Readers' Letters: Most MSPs seem incapable of civilised debate

The great tragedy is not that people heckle each other. Yes, that is annoying as you can’t then hear what is being said, but for me, it is the inability of many to actually form opinions and express them without having a speech written for them by a Special Adviser. So often you watch “debates” and there is no engagement with what someone has said. They are merely there to read the words on the paper before them.

Debate involves not only speaking but listening, considering and countering – something many in Holyrood appear incapable of doing. I don’t hold out much hope that it will be any better after the next election.

Jane Lax, Aberlour, Moray

Mean mediocrity

On BBC1’s Laura Kuenssberg programme on Sunday there was much discussion about the strife and uncertainty in the world.

Panellist Stephen Flynn, the SNP Westminster leader, commented that amidst the turmoil First Minister John Swinney offers stability.

Would this be the stability that would result from the SNP achieving its primary aim of forcing another referendum, triggering years of campaigning, negotiation, disputes, division and economic turmoil, added to the international uncertainty?

More likely it would be the stability of the SNP failing to trigger a referendum, saddling us with another five years of “business as usual” mediocrity, increasing public debt, introducing inadequate legislation, failing to improve the economy, education, healthcare, transport and housing.

Mark Openshaw, Cults, Aberdeen

Staying special

It’s true that the United States failed to assist the United Kingdom in the 1982 Falklands War, as Ni Holmes recalls (Letters, 20 March). President Ronald Reagan faced the dilemma of either backing his closest ally, or else the pro-American Argentinian dictator General Leopoldo Galtieri. So America stayed neutral. The USA had also refused to help the UK during the Suez Crisis many years before.

However, remember that the UK declined to support its US friends in Vietnam. Yet despite these foreign policy differences, the Special Relationship endured.

Ni Holmes proclaims: “Scotland must get free of the toxic union with Westminster before Keir Starmer relents and follows President Trump, dragging us with him into another conflict with countries we would otherwise be able to make peace with.”

Given some disturbing similarities between Iran’s rulers and the Scottish nationalist movement discussed in a previous letter (“Regime changes”, 5 March) it’s actually very easy to imagine the People’s Republic of Scotland cosying up to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The separatists’ continuing refusal to condemn Tehran’s barbaric actions while constantly criticising every Israeli and US move reveals a great deal about where their sympathies lie.

Martin O’Gorman, Edinburgh

People power

Martyn McLaughlin is right to raise concerns about the scale, energy and water demands of new data centres (“Data centre revolution – time to stop and think?”, Scotland on Sunday, 22 March). But the debate is still missing the central truth.

Every conventional data centre wastes almost half of the energy it consumes, venting vast quantities of heat into the atmosphere while nearby homes, schools and public buildings burn gas to stay warm. This is the very definition of poor regulation and bad design.

Scotland needs data centres, but it deserves far better than what is being proposed. It could have facilities that reuse heat within communities that need warmth; turning AI infrastructure into a net contributor to Scottish society, not just a drain on the grid.

This is not theoretical, it can be achieved today.

The problem is that our planning system still treats all data centres as if they are equal. It does not distinguish between infrastructure that wastes energy and infrastructure that uses it twice. That is what needs to change.

If Scotland is serious about climate targets and about public consent for this next wave of development, planning policy should be clear: 100 per cent renewable power, near-zero water use, and meaningful community heat reuse, built in from Day One.

Anything else is simply scaling yesterday’s mistakes.

Mark Lee, CEO, Deep Green Technologies, London

Common sense

It was no shock whatsoever to read of the latest poll indicating that the majority of Scots back further drilling in the North Sea. After recent events, it would be close to insanity not to feel that way.

I am sure they are all aware that fossil fuels are finite. They are aware also we are playing for time by urging drilling to resume, it can only be for a few decades while we perfect other means. But in the annals of our economic history has there even been a more catastrophically stupid decision than to shut off our own abundant supply of fossil fuels, gas, oil, coal, decades before having anything remotely capable of providing the people with 24/7 power is online and available? UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and his fellow eco zealots in the SNP and Greens have a lot to answer for. Shut down our nature-provided bounty and instead buy from Norway or Russia – not best known for Green thinking.

Ed Miliband and the SNP are rightly alone on this one.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

United is best

With polls suggesting a pro-independence majority at the forthcoming Holyrood election, but no guarantee of an outright majority for any single party, this is no time for complacency.

The case for independence is clear: Scotland has the resources and talent to thrive by making its own decisions and taking its place in Europe and the wider world. But this vision will only be realised if people turn out to vote.

Unity is essential. Differences must be set aside so all pro-independence voices work together toward a common goal.

Above all, we must act. Speak to others, make the case – and on election day, get out and vote. Every vote will count.

Grant Frazer, Newtonmore, Highland

Fire eating?

Where is the Type 45 Destroyer HMS Dragon? You remember, the one meant to be off Cyprus. The UK Labour Government got the necessary optics with the big send-off from Portsmouth Harbour, then silence.

Here is a clue. It stayed in the Channel for days with the slight problem its actual crew was still in Plymouth!

John V Lloyd, Inverkeithing. Fife

Classics nouveaux

Scotland on Sunday featured a fascinating article on the revival of the Classics in state schools (22 March). So keen is the interest, that it's proposed to include Classical Studies in the curriculum.

So far, this interest has been powered by enthusiastic teachers, using the lunch break, out of hours. It's early days yet. The Classics have been taught in Scotland since the Middle Ages and were in decline through the 1980s, only to disappear altogether in 2011. As a Classics graduate myself, I know well the value of a Classical education. It presents a great appreciation of languages, which have derived from Latin and Greek, and, indeed, of language itself.

In an era of predictive texting, it's good to see Classical Studies being prescribed, and restored as part of our precious heritage.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Hateful acts

If your loved ones in the Greater London area die this year because there wasn't an ambulance available to get to them on time, you can perhaps blame those who torched four ambulances on Sunday, run and paid for by volunteers to serve all Londoners, all because they were perceived as “Jewish”.

That is the state this country has got itself in – something that would never have been tolerated even in the days of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts.

It’s long past time the perpetrators of this ongoing madness faced a reckoning.

Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire

Chocs away

Steuart Camp­bell considers Intelligent Design and reflects upon the glorious Milky Way galaxy (Letters, 23 March). Most members of our society accept that the Milky Way chocolate bar is designed, and is produced in a factory.

So why not accept the same fundamental idea of design for the Milky Way galaxy? The great writer and famous literary figure, G K Chesterton famously said: “It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”

James Hardy, Belfast

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