When we got a month’s rain in 24 hours, I watched the water running down the Campsies behind my house, flowing across the fields, reaching my garden, and flowing towards my back door, threatening to flood my house. Fortunately, the rain stopped just in time, but the water was within a hair’s breadth of getting in my back door. This was in December 1994!

We have been warned about the climate crisis for 60 years, and we have done nothing about it, because in our ignorance, we think if Scotland gets nice and hot, we won’t need to go abroad to get a tan. It is impossible to adequately understand our ecological crisis with the same reductive thinking that caused it in the first place. Most people believe that a few degrees more does not really make that much of a difference. But the temperature is just the beginning, it’s the loose thread on the jumper that unravels.

Some of the consequences of temperature rise are obvious, because we can see and experience them directly. The number of extreme storms that happen each year has doubled since the 1980s. They now hit so frequently that they don’t even impinge on our consciousness, until the east coast of Scotland gets flooded. Rising temperatures have also generated some of the most destructive hurricanes on record, in the USA, Puerto Rico, and Haiti. Increasing temperatures have also caused fatal heatwaves. The European heatwave in 2003 killed 70,000 people.

The extreme weather, which we are experiencing in Scotland right now, as well as in other parts of the UK, will have a deadly effect on our ability to grow food. We need to think about why this extreme weather is affecting us, and start taking action, otherwise we will be lucky if we have two years of normal life ahead. David Attenborough has been showing us how we are all interlinked, we are part of a green chain, a big green jigsaw puzzle, and if parts are taken out and destroyed by our overconsumption, then we are all up you-know-what creek without a paddle.

What are you going to do about it?

Margaret Forbes, Blanefield

An electorate that’s fed-up

Here’s an interesting fact: Gerald Killen, Labour candidate in 2019 for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, achieved more votes (18,545) and lost, than Michael Shanks did (17,845) when he won in 2023. In 2019, the might of the UK Labour party was absorbed in losing a General Election. In 2023, the party loaded up buses of Labour activists from the north of England and deployed them on the streets of Rutherglen in an exercise that must have cost a fortune and is unlikely to be repeated at the upcoming General Election.

Rutherglen and Hamilton West used to be a safe Labour seat. Since 2010, it has changed hands between Labour and SNP each election. The by-election showed an electorate jaded with the shenanigans of political parties. Labour, who should champion the underdog, are committed to the two-child cap, the bedroom tax and Brexit, whatever their candidate said on the doorstep.

Imagine a world where under a Westminster Labour Government, the Scottish Government were unable to provide free university tuition, hours of free pre-school childcare and the Scottish Child Payment. These are just a few of the benefits that are not available in England and Wales. Ian Murray talks about devolution having gone far enough. If he cared about Scotland, he would extend the powers in Holyrood to reflect the values of its people. I would not bet on Rutherglen and Hamilton West staying red.

Frances Scott, Edinburgh

Time for me to vote for change

Despite the continued carnage unfolding in the Middle East, I find my spirits lifted on news of the Tory rout in the English by-elections.

This combined with the rout of the SNP in Rutherglen convinces me that we have finally seen the back of the barbaric, morally bankrupt Tories and the incompetent SNP, together with their “designated survivor” unelected leaders.

As a former died-in-the-wool but now sickened conservative and non-nationalist, I am no great fan of Labour and sometimes struggle to understand what they stand for but may find myself casting my vote in their favour if only to ensure the defenestration of the current regimes.

I think that in politics as in other life situations, whether it be in business or personal relationships, change is good just for change’s sake. I am not hung up on Labour policy but just want something different. Who knows, if Sir Keir makes a reasonable fist of it, he may have a convert!

Keith Swinley, Ayr

Labour will help independence

Ruth Marr is quite correct in thinking that an independent Scotland would survive perfectly well (Letters, October 20). However, the issue is not survival but rather when is Scotland ready and prepared for independence. I suggest that the return of a Labour-led executive in the Scottish Parliament, delivering good government, will help the independence cause. I realise that Ms Marr is a committed and vociferous supporter of Scottish independence (Letters, passim ad nauseam) and she will continue to support the SNP. Others might do well to vote Labour in the hope that effective government will be re-established at Holyrood.

Sandy Gemmill, Edinburgh

Why do we need a subsidy?

Has Robert IG Scott (Letters, October 30) ever read any replies to his oft-repeated mantra?

Firstly, it was not the poor state of the Scottish economy that led to the union but the loss of money from the lords and toffs who ran Scotland at the time, and got bailed out by their mates in England.

Secondly, he needs to check how the Barnett formula actually works.

Thirdly, why does Scotland need a huge subsidy? Could it be that decades of poor capital investment by successive UK governments has led to a deficit on the revenue side? So the funds to address this in independent Scotland would come from increased capital spending, leading to decreased revenue costs and increased revenue income. If he wants an example of how this works, look no further than London.

Or he can assure me that staying in the UK will lead to this increased capital investment and that a few years from now, Scotland won't need this "subsidy".

Iain Cope, Glasgow

We need to stick with the SNP

Nigel Farage has recently stated that he expects to be leader of the Tory party by 2026. Conservative minister Andrew Bowie was scornful of the suggestion but Labour's Wes Streeting countered this with his claim that Farage already was Tory leader in all but name. They are both wrong.

The by-election results on 19 October prove that Keir Starmer has convinced voters in England that his new Tory party will be more successful and sweeter-smelling than the present lot and, as such, has effectively become the new darling of the centre-right south of the border. Rutherglen and Hamilton West was an example of a quite different re-alignment, the new normal in Scottish elections where unionist supporters unite tactically behind whichever among their three parties has the best chance of defeating the SNP.

I had been moving towards the view that being closely identified with one political party had not always been the best course for the Scottish independence movement but the recent emergence of what is effectively a tri-partite unionist alliance backing a single candidate suggests that the independence side need to stick with the SNP. Starmer's interest in Scotlandshire is limited to the number of seats it might contribute to his majority next year.

Willie Maclean, Milngavie

What Denis Healey really meant

In expressing her boundless admiration for Labour's Denis Healey, Ruth Marr has made an unfortunate omission (Letters, October 20). What Healey said was "if the Scots want independence they should have it and England would need to adjust". As he was writing many years before 2014, when Scots had not yet decided they did not want independence, he could be forgiven. But Ms Marr has no such excuse.

GR Weir also has no excuse for ignorance when he claims Northern Ireland has "a right to self-determination". The power to hold a border poll is solely in the hands of the UK Secretary of State, who must be convinced that a referendum would be likely to succeed in reunification. It is always amusing to see Scottish nationalists wishing this power into the hands of Alister Jack, no matter how many times they are told this would be the outcome.

Peter A Russell, Glasgow