FOR me, the highlight of your referendum anniversary edition of The National was the walk down memory lane with National Collective.
The politicians of the time got bogged down in the quagmire of currency and rival estimates of the value of North Sea oil. Meanwhile, the renaissance of creativity which was expressed by celebrities and new talents alike through songs, Fringe events, dramas and poetry is little remembered today.
National Collective officially disbanded almost immediately after the indyref. However, the creative spirit continued.
I wrote a novel, Two Closes And A Referendum, published in 2017, which brings together the month-by-month activism on both sides and factual political events of 2014 with the human dramas of the fictional residents of two closes in the East End of Glasgow.
READ MORE: Scottish Reform breakthrough could bring chaos to Holyrood, John Curtice says
And if you haven’t seen it already, I would urge you to watch To See Ourselves showing 2014 in the life of an activist, filmed by his daughter.
Both works will take you back (if you were active) or show you what you missed (if you weren’t).
Ross Colquhoun says the National Collective “belonged in a time and place, and this time has passed”. I totally disagree. They were wrong to officially disband in 2014 and (unofficially) they are still here. And our need for their creativity and original thought has never been greater than now.
Mary McCabe
Glasgow
IT is hardly a surprise to note the outcome of the modelling by economists at Aston University, which yet again highlights the continuing act of economic self-destruction that is Brexit.
Goods exports and imports are being seriously hit by the bureaucratic barriers erected by leaving the single market, reducing the UK’s trade competitiveness.
The research has further highlighted this stifling impact, estimating that annual exports to the EU are 17% lower and imports 23% behind where they would have been if Brexit had not occurred, with negative impacts increasing during 2023.
Brexit continues and will continue to have a profound and ongoing impact on UK trade with the EU, and yet the Labour Government continues to rule out rejoining the EU single market or forming a customs union.
The party did, however, promise in its manifesto to “tear down” barriers to trade with Europe by seeking other improvements.
If Keir Starmer is as serious as he says about economic growth and taking tough decisions, it is essential that he tackles the elephant in the room and is more ambitious in deepening trade ties with Brussels, including rejoining the EU single market.
Alex Orr
Edinburgh
SIGHS of relief reached gale-warning levels when the Tories were ousted in July. However, that storm front quickly lost its identity as the new reality was hammered home by the son of a toolmaker.
It’s to do with expectation.
An equivalent would be the shockwave that reverberates around society when we learn of a woman involved in extreme physical cruelty to a child. We all know it’s a possibility but deep down it’s something we still on the whole associate with men. Statistically that is a correct though weakening supposition.
There were expectations that Starmer’s administration would be more caring than a Tory government.
So choosing to keep the two-child benefit cap brought us up short. Scrapping the Winter Fuel Payments to the elderly stuck in our collective craw.
Add that to Labour’s trotting along in the US tailwind regarding the soft touch on Benjamin Netanyahu for nearly a year now – despite the other three nations of the Union calling for an immediate ceasefire – and we are already wondering what is going on.
I would argue strongly that Labour are acting entirely true to form.
Blair’s New Labour stuck to Thatcher’s fiscal programme for two years. It was the Blair administration that introduced tuition fees – crushing generations under debt. It was New Labour that introduced the private sector into NHS and education infrastructure and, of course, it was Blair who gave us the tragic body count in Iraq.
Anyone surprised by Starmer’s Labour has a very selective memory …
Amanda Baker
Edinburgh
EVERY opportunity to mention the Scots language should be taken, as editorial policy.
The recent excellent piece by Hamish MacPherson on three notable Borderers – Michael Scot, Thomas the Rhymer and the Blessed John Duns Scotus – is a good example of such a missed opportunity.
He mentioned, for example, that Duns Scotus was fluent in Latin and Greek, spoke French and Italian, and learned Arabic in order to translate significant works in that language.
The chance to say that this person was, of course, a Scotsman whose native tongue was the Scots language would be a good stroke for our language. Most Scots would know that his native language was Scots but others might not be aware that the language they are reading in is not the same as spoken in the Borders in the 13th to 17th centuries.
Everyone in Scotland who is not a Gaelic speaker, up to and including James VI of Scots/I of England, would have spoken Scots, and this should be mentioned at every opportunity.
Similarly, the numbers and titles of monarchs should be scrupulously accurate. There are no monarchs of SCOTS after Charles II – who was crowned in Scotland and took the oath to the sovereign people of Scotland – only of Scotland, England etc, and James Vll and ll should be so described, just as Elizabeth was Queen of Scotland, ER. Check postboxes to confirm this.
There are many other ways to assert the distinctness of Scotland and especially the people of Scotland – which is what everything should be about – and The National should use all of them at all times in the most positive of ways. Language, in the widest sense, is the key.
READ MORE: Stephen Flynn: Keir Starmer failing to deliver change to Scotland
Susan FG Forde Scotlandwell HOW do I tell the world? Who would want to know?
How can I describe my experiences in the face of a United Kingdom propaganda machine that sees health as an as-yet-untapped cash cow, a system fit to plunder?
“Broken but not beaten,” political bleating. Statistics used as blunt instruments to disrupt the calm necessary for the caring classes to function. Ill-humoured attacks disguised as a catalyst for change.
With this as a backdrop, I have been in the care of three major hospitals and a health centre on and off for the last 16 months. Okay, it is the Scottish NHS, and that is a matter of pride to me.
There are no superlatives strong enough to describe my treatment, the thought and the skill invested in me. From the light green ladies and gents, through the colourful range of uniforms to doctors, misters and misses, I was listened to and looked after with concern, care and humour.
I may have been especially fortunate but was treated by professionals, at all levels, who latched on to me empathetically, reassuring as they treated.
The advert part. If you have to vape, have to heavy bevy, wonder where your next pudding supper is coming from, they’ll try, but the reality is they cannae keep up. It has a lot to do with us.
All in all, I believe I have been served by a world-class health service, staffed by people whose personal investment gives it this quality. Simply the best!
An’al no be telt different.
James Donaldson
Fairlie
SO, the Dundee United manager Jim Goodwin “bemoaned his player’s failure to put in a ‘cynical’ foul on Tom Lawrence before the Rangers playmaker scored”! (The National, September 16).
Is this the depths that Scottish football has plummeted to?
Will the SFA censure Mr Goodwin (below left) for bringing the game into disrepute by publicly making such a statement? I don’t think so.
Had Lawrence been “cynically fouled” by a United player, would one then expect that player to receive a red card? I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.
From a spectator’s perspective, it seems to be SFA “custom and practice” not to issue a red card seven minutes into a match, after all, it might influence the overall spectacle. Had the same incident occurred seven minutes from the end of the same match, I have no doubt it would have been issued!
There was an incident later on in the game where a red card should have been issued but the referee, already “yellow card happy”, with some of the most ridiculous being issued for what can only be described as “trivial” incidents, “bottled it” and turned in a performance well short of what is expected by a well-paid (though part-time) official who, in my opinion, had already lost considerable control of the game. I won’t read any of these criticisms of referees in the sports columns! Nor will I hear ANY club official criticise a referee for making a wrong decision because the press and club officials will be punished and, by definition, are therefore censured!
Despite living in a democracy, no-one can criticise SFA referees, but I feel I must make my point.
What about VAR, is it “doing the job”? Yes, but NOT the job it should be doing due to the “selective opinion” of the officials, therefore, it needs to be refined and the first change should be by allowing the public to hear the dialogue between referee and VAR and to hear it LIVE, not three months later.
Despite newspapers, reporters, managers and club officials being censored, the public aren’t, so it’s left to those who pay and financially support the game and its officials to complain openly, otherwise the game will continue on this downward spiral and a lack of interest (and finance) will eventually kill off football as we know it.
Jim Todd
Cumbernauld
OKAY, I am baffled. I admit it. I’m in the latter half of my 60s and maybe it’s all got too much for me to follow. Fifty years of supporting the SNP have ground me down. Last Tuesday, SNP depute leader Keith Brown eventually told us, at the National’s Indyref @10 event, that another Section 30 will never be granted. This bit I understand.
However, later in the day, he and the rest of the SNP MSPs joined with the Greens, Labour, LibDems and Tory MSPs in a nightmarish coalition to vote down a proposal to use the 2026 elections as a referendum.
As best I understand the parliamentary procedure, the SNP then went on to support an amendment from our ex-colleagues, the Greens. It called for a convention to be established to also debate the fate of the monarchy, rejoining the EU, the treatment of asylum seekers and a rapid transition to net zero, otherwise known as the Green Dreamland with – you guessed it – Grangemouth no more.
It is now three months from July’s electoral disaster and three months nearer to May 2026. The chances of a second disastrous performance by the SNP are high and increasing day by day.
Brian Lawson
Paisley
BATTERY Energy Storage Systems (BESS) are the new energy nightmare flooding into rural Scotland.
Residents are watching in horror as speculative energy traders, most from outwith Scotland, apply to dump their potentially toxic and dangerous industrial junk near our communities so they can buy cheap and sell energy at an inflated price. They will ruthlessly hold the grid to ransom when wind fails for the best possible price (and that can be £4000MWh+) before releasing any electricity to keep the lights on.
At the FIELD Beauly BESS public consultation one of the staff members shrugged and said: ‘It’s just business’ when I challenged the motives of his ‘green’ company with the above.
There is no economic benefit to the consumer and definitely no environmental benefit either.
Although I don’t understand how people can ignore the pollution overseas and the adverse affect on indigenous people that lithium mining has, can they really ignore the fact that if these things catch fire they are almost impossible to put out. It has been reported that if the BESS at Keith goes up then the police will just ‘’cordon off Keith’ until it burns itself out.
It seems that anyone with enough savvy to fill out a planning application form can apply for something as dangerous as industrial battery storage with the intention of sticking it near people’s homes.
The outrageous lack of protection of rural citizens by the Scottish government regarding the deliberate siting of potentially lethal BESS near where people live, work and raise their families has to be grossly negligent. With an already depleted fire service what confidence does anyone have that a lithium battery fire is going to be extinguished and vast plumes of toxic smoke will not be belching into the atmosphere?
These BESS speculators are offering vast sums of money to landowners to host their potential fire crackers. Figures of £70,000 pa for decades have been bandied about – enough to turn some into bad neighbours. Some landowners don’t live on the land they will lease for BESS. After all who would choose to live near that?
Wind developers have already trashed vast swathes of rural Scotland and if there is a proven economic and environmental need then before someone is killed BESS should only be permitted in existing remote industrialised wind farm locations, many miles away from where people live. The wind industry has created a major problem with their unreliable generation and if millions of pounds of constraints were removed from them then maybe they might take some responsibility. I can hear the howls of indignation already!
The Scottish government must call a halt to siting BESS in our communities before there is a tragedy or face the wrath of those they put in danger.
Lyndsey Ward
Beauly Spokeswoman for Communities B4 Power Companies
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