I AM a livestock farmer. When I want to capture cattle in one of my fields, I erect a compound with high gates and place inside it a few troughs containing a small quantity of irresistible feed to lure them in. Once inside, I close the gate behind them and they are at my mercy while I carry out whatever management procedure I consider necessary.

When the animals realise that the feed they were offered was superficial, they want out again. While I carry out my management tasks, they are desperate to escape and keep pressing against the gates. As soon as I have completed the work and let them out, they gallop at high speed to the other end of the field and are nervous of my presence for some time afterwards because they know they have been tricked.

If I was to attempt to lure them back in to the compound while they still recall what happened to them on the previous occasion, my efforts would be futile.

I keep hearing Brexit-supporting politicians saying that it would be “undemocratic” not to leave the EU because the electorate have spoken, even though these voters were lured in with false expectations. Now that they know the truth, and have been trapped into a scenario that is focused on leaving the EU, I hear so many people saying that they have changed their minds and would love to escape from their original choice.

If they were given another opportunity to choose, there is no way that they would vote to join the Brexit madness, and would reject any attempt to lure them in once again.

How come the logic of choice and reconsideration that is afforded to my animals is withheld from the electorate? How come a reversal to the voters for an opinion, given the greater knowledge they now have about Brexit and its inevitable damage to our country, is considered “an affront to democracy”? My animals are, ultimately, allowed to choose to leave the enclosure and always do so at high speed with a resolve not to be tricked again. Anyway, I would consider myself to be a failed farmer had I only managed to capture 52% of them in the first instance.

Alasdair Forbes
Farr, Inverness-shire

SO it’s a three-month delay for Brexit if May can get her deal through Parliament. Except the Speaker, John Bercow, has already stipulated the deal has to be changed substantially.

But it hasn’t. And if Parliament is to be seen to be credible, Bercow’s decision must stand. And with no change, apart from the pressure from the EU, which is irrelevant to convention, by rights this deal – already voted down twice – should not be allowed to come before MPs.

Conditions not met, then no delay. Nothing’s changed. It’s a shambles. Time for Corbyn to show leadership.

Jim Taylor
Edinburgh

WHAT an anticlimax. The Prime Minister giving a speech to update the public on Brexit but effectively saying nothing new. Her support act – Jeremy Corbyn – fulfills his role as the willing dupe, scuppering a cross-party approach that he called for because he didn’t like who turned up.

And what do we get from Theresa May? She blames everyone else for the state the UK is in, moaning about MPs not backing her deal, saying she’s with the public but she won’t let the public have a vote on her deal!

She is a political pygmy trying to rewrite history and shift the blame on anyone but her.

There is no future for Scotland within the failing union. We have a Prime Minister who is clueless and refuses to budge from her pathetic deal, and an opposition leader who refuses to oppose. Get that lifeboat ready, it’s time to jump ship from HMS Britain – it’s been sunk by a Brexit torpedo, with an incompetent captain and crew wilfully ignoring the economic disaster they have steered us into.

Cllr Kenny MacLaren
Paisley