Here's my prediction from north-east Scotland for next year's Holyrood elections. Despite all the hot air at the SNP conference, and their past 18 years of failure and division, Stephen Flynn (a recent convert to ‘drill, weans, drill’) will be elected as MSP in South Aberdeen, with less than 30% of the votes.
This will be thanks to Reform UK, the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems tearing themselves apart.
This result will be reflected across Scotland.
The SNP will be the largest party, with around fifty seats and, with almost identical policies, will form a coalition with Labour, who will have around twenty seats.
John Swinney will resign as party leader and Stephen Flynn, a man who has never done a non-political paid job in his life, will be a shoo-in as First Minister, with Anas Sarwar - who constantly bleats about NHS Scotland, with no idea how to fix it – as Health Minister.
God help us.
Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven.
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Stephen Flynn had the right idea. All our MPs should double up
Sara Sharif tragedy is a reminder that we need more, not fewer, ‘snoopers’
Do for this generation what was done for Scotland's emigrants
Scottish Nationalists: It’s a trust issue
The SNP must face the harsh reality of nearly twenty years of minority government, which is that independence is as far away now as it was twenty years ago.
They must ask why they have failed to persuade the majority of the electorate that separation from the UK would be good for Scotland.
The simple fact of the matter is that the SNP is viewed by the Scottish electorate as being a party of high taxation that is anti-business, which has undermined the Scottish economy to a near recession, while allowing the NHS and our system of education to reach crisis levels.
With only seven months until the Holyrood election it would now take a miracle for the SNP to change the minds of the Scottish electorate, as there has been so much damage done to Scotland over the last 20 years.
Scotland deserves better.
Dennis Forbes Grattan, Bucksburn, Aberdeen.
Umbrage at urbanites
As John Swinney and his party consider what constitutes a mandate for another referendum, and freely quote that Scotland was taken out of the EU against her will, perhaps he and others should remember that in 2014, not only did the Yes campaign lose by 10%, 28 of 32 councils also voted No.
Those who voted Yes were primarily in large urban areas, and were not representative of wider Scottish society.
Is it fair that those who live in by far the greatest geographical spread are taken out of the UK against their will?
Not in my book.
Duncan Sooman, Milngavie.
Not so shipshape
The saga of the Glen Sannox, described as “at the heart of Scotland’s ferry fiasco”, makes for depressing reading (“Beleaguered ferry Glen Sannox ‘should not have been accepted’”, The Herald, October 9).
It is all the more depressing when one recalls that shipbuilding on the Clyde was once a leading force in the development of Scotland, and in the enhancement of its reputation.
The names of its former yards, such as Denny, Fairfield, John Brown, Lithgow, Stephen and Yarrow, readily spring to mind.
Through their activities these companies established a reputation for reliability and excellence, which generated the phrase ‘Clyde built’.
These heady days are now, for the most part, in the past.
Today we have a Clyde shipyard delivering the Glen Sannox seven years late, with costs of delivery - combined with yet to be brought into service sister ship Glen Rosa - estimated at five times the original contract price.
With all this to consider, it is unlikely that those seeking to place contracts for new ships will be rushing to the doors of Ferguson Marine.
There is clearly some comfort to be drawn from the fact that BAE on the Clyde continues to attract work from home and abroad.
Ian W Thomson, Lenzie.
Return to sender
The EU is gearing up to introduce a new Entry/Exit System (EES) for non-EU citizens, including the British, which will include gathering personal information at border crossings by photo and fingerprint.
Apparently it is intended to strengthen border security by checking details of those leaving or arriving in the Schengen Area.
All well and good, but just how is it intended to be applied by the French to the hundreds of obviously non-EU citizens leaving France each week to cross the Channel in the small, and now bigger, boats?
Or are the French so happy to get rid of the migrants that they wouldn’t dream of stopping them for a photo or a fingerprint, let alone a questionnaire?
Why can’t our government accept that it, and only it, can stop the small boat migrant invasion, and the way to do it is to take resolute action to remove what is known as the ‘UK pull factor’.
I’ve suggested before that one sure way of achieving this would be to make the risk and cost of crossing the Channel in these boats pointless.
The UK is a sovereign country and these migrants are flouting the law by breaking in like burglars.
In operation, the ‘one in, one out’ scheme, which is meant to deal with this huge problem, is hopelessly ineffective.
It is daily swamped by the ever increasing number who arrive, against the handful returned to France.
It is high time the Government accepted the obvious reality of the situation and legislated immediately, so that anyone arriving by this illegal method is automatically disqualified from staying, and will be held securely until deported.
Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop.
Stop the marches
The protests against a war that has actually stopped continue.
Surely there cannot be many people left in the UK who have not noticed the insistent message from the pro-Palestine supporters by now?
Given this, why are the protests continuing?
These are causing major headaches, major expenditure and the growing suspicion that they are really not about peace, but removing the right of Israel to exist at all.
A cessation of these unproven attacks upon Israel is long overdue.
How many people still have implicit trust in decisions made by the UN, or even international courts?
There are so many other humanitarian problems in the world today, yet all attention is focussed upon only this one.
Why?
Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.
Net Zero not working
There is a vast wealth of coal, gas and oil in the world, and countries are ignoring Net Zero as they harvest and burn it to drive their economies.
There are at least 7.5 billion barrels of gas and oil to be harvested from the North Sea, but political interference from Ed Miliband will see only a small part recovered.
Thus the UK will need to source the rest of the world for supplies, at far greater cost.
The UK electricity produced by wind now makes the UK's electricity the second most expensive in the world because of the green subsidies.
The price paid for electricity by UK industry is sixty three per cent higher than in France and twenty seven per cent higher than in Germany.
No wonder the UK has shed hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Meanwhile, China is building eleven new oil storage facilities (enough for 169 million barrels) and they have 1,195 coal-fired electricity plants, and are building even more…
Clark Cross, Linlithgow.
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