jobs, talent and capital.

Scotland needs managed, affordable climate policies, not the Greens’ cliff-edge dogma that amounts to self-harm.

Their Marxist posturing has no place in government.

Scotland deserves serious politics, not destructive experiments from a party for whom nobody voted.  

Ian Lakin, Milltimber, Aberdeen. 

Banking’s a bust

Nothing epitomises the SNP administration more than its creation, the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB) (“Question over bank backing of collapsed tech firm”, The Herald, August 30).

The affectation of a grandiose name redolent of world class aspiration. The assigning to it of a precious £2 billion of taxpayers’ money without a clear prospectus. The belly-up fate of its investments.

All are characteristics of SNP rule, which tries to punch above its weight and run before it can walk.

For the SNP is not a governing party in any substantial sense. It is an agit prop campaigning party, and the poor results of its domestic rule are evidence of that.

The mission of the SNIB, said a spokesman, “is to take on higher risk than other commercial investors to drive growth in the economy.”

And what better use of taxpayers’ money is there than axiomatically risky ventures?

Now the risks are coming home to roost.

In June, one of SNIB's protégés, Krucial, called in administrators. Now it has been announced that the first firm backed by the SNIB, M Squared Lasers, has collapsed, resulting in a loss for the taxpayer of £34 million.

An early failure backed by the SNIB was Circularity Scotland, the SNP’s failed deposit return scheme, which declared its insolvency in 2023, losing the SNIB £8 million.

This very month, it was reported that SNIB staff shared more than £1 million in bonuses, while the value of its portfolio fell by £77 million.

Average pay at the SNIB is over £96,000, while the chief executive, Al Denholm, receives £340,000. Without a trace of irony, Mr Denholm said: “Clearly, we’re always thinking about value for money at all times. So it’s something that’s embedded in our DNA’.

Nice work if you can get it.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.
 

Time to down arms

Yet another senseless mass shooting in the US, and all because access to gun ownership is too easy and lightly regulated (“Man kills two children in church”, The Herald, August 28).

I am surprised that the penny has still to drop for our friends across the pond.

It has to be time now to revisit the Second Amendment to tighten the meaning of "the right to bear arms", which was right at the time of its commission, but is now invalid thanks to the context within which the country operates today.

Its purpose was to ensure that a people's militia would be able to act immediately in the face of a threat to topple the government.

The only threat to the constitution, now, is the occupant of the White House.

We will no doubt hear the pat but specious response of those who support the gun lobby, that guns do not kill people, only deranged people do that.

There can be no denying that those with a twisted mentality, a grudge against mankind, or an ideological antipathy towards American democracy are the culprits on these horrific occasions.

However, they could not carry out this type of criminality on such a scale without guns.

Guns are not needed in a civilised democracy today.

Certainly before any licence is issued, applicants should undergo rigorous mental health checks by two independent psychiatrists.

If guns were in short supply, the number of mass shootings would decline.

America’s federal government should remind citizens every month of the terrible record of mass shootings.

This would encourage the nation to feels the shame of those occasions, when so many innocent individuals lose their lives, or incur serious wounds, as a result of the universal availability of guns in America.

A regular public campaign to keep those crimes fresh in the minds of all law-abiding citizens and a sharp crackdown on gun ownership in the community would surely have a positive effect upon inhibiting the use of guns.

It would be much better than the sporadic response of throwing hands up in horror on every occasion, then doing little, or nothing, about this senseless and avoidable violence.

We feel America’s pain but the country must find the remedy, even if it means breaking with their traditions regarding gun ownership.

Denis Bruce, Bishopbriggs.

It may be hard to swallow, but Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party might be part of a Europe-wide phenomenon. 

Human rights… or wrongs?

Judging by recent letters, the debate about immigration is heating up.

Is it not significant that elder statesmen such as Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Jack Straw and Lord Blunkett are calling for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights ?

The ECHR is badly out of date (it came into force in 1953), and has been abused by smuggling gangs for at least 10 years.

I was living in Germany in 2015 when over 2 million people arrived, including a record number of asylum seekers, waved through various safe countries by the soft touch Angela Merkel.

No wonder the Alternative für Deutschland has become the most popular party, though perpetually ganged up on by the Bundestag's globalist Uniparty. 

Reform UK is simply the latest manifestation of a Europe-wide backlash against mass immigration, in particular by illegals.

George Morton, Rosyth.