DEAR Mr Blackford,

I along with probably a few others have been at pains to understand you and your colleagues’ dogged persistence in remaining at Westminster in the fulminating Brexit debacle!

It might now be finally dawning on me that one of the few understandable explanations for your endurance and continued stoicism might be the opportunity afforded by actually being seen and heard in the public eye day after day.

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The mainstream media “brainwashing” with its commonly spouted narrative of “SNP bad” is thereby rendered impotent. Cameras operating within the House of Commons and its immediate environs ensure that the viewing public can see, and hopefully appreciate, the very tragic and ultimately sad performances enacted there.

The mainstream media cannot spin this, and the truth is there for all to see. Surely in the face of all this utter nonsense, when asked, the people of Scotland can only deliver one possible answer, which has to be the reinstatement of full self-government to Scotland, consigning the status quo that is Westminster into the long grass of colonial obscurity.

Westminster has never delivered for Scotland or its people, nor could it ever with its inherent bias. Westminster looks after Westminster, after Westminster ad nauseam and ultimately deserves its inglorious place in history.

I truly believe that you have done enough and “now is the time” for you and your parliamentary colleagues to close the door on Westminster and all that it stands for and return home to lead Scotland to a new and better future as an independent nation once again.

Respectfully yours,

David Cox
Nairn

I WAS surprised to read the comments of your correspondent Paul Robison (How can the SNP-run council defend cuts in Dundee?, February 16).

Is he unaware that in England, local authorities are cutting by up to 40%, slashing their reserves and services, and in one case only a court order prevented a council from closing all its libraries?

Some English councils are selling their gallery collections and some have had to stop all non-essential expenditure. Houses aren’t being built, the elderly left uncared for. More than one council is on the brink of bankruptcy.

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Is he unaware that Wales is cutting deeper than Scotland and one local authority there has increased council tax by a staggering 22% over the last two years, in order to mitigate just some of the cuts?

Across the UK, council tax is rising 6% on average compared to Dundee’s 3%. All the while Dundee has fully mitigated the bedroom tax and delivered award-winning services, bringing some relief to the most vulnerable in our society struggling at the hand of the Tories’ “welfare reforms”.

Northern Ireland has the highest levels of fuel poverty in these islands, but in partnership with the Scottish Government and energy suppliers, Dundee City Council has delivered an external wall insulation programme to more than 4000 households in our city and seen a reduction of more than 7% in fuel poverty.

That is solely down to the SNP.

Rather than quietly acquiescing to the Tories’ decade of austerity, it is clear that the only bulwark between the Scottish people and further misery is the SNP.

When you look at local authorities across these islands and see the chaos and carnage in vital public services, you can only imagine what Dundee would be like if left in the hands of the Tories or their Better Together Labour allies.

I for one am grateful we have an SNP administration that is not abdicating its responsibility and is protecting us from even worse at the hands of the Unionists.

Henry Malcolm
Dundee

ANGUS Robertson is, of course, right to demand the BBC is held to account for anti-Scottish / independence bias (Dear BBC Director General, February 16), but this has been going on for years at the humbler level of “vox pops”. I will not be alone in having shouted at the radio or TV “could you not find a Scot to interview?!”

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My guess is the outside broadcast teams and editors are told to ensure there is a “cross-section” of interviewees, aka not too many Jimmys or “Wee Marys” (as the posher St Andrews undergrads used to, derisively, refer to female students with a Scottish accent; perhaps they still do). The evidence of our eyes and ears, though, is that the 15% of our population from south of the Border – never reluctant to put themselves forward – are massively over-represented in our culture and media, revelling in the pathetic tendency of many Scots, still, to defer to an uber-confident incomer.

Real expertise, from whatever source, should always be respected, of course, but let’s hear it for – and from – Jimmy and Wee Mary.

David Roche
Perth