Readers' letters: Swinney the peacemaker ready to grace world stage

First Minister John Swinney, as usual hiding his talents extremely well, has been highlighted as being one of the early orchestrators of a call for peace in Palestine. This fact, brought to light at this year’s SNP conference by no less than the new Palestinian UK Ambassador addressing conference for the first time (your report, 13 October), must have been greeted with a typical Scottish reaction of quiet pride.

We have to applaud the praise and wonder how this man could be so overlooked globally. Surely, this is the moment when our First Minister steps out from the shadow of previous holders of that post to grace the world stage. Even the role of our ambasssador to the US or UN representative might not be a step too far for our man of many talents.

Meanwhile, his day job beckons as he rouses the faithful for another tilt at Westminster and the ever fading dream of nationhood for Scotland. One can dream, though of bigger and better roles for our First Minister.

T Lewis, Coylton, South Ayrshire

Conference calls

So the SNP conference comes and goes. Nicola Sturgeon turns up to flog copies of her memoir, and there’s a stramash about overpricing. John Swinney bizarrely waffles on about tossing pancakes, but there’s not much chat about his job managing Scotland’s public services – though much more on awfully horrid Westminster and a great deal about independence.

It’s been a year since Alex Salmond died, but at the conference, it’s almost like he never lived. Stephen Flynn, leader of the rump of SNP MPs, turns up from London, and everyone pretends he won’t be party leader after next May’s election result. Sturgeon tells us she believes in Swinney’s secret plan to achieve cessation, though I suspect the plan is so secret Swinney doesn’t know what it is.

However much Swinney pontificates, in 2022 Sturgeon forced the Supreme Court into confirming that Holyrood doesn’t have the power to legislate for a referendum. Meanwhile, shortly before the conference, Keir Starmer reiterated that the democratic result of the 2014 referendum must be respected and that there definitely won’t be another Scexit vote before this parliamentary term ends in 2029.

Martin Redfern, Melrose, Scottish Borders

Talent contest

Having watched John Swinney’s Sunday TV interviews, it’s clear he’s an absolute icon of the lack of imagination, talent and energy that has seeped through and suffocated Scotland since 1999.

I also saw a glimpse of what it could be like if Douglas Alexander could be be cloned and be both Secretary of State and leader of Scottish Labour. He’d wipe the floor with the SNP in next year’s Holyrood elections and be a great First Minster.

And if he could entice the likes of Jim Murphy and Tom Harris back into their overalls we might even have the beginnings of a transformation of Scotland.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

We need indyref2

I’m one of the 60 per cent in favour of Scottish independence, but don’t vote SNP. The issue is surely too big and important to be left in the hands of one party, or two if Alba are included.

The time is ripe for a second referendum on independence. Thorough disillusionment with the Westminster government is accentuated by the scary rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, who could win 361 seats in the next election with a mere 28 per cent of the vote under the crazy first-past-the-post system.

Reform UK is an English national party, with little support in Scotland. Attitudes towards immigration and re-arming are very different north of the Border. It already feels like we are living in a different country and it’s past time for us to make a decision on our future.

Keir Starmer has said he won’t grant permission for a referendum. It’s up to us to make him change his mind. The status quo isn’t working.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Heed petition

One million voters have now expressed their frustration with the ongoing political drama known as Keir Starmer.

The symbolic significance of the active petition for an immediate general election will be lost on Labour but exposes the delicate frailties of our voting system. An active minority can help elect a Prime Minister but a frustrated majority cannot remove one, however dangerous and damaging the culprit. Parliamentary democracy is an ass and we are donkeys to accept it.

Elected by only a third of British voters, Starmer will cling on for as long as possible. He faces no effective opposition, counts on blind political loyalties and enjoys freebies at every turn. Mob rule is never the answer to national political ambitions so now is the time to seek legal remedy and allow the legal system to prove that it is not as asinine as critics assert.

Graham Hadley, Dunfermline, Fife

Trump is no saviour

What kind of world are we living in today? A narcissistic megalomaniac acting as a dictator of the most powerful country in the world devises a loathsome land-grab plan to turn a foreign state into an extravagant tourist resort and supplies the weapons, military intelligence and political backing to another country to devastate that state.

The subsequent despicably wanton destruction and utterly callous disregard of human life is now effectively applauded by the UK and countries around the world under the guise of welcoming a truce in Gaza (without any commitment to reversing ongoing illegal settlements in the West Bank, never mind to a long-term two state solution) for what may simply be a brief hiatus in an appalling conflict that has lasted more than a century. These countries have not even acknowledged, never mind condemned, the horrendous suffering that could have been avoided if the US President had acted decisively a year earlier to end the carnage which has robbed the Palestinian population of the resources and infrastructure to build a viable future for their families while Israeli families continued to mourn the painful absence of hostages kidnapped in the horrific Hamas attack of 7 October 2023.

It is not surprising that Trump calls Putin his friend in the despotic authoritarian world he is fostering while silencing the voices of criticism and protest. There is a better way forward but our children will not see that world if the UK and other countries simply bow to the “might is right” philosophy of a powerful dictator masquerading as a democratic saviour while cynically manipulating those in awe of his power to support his perverse desire to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Down the drain

Colin McAllister is exactly right about the “so-called Stone of Destiny” (Letters, 9 October). It is supposed to have been Jacob’s pillow, which would suggest emphatically that it would be a type of rock which is common in the Holy Land. Sandstone is not the sort of stone you would expect to find in that part of the world, whereas it is abundant in Scotland. I believe, as does Mr McAllister, that a black stone which may be basalt, which is a kind of stone found in the area where Jacob lived, is the real Stone of Destiny. I also have heard that there was a strong candidate which was contained within an iron cage in a church, now closed, in the village of Dull. The stone is no longer there, but I believe that it was there as recently as 40 years ago.

I don’t know if the carvings on the stone were Egyptian, as he states. I thought that they were Pictish. Bearing in mind that St Andrew’s bones are said to have been brought to Kilrymont, which was the name of the town which now bears the saint’s name when it was a Pictish settlement, it would make sense if Jacob’s pillow arrived by similar means. Pictish carving, which is exquisite, would seem appropriate in that context.

The idea that a roughly-hewn, crude oblong of sandstone would ever have been the stone that Scots kings sat on to be crowned is, frankly, laughable. And it was as a laugh, according to the story I was told many a long year ago, that English soldiers were told by locals that it was the Coronation Stone. Those soldiers happily carted it off and swallowed the story. If it is the Scots Coronation stone, then why does it have an iron ring hammered in at one end? It is because it is, indeed, the drain cover it is said to be and the ring was put there to enable it to be lifted. A coronation stone doesn’t require lifting. QED.

Andrew HN Gray, Edinburgh

Nuclear’s vital

I occasionally have a glance at the UK grid supply. In the past two weeks there were at least two days when wind’s contribution was only about 1 per cent of requirement and one day when it was 50 per cent. How on earth would we cope with with such an erratic situation without gas and nuclear (the latter including up to 10 per cent of UK power from France)?

Scotland’s remaining nuclear station at Torness provides a reliable 10 per cent of our electricity. It is due to close in just four years’ time. John Swinney has vowed that he would use planning permission to ban any new nuclear power in Scotland. To equal the Torness contribution will require about 500 of the largest wind turbines plus the essential back-up storage and of course hundreds of square miles of extra grid.

Dr A McCormick, Terregles, Dumfries and Galloway

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