Sir, – Given the unrelenting pressure placed on the Scottish Government by NFU Scotland to deliver a workable CAP deal for Scotland’s farmers, I am seriously disappointed with the criticism directed at the union from those who should really know better (The Courier, February, 19).
Cabinet Secretary Richard Lochhead needs to take the bit between his teeth, accept responsibility for the inefficient £180 million computer system he has installed and use what time he has left in office to rebuild his credibility within thesector.
Policy decisions on CAP were made almost two years ago now, so blame for the dreadful delays in support lies firmly with the ScottishGovernment’s chosen IT system.
In the past few months, NFU Scotland has highlighted to politicians the cash flow crisis affecting the whole rural economy, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has beenchallenged on hergovernment’s failings and Richard Lochhead was well and truly called to account at NFU Scotland’s AGM.
Since the Highland Show in June 2015, almost every week has seen NFUS push the Scottish Government to come clean on its timetable for delivering CAP so that all rural businesses feed merchants, machinery dealers, auctioneers, seed and fertiliser salesmen can plan ahead.
Everyone is struggling at the minute and this makes it easier to blame the union when all things seem to be against us, whether it is thecurrency, the drop in CAP budget, the weather or, more importantly, commodity prices.
We really need to step back sometimes and appreciate how things might have looked if our union’s lobbying had not succeeded on a number of things over the past couple of years.
Things are morecomplicated now than in the past but securing a support mechanism that is as good as we could get and successfully retaining a budget to support our farmers in Less Favoured Areas was only possible through constructive negotiation with all three governments (Scottish, UK and European) and not through burning tyres or throwing things into the water.
The list of issues that the union is battling on a daily basis continues to grow fair prices, greening, flooding, land reform, red tape to name but a few and the whole union workstirelessly along with elected members and the wider membership to reduce the impact these have on us.
Hearing someundermine the one organisation that fights for all sectors simply makes me moredetermined to represent the membership and highlight the positives achieved by the union.
Martin C. Kennedy. Chairman of NFU Scotland’s Less Favoured AreasCommittee, Lurgan, Aberfeldy.
Litter blights our countryside
Sir, – It would be nice for all of us living in the countryside to see a campaign along the lines of Let’s Clean Up Courier Country.
The grass verges in the region are absolutely covered in empty cans, bottles, food wrappers and so on and it all looks disgusting.
I have been picking up litter around our area for a while now and I would bring to Perth and Kinross Council’s attention the A94 outside Blairgowrie, which the skiers use. It is particularly bad with discarded drinks bottles.
I am not alone in noticing the mess onour roads in the countryside.
Mrs A Constable. Tomlea, Strathardle.
Pedestrianising has hurt street
Sir, – Pedestrianising half of Reform Street in Dundee has ensured no one shops there.
An obsession with keeping traffic out of our high streets has destroyed them.
In Dundee, all traffic is led around the centre, not through it.
Opening up Reform Street and the High Street at least to buses would bring peopleand much-needed life back into Dundee city centre.
Moira Brown. 142 Gray Street, Broughty Ferry.
Sham of SNP’s ‘social justice’
Sir, – Karen Heath lists various letter writers who challenge the approach of the SNP (February 22) as she seeks to ridicule them, and then takes comfort from dismissing them all as “Tory correspondents .who yearn for the day that Scotland knew its place”.
I doubt these writers are all Tories, certainly in my experience many critics of the SNP align themselves with Labour, Lib Dems or indeed no party at all.
As for the rest of that assertion, well it would be a little like suggesting that supporters of the SNP want to break away from the UK whatever the cost.
I was cheered to read Ms Heath’s view that not all SNP supporters necessarily want independence.
It was a shame, however, to hear that was because they might simply be attracted to the SNP as a party of “social justice and fairness”.
If that is the case they have surely been badly misled, as the SNP leadership so recentlydismissed out of hand proposals from other parties to start to address inequality and help the funding of critical public services by adding 1p on tax.
Keith Howell. White Moss, West Linton.
Nationalists are failing the poor
Sir, – The Cities Outlook 2016 report shows a clear distinction between No and Yes voting cities with Aberdeen and Edinburgh high-wage/low-welfare cities and Glasgow and Dundee low-wage/high-welfare.
Not unexpectednews.
Yet it is surprising SNP separatist dogma is deemed quite so attractive by some in Scotland’s less well-off communities.
The nationalists, as everyone knows, talk anti-austerity radicalism but walk a centrist Blairite agenda.
Nicola Sturgeon heads a party of universal rather than targeted benefits.
She prefers to freeze council tax year after year, benefiting the better off and penalising the needy in society, the heaviest users of now under-funded council services.
A crucial weapon in the fight against inequality is education.
Yet the SNP discriminates in favour of the middle classes by cutting 150,000 college places to maintain headline-grabbing free university tuition.
And we’ve witnessed a startling decline in literacy and numeracy rates in schools during the SNP’s nine years in government.
There’s no doubting support for the SNP’s anti-UK narrative is at its strongest in Glasgow and Dundee.
But why then does Ms Sturgeon betray such loyalty by failing to deliver on promises made to her most faithful supporters?
Martin Redfern. 4 Royal Circus, Edinburgh.
Greek’s position sign of a tragedy
Sir, – When we find that Alexis Tsipras, the spendthrift Prime Minister of bailed-out Greece, is now in a position to judge on Britain’s status within the EU, the time has surely come to call it a day and be rid of this madness.
Malcolm Parkin. 15 Gamekeepers Road, Kinnesswood, Kinross.
Simple solution to bank’s name
Sir, – I note that the SNP feels that the Bank of England should be renamed as the Bank of England Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland.
Perhaps it should, for clarity, be renamed as the Bank of the United Kingdom.
Councillor MacRoberts. Ward One, Carse of Gowrie, Perth and Kinross Council.
Ruth right on nationalists
Sir, – I agree with Ruth Davidson that apro-union party should not allow nationalists as members.
Labour and Lib Dems will be seen by union supporters to have gone soft on the issue.
The last two of our local councillors joined the SNP group in Aberdeenshire council and enabled them totake over the administration.
Their rewards were committee chair and vice-chair positions, with only six years’ experience between them.
The SNP’s practice of turning seemingly every issue into a case for independence shows that a vote for the SNP is a vote for separation.
The Conservatives are rising in the polls because they are the only truly union-supporting party in Scotland, untainted by 17 years of underwhelming devolved government and, from what I read, campaigning on a joined-up vision for rebuilding Scotland within the United Kingdom.
Allan Sutherland. 1 Willow Row, Stonehaven.
Anti-semitism is still a problem
Sir, – Anti-semitism has become a major problem in most United Kingdom universities and the deplorable behaviour of OxfordUniversity’s Labour Club (OULC) is only the tip of the iceberg.
Support for the Palestinians has morphed into support for any enemy of Israel including those within genocidal tendencies who want to destroy the nation and all things Jewish.
Jewish students feel “threatened and vulnerable” in campuseswhere Islamists recruit for ISIS and they are the only minority group which cannot turn tothe student unions for support.
Members of the OULC have been disciplinedfor harassing andintimidating individual Jewish students but there is disturbingrise in such incidents in all our leading universities.
What makes thistruly disheartening is that it was university students who burned Jewish books in Nazi Germany and itappears little has changed in the grovesof academia.
Rev Dr John Cameron. 10 Howard Place, St Andrews.