IN his letter of May 29, Alan Adair asks “why don’t we...” and goes on to identify many of our strengths and successes but continues to ask why “we” don’t do something about it.

But we do! I do, many do, but our audience is five people, maybe ten.

The SNP have centre stage, and it is for them to detail our currency, its security, longevity and place on the world’s stage.

It’s for them to openly describe the serious threat that hovers over our NHS, and, in truth, our democracy too, but they don’t, haven’t, won’t.

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To be fair, they do have a major problem, which is that the media, being UK-sycophantic, much prefer SNP baaad or Scotland baaad stories. So they may have told us all these things, but they haven’t reached me.

A publication or announcement on our intended currency, if they cannot destroy it, gets ignored.

Scots don’t get to hear it either, as we are surrounded, wall to wall, by the Unionist media.

Yes, I can obtain of copy of the relevant documentation if I send off for it, ten of us might do that. The headline or newsflash reaches millions, is short and succinct, Scotland baaad, Scottish pound worthless, ferries a rip-off.

It seems a truth that anything a Scot does, or indeed that Scotland does, that falls outside the English fall-back of “too wee, too poor and too stupid” is either totally blanked or stamped as a UK success.

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Do you remember that the first islander to win Wimbledon for a thousand years was identified as a “Brit”, not a Scot? Do you remember the boos when Alex put them right with the Saltire? They really didn’t like that truth being exposed to so many people around the world.

To be fair, both Labour and the Tories are good at getting their message out there, whether a lie or truth.

It is disturbing that many of the questions put in 2014, which were blown up out of all proportion then, remain unanswered now, eight years later.

Please allow me to make this last point. Not a single person, in any of the myriad countries that have escaped from Westminster’s maw, ever said or thought, “I’m not going to support independence if that’s the currency we’ll have to use!”

Christopher Bruce
Taynuilt

I AM not a member of the SNP. I have no association with All Under One Banner.

I do have a passionate belief that Scotland should have independence so we have the control we need to shape Scotland into a country of which we can be proud, and not be part of a UK of which I am ashamed.

So I was disappointed, dispirited and frustrated at the insistence of Toni Giugliano that the SNP “must have space” to decide their preferred route to independence.

The inference to be taken from this is that in determining the roadmap to independence, it is the SNP’s way or the highway.

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The SNP has no inalienable right to decide solely how the independence campaign should be fought.

Therefore it is irrelevant what, in isolation, the SNP’s preferred route to independence is. It is for the whole independence campaign to get together to agree how we should fight for independence.

The SNP can make their contribution but they should have the humility to accept that many others have a valuable contribution to make.

In 2014 I attended a hustings and made the point that the campaign was too SNP-centric. The panel – which comprised SNP, Scottish Socialists, Greens and Common Weal – made an admirable show of unity but it was obvious this was just a façade.

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The true feelings came out after the failed referendum. There was an admission that the campaign had indeed been too SNP-centric. We must not make the same mistake.

Cooperation among interested parties was successful in achieving devolution through the Constitutional Convention; a campaign in which non-political, inclusive figures such as Canon Kenyon Wright were prominent in putting forward the case.

What is so depressing about Mr Giugliano’s statement is his language. His talk of the “usual suspects” in the AUOB movement betrays his mistrust and disregard for their views. Perhaps AUOB are not without blame for the fractious relations. I don’t know; but he will never persuade them with language like that and he should take a good look at himself.

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The SNP could concentrate on running our government competently so that I would not constantly have to be fighting a losing battle with my indy-sceptic friends and family to persuade them how much better an independent Scotland could be. That would be their biggest, most valuable contribution.

But until everyone – SNP, AUOB and everyone else desperate for independence – accepts we must present a united front in the independence campaign, the battle for independence will not be won.

William Thomson
Denny

LOVING this latest line from the imbecile Boris Johnson saying he cannot believe the police lack the common sense to just ask him what the entries in his diaries mean.

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The people living in Scotland need to start realising they can either live in a very prosperous country, or they can live in a poor, rundown, decaying country with no hope, as we all have to stand and watch our vast resources being stolen literally every moment of every day, by a greedy, crooked, power-mad neighbour that is treating our people and our wishes with absolute contempt, with the only growth we are witnessing being our debt, our food prices, our disgracefully crooked energy bills, our food banks, our suicide rates and our rising anger at the injustices we are having to accept from a shower of dimwitted, landed fools who we have not voted for for nearly 70 years and who, if we are all honest, couldn’t run a bath, never mind a country.

Iain K
Dunoon