HAS there been a change in the wind? Are journalists, even the BBC in Scotland, beginning to report on the independence debate in a more positive way? Would it be too optimistic to say that independence is finally becoming mainstream?

I have a theory about this. Daily papers are delivered to editorial departments. Journalists are curious so certainly read them! So are the media themselves being influenced by what they read in The National? I hope so.

What an irony if our Scottish media (despite the owners’ views) become converted to independence, thereby helping us to win over No and undecided voters!

I do think there is momentum for change. As the horrible Brexit soap opera grinds on in the Commons, people are watching the London parliament as never before. They do not like what they see.

Witness Ian Blackford, who is doing a sterling job, proclaiming: “Scotland is watching.” It must be clear how English politicians (and their Scottish clones) are proving disastrous to Scotland.

With the arrival of our BBC Scotland channel we are seeing our country represented differently on television for the first time.

Watching The Nine news feels quite surreal. It really hits you how we’ve been kept in the dark about our own affairs, now hopefully being treated with the attention they deserve.

It makes the news from BBC1 Scotland pale into insignificance – while news from the other channels seems alien and strangely irrelevant, as if indeed it is coming from another country.

Maybe our 10-minute slots from “where we are” will be rendered redundant and morph into the new Nine (which will then move to where it should be at 6pm).

The push-back continues with the publicity surrounding the scandal of the McCrone Report – and the determination to be represented fairly in BBC debates from now on.

For me, inspiration comes from the words of the late Ian Bell, in a wonderful article written in 1999: “So it begins, and it will not now be halted.”
Sheila Johnston
Dumfries

I LISTENED with immense discomfort to Wednesday’s speech from Downing Street. At the start, I felt a cold shiver along my spine, because the voice was so like that of Mrs Thatcher, then I realised that the speaker was the current prime minister. I believe that her speech was extremely dangerous, in that it was attempting to sew discord between the people and Parliament. I firmly hold to Nicola Sturgeon’s statements that the people are sovereign and MPs are (supposedly) elected to represent us.

Despite the moderation of her voice (another makeover?) and her comments about MPs trying to manipulate the vote for and against her deal, I fail to understand why she would say that. If anyone was in the business of manipulation, it was she; after all, who was it who pulled the meaningful vote just before Christmas?

I am really tired of seeing the Prime Minister and her husband on the TV news bulletins, leaving church on a Sunday, as if attendance at a service made her special. I do not believe that it does. Many people in Scotland go to church, and not just on Sundays. However, this Prime Minister does seem to play on her relationship and this is not to her credit. Does she even have a conscience?

As someone said on Thursday morning on the radio, if she is on my side, then I am changing sides!

Monica Wells
Deskford, Moray

IT is reported that Theresa May delivered “90 minutes of nothing” at the Council of Ministers in Brussels. That encapsulated the final denouement of this government at Westminster. It was simply reported in a headline in Der Spiegel: “May wird an die Seitenlinie verbannt” – “May gets taken off”.

The EU has had to take over. It was apparent when Theresa May had no plan B if her withdrawal deal failed a third time that she had to be “taken off” the pitch. The EU then issued two leaving date options and Theresa May had no option but to agree.

It gives MPs the opportunity to take control of the crisis, as it now appears that Theresa May has been told by sections of the Tory party that it is time for her to go. The hidden signal from the EU to the UK is almost tantamount to saying that Theresa May is beyond political redemption.

It must be excruciating to sit for 90 minutes and listen to nothingness from a vacuous, failing Prime Minister who is flailing about as her time runs out. There are no bribes or bungs left at her disposal, her attack on MPs across the spectrum was an attack on the parliamentary system per se, and her faux appeal to the people was an insult as she personified the closed, inward Brexit management which rejected consensus across the divide, spurned inputs from the devolved governments and other national groups and which was “controlled” by the bribed DUP pulling the strings.

This is a Prime Minister who has lost all personal and democratic integrity even in that, at times, questionable and anarchic UK governmental system which is largely driven by convention, custom, contradictory mechanisms and arcane idiotic points of order and ceremony!

There was one additional option – or really ultimatum – the EU must have pondered inwardly to add to the list which Theresa May agreed to, and that must surely have been that she resign after the final outcome of this stage in the Brexit saga!

John Edgar
Kilmaurs

THE Tories should have postponed Brexit to the day particularly appropriate to themselves. April the 1st.
Gus Brooks
Peebles

I HAVE somewhat belatedly been catching up with Alan Riach’s excellent articles on Scottish writers who have either been half-forgotten or are worthy of a fresh appraisal. In his comments on Alexander Trocchi, he deals with Trocchi’s two main works, Young Adam and Cain’s Book. These are novels for which Trocchi is justly remembered and admired.

However, there was an interesting almost subterranean strand of Trocchi’s writing which would have added depth to the portrait. It is Trocchi’s so-called “Paris novels”. These included Thongs, White Thighs, and Helen And Desire, pornographic works originally commissioned and published by Olympia Press. As well as Trocchi’s novels, Olympia Press also published work by JP Donleavy (The Ginger Man), Henry Miller (Sexus), Jean Genet (The Thief’s Journal) and William S Burroughs (Naked Lunch). This wild and unrestrained company was Trocchi’s chosen milieu.

It was also probably very important for his financial survival as a writer. Burroughs said: “Alex Trocchi has the courage so essential to a writer. He writes about spirit, flesh and death and the vision that comes through the flesh ... he has been there and brought it back”. It is Thongs which is the best known of these “Paris novels”. It tells of Gertrude Gault, whose “unquenchable desire” takes her from the back streets of Glasgow to the sadist clubs of London and transforms her into Carmencita de las Lunas, Pain Mistress of Unholy Renown. As you might imagine, including reference to these books would have, perhaps, drawn an even greater contrast between Trocchi and the other subject of the article, George Mackay Brown.
Eddie Dick
via email

ALGERIA was a French colony (actually three departments of France) until a war of independence freed the country in 1962 to become one of the leaders of the progressive non-aligned movement. Algeria is rarely covered by the English-language press. But for the past four Fridays, Algerians have demonstrated in mind-boggling numbers to protest about the stranglehold of a ruling elite, joined by those in the diaspora, including Scotland.

These secular, good-humoured demonstrations have been led by women and young people who make up 30% of the population.

Like us, they’re involved in a struggle for self-determination in an oil-rich country for there to be opportunities at home. While the mainstream media focus on the difficulties of different parts of the world, let’s recognise when others stand up for values with which we can identify.
Cathie Lloyd
Letters, Lochbroom

COLLEGES Scotland Employers’ Association has made eight offers to the Educational Institute of Scotland Further Education Lecturers’ Association (EIS-FELA) to try to end the current lecturers’ strike action.

The EIS-FELA has taken its members out on strike action without ever formally putting any of our offers to its members, and we know they are misleading its members on the offer on the table from colleges.

The current offer is a flat cash payment of £625 for years one and two, followed by Public Sector Pay Policy – 3% for those under £36,500 and 2% for those above – for year three and a five-month pro rata extension for the first five months in year four.

There is currently also an additional offer on the table – our eighth – which is on condition of compromises being made by the EIS-FELA. This increases the flat cash payment to £800 in years one and two with years three and four remaining the same. Colleges remain fully committed to implementing terms and conditions agreed in the harmonisation deals in May and November 2017.

These offers are in addition to the substantial pay increases for lecturers from harmonisation over 2017-20.

£55.7 million is being spent on lecturers’ pay, terms and conditions, even before the cost of this pay dispute is resolved, which will add more than £10m.

These pay offers would be funded by colleges making cuts, so the bigger the pay offer, the deeper the cuts.

The national average pay rise for lecturers across the 2017-20 three-year period from harmonisation and the current offer is more than £5000 – or more than 12% – but the EIS-FELA has gone out on strike for the third time in four years. Lecturers across Scotland are benefitting from reduced teaching commitments, increased holidays and excellent pensions, and are by far the best paid across the UK – on average almost £10,000 better off than lecturers in England.

The EIS-FELA is committed to withholding assessment results from colleges, which would mean students would be unable to achieve their qualifications, move on to other courses at college or university, finalise their apprenticeships or move into jobs dependent upon passing courses.

It is unacceptable for the EIS-FELA to jeopardise the futures of students in this way and I believe many lecturers are not supportive of this attack. This may explain why there has been a fall of around a fifth in the number of lecturers out on strike from day one in January to day four in March.
Alex Linkston
Chair, Colleges Scotland Employers’ Association