Sir, I have many vivid memories of a remarkable year just past for Scotland. The incredible referendum campaign and its aftermath.
Fantastic public meetings in packed halls, animated exchanges on doorsteps, Jim Sillars and the Margomobile, the BBC protests and the return of Tommy Sheridan.
I was standing a few yards from Jim Murphy on Kirkcaldy High Street when the eggs were thrown the first missed him and whistled past my leg a memory that still makes me chuckle.
But far from being amused I rue a wasted opportunity in the closing days of the campaign.
In the final phase of that “marathon match” in which Yes had just taken a 51-49 lead, the ball was passed to the Better Together prop forward who lumbered towards the line for what they hoped could be a match-winning try.
Some commentators think Gordon Brown saved the union. Certainly it was vital for the Yes side that he was taken down and I believe I missed a chance to tackle him in Kirkcaldy a few days before the referendum, with a great many journalists present and TV cameras filming the event.
As usual, the Better Together organisers had tried to keep Yes supporters out of the meeting but I managed to slip past the heavy security presence. In his speech Brown declared: “an independent Scotland can’t be a fairer Scotland just look at the SNP’s White Paper they propose that corporation tax be reduced”.
I was astonished was he trying to deceive his followers into believing there would be a perpetual SNP dictatorship in an independent Scotland, or showing so little confidence in his own movement that he didn’t believe a rejuvenated Scottish Labour party could gain power post-independence?
Certainly the 35% or so of traditional Labour voters that voted Yes seemed to believe that a fairer Scotland was possible.
I rose to my feet in order to challenge the former PM, but unfortunately I wasn’t given the opportunity.
At least I and many others were standing up for Scotland in the run-up to the referendum. I look forward to voting in an SNP successor to Mr Brown as MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.
Andrew Storey. 14 MacDuff Crescent, Kinghorn.
Big money to get the best?
Sir, So Mr Carne, boss at Network Rail, has declared he will not now take his £34,000 bonus (no great loss compared to his £675,000 annual salary).
I wonder if he ever gives a thought to the fact that many of those relying on rail travel to earn their daily bread are on a lot less than £34,000 a year.
Perhaps now the suggestions we have to pay these fantastic salaries to attract the best are exposed as tripe.
For that money we have a prime minister and the best part of four leading cabinet ministers; and they have to run a country.
Surely if Mr Carne is the best, then we are right up the proverbial creek without a paddle. I suggest the public would be better served if he took the £34,000 and relinquished his £675,000.
G Stewart. Clayholes, Carnoustie.
Lack of British democracy
Sir, One thing that seems to have escaped almost all political commentators is the sharp decline of British democracy in Britain during the last decade or so. Once a quasi-chairman, Clem Attlee being one of the finest examples, the new party leader is now a dictator.
Most of the younger politicians have no experience of anything outside politics. If they wish to climb up any slippery surface then they must toe the party line. Any attempt to represent those who elected them is squashed by the party machine lest it be in any way critical of the leadership and the official policy. Thus we are forced to elect the least repulsive Duce available.
A “mandate” is rather like a joke in a Christmas cracker: “We have a mandate to . . .” That is an action which suits the movement of the time, but is swiftly forgotten when it becomes either a political or economic embarrassment.
No modern politician at any level exudes any desire to imagine what Britain will be like in 20 years’ time.
The next election is vastly more important. Reducing poverty must include a distribution of wealth that is equitable, but the various pay-masters insist that will be a financial disaster for any party’s attempt to achieve it. Even a brief analysis of our pathetic, and probably disastrous, energy policy and the decline of our manufacturing industries would pierce the breast of any but the most hardened “voice of the people”.
Is it any wonder that the success of the SNP and Ukip cannot be dismissed as a protest vote? It is not. It is the genuine desire of the voting classes, most of us, to be heard by any politician whose ambition in life is real achievement over personal aggrandisement.
Robert Lightband. Clepington Court, Dundee.
Figures tell it like it is
Sir, If the Reverend David Robertson (Letters, December 30) wants to play the numbers game, I have some more for him.
In the past census, the number of people professing no religious faith in Scotland stood at 37%, an increase of 9.5% since 2001.
The number of Catholics stayed the same, buoyed by immigration, at 24%. More than 1.9m people said they had no faith, outnumbering members of the main Church of Scotland denomination by more than 200,000 and Catholics by 1.1 million.
It is clear from thesestatistics that the Christian stranglehold on education should be consigned to history.
Alistair McBay. National Secular Society, 5 Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh.