ALYN Smith’s excellent article and accompanying photograph (The fact is that there’s no good Brexit ... and they know it, October 9) highlight the fact that in his words, “the SNP are an internationalist party, and the EU is international solidarity in action”.

The present Brexit shambles could exclude our young people from making a full contribution to and enjoying many of the exciting experiences that Europe has to offer.

READ MORE: Brexit: Leave.EU post disgusting tweet about Angela Merkel

If Westminster drags Scotland out of the EU against its will then independence must come quickly, as it will permit Scotland to apply to join the EU and also the UN which will open up new international opportunities for our young people.

Hopefully those heading up the Leave campaign are ashamed by “their” tweet, “We didn’t win two world wars to be pushed around by a Kraut”. The PM’s extravagant use of language in the House of Commons has helped to fuel such disgraceful responses which are a smear on the UK’s standing in the world.

Thomas L Inglis
Fintry

AFTER taking part in the very enjoyable AUOB march in Galashiels, my wife and I were delighted to be given a Yes Stone by two lovely fellow marchers from near Kilmarnock, who we had just briefly met and discussed the day’s event with while we packed our kit into our cars after a great day.

A fantastic small object painted and decorated by them with care, which also bore the postcode of their own Scottish village to show where they had travelled from to our Borders event, it was a token to show that they were with us in our struggle to gain independence in the Scottish Borders.

This stone is now proudly on displayed on my house office desk, and I look at it every day and think of these fellow Scots’ kindness and caring.

This action rely motivated us think how all our positive energy is needed to keep the Scottish citizens motivated and active to win over non-voters and new voters in our everyday life to gain total independence from this broken union for Scotland.

So on Saturday morning we headed for Edinburgh to the march with a few of our own Yes stones in our pockets, with our message and postcode from Gordon in Berwickshire, thanks to my wife spending many hours lovingly decorating these stones gathered from around us!

To see the smiles and delight on our new friends faces we met on our journey on the march when we gave them our little bit of Yes support and friendliness was just fantastic, and it made the Royal Mile seem almost flat!

Shetland, St Andrews, Greenock and Inveraray Yessers were delighted with our little bit of Yes Gordon support and caring, and hopefully this will help each one of them win over a No voter or get a first-time voter o come out and vote Yes in indyref2, and get the Scottish people over the finishing line to win our independence!

Ian Thomson
Gordon

REGARDING your story “Workplace parking levy: Labour accused of siding with Tories” (October 8), this should be an interesting debate. The Tories brought in the law in Westminster that enabled Tory-led Nottingham-shire Council to impose the parking space levy, and the Labour party fought the 2017 local elections in Edinburgh and Glasgow with a manifesto commitment to ask the Scottish Government to legislate to enable councils to implement a workplace parking levy.

Crocodile tears are flowing from Labour’s Colin Smyth with his description of the levy as “an attack on workers” that would “hit the lowest-paid hardest”; no doubt he will be joined by other outraged members of the party that whipped its MPs into abstaining in the 2015 vote on the Tory Work and Welfare Act that has caused so much suffering and has hit the lowest-paid hardest of all.

This approach will no doubt be a major plank of the opposition’s hypocritical case against the workplace parking levy.

In practice the workplace levy will probably have very little effect on the average employee of the companies that will have to pay the levy if it is introduced by their local authority.

In reality these employees are usually well down the pecking order in city centre company car parks, where reserved spaces usually start at board level, followed by senior executives, working down in rank from the space nearest the door to visitors spaces on the periphery, with some reserved for disabled drivers. Anything left over after that is usually on a first-come, first-served basis for the rest of the staff.

The majority of employees usually have to make do with whatever public parking is available in the area.

No doubt all of this will have been forgotten by MSPs from the Labour and Tory Scottish branches, who will get on with their day job – unquestioning opposition to any Scottish Government proposal.

John Jamieson
South Queensferry