SO it’s official. MI5 vetted the political affiliations of every BBC job applicant including their families for years. It wasn’t until they were forced to admit the screening that they stopped using MI5 in 1984.

The BBC still vets new applicants and they don’t need spooks to do it for them, there are plenty of commercial companies that have access to huge databases of information on almost everyone living in the UK. It couldn’t be easier to identify pro-indy journalists and weed them out.

Of course the BBC would say that they allow pro-indy voices to speak on their networks, but there is a huge gulf between being a staff employee and a freelancer or those on a short-term, three-month contract.

Staff journalists have special access to all manner of internal memos, emails etc that non-staff don’t. There are also staff only meetings behind closed doors. The employee is the gold standard of security for the BBC – that is why new applicants are so thoroughly researched and vetted. Where are the BBC journalist whistleblowers willing to out the BBC’s British nationalist political agenda? There aren’t any, that’s how tight a ship the BBC runs.

In the eighties the late Alistair Hetherington, Controller of BBC Scotland, fought very hard to get a young female journalist into the BBC whose application had been refused. He won eventually, but by that time she got a job somewhere else. He also tried in vain to get the BBC in London to devolve more power to BBC Scotland and promptly got the sack. Would he have been cleared for any kind of the job in the BBC today? Not a chance.

Mike Herd
Highland

IAN Small, Head of Public Policy and Corporate Affairs, BBC Scotland – a fine grandiose title with a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta ring to it – is once again blowing the BBC trumpet. (Letters, April 20).

According to Mr Small, BBC Scotland’s new channel will deliver “high quality”, which begs the question, if high quality is possible at the BBC, why have we for years suffered a dearth of “must-watch” shows with news and current affairs programmes where political spin and bias is the norm?

His weak attempt to justify an apparently low budget for the launch of a new TV channel reminded me of Westminsterites who, when announcing spending cuts, assure us that with less money we can achieve more.

However, I do sympathise with Scots who perhaps hoped that a new BBC channel was merely an empty threat, but now realise the state broadcaster means business.

Regarding the British state/ BBC Scotland relationship, I would quote the then Irish president Eamonn De Valera who, at the inauguration of Telefis Eireann in 1961, said: “I sometimes admit when I think of television and radio and their immense power, I feel somewhat afraid.”

Malcolm Cordell
Broughty Ferry, Dundee

IN his analysis of the state of the Commonwealth (Maybe it is time former colonies cast off last of shackles, April 20) Patrick Harvie makes the common mistake of conflating the organisation that is “The Commonwealth” with that of the Commonwealth Games. Whilst Scotland is able to enter a team and even to host the latter, it is not, as a country, a member of the Commonwealth, the former being an entirely separate institution in which the UK holds the dominant position.

This fact is borne out by the non-presence of the First Ministers of both Scotland and Wales at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in London this past week. The question then arises, Cicero-like – qui bono (who benefits) from the current structure of the Commonwealth? It takes very little investigation to establish that England – or, more specifically, London – gains most, if not all, from UK membership. The main offices, as well as the considerable funds involved in operating the infrastructure of the Commonwealth organisation, are all expensively domiciled in London, whilst the personnel involved reads like a cast list from the UK establishment’s great and good. Along with the inflated salaries and expenses involved, this is jobs for the boys writ large.

Patrick is entirely correct in one respect: the future of the Commonwealth shouldn’t be the decision of the UK. But nor should it be in the personal gift of the current monarch to suggest that her eldest son succeeds her as its figurehead. The key question is not what a future Commonwealth should look like, but whether it should continue to exist at all, and, if it is deemed to have any ongoing cultural merit and economic value, what must be done to rid it of its imperial trappings and legions of hangers-on.

Peter Wilson
Edinburgh

IN light of Jeremy Hunt’s forgetfulness about his discounted luxury flats (in breach of money-laundering rules) I got thinking about a story earlier this year.

Royal Liverpool Hospital faced disaster when – among other things – cracked beams were discovered in the roof. This fiasco helped exacerbate the collapse of monster company Carillion – responsible for this construction and for huge swathes of government outsourcing.

Now I wonder if the cracked beams are actually in the heads of this Tory administration. That would explain why Hunt cannot recall who is making him rich, and why Theresa May has wind rushing through her skull...

Amanda Baker
Edinburgh

READING Saturday’s letters I observed a curious similarity between the photograph of Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy and our own distinguished Secretary of State. It is the look of anxiety, fear and knowledge that they are on the wrong side of history.

George Wilson
Haddington