Readers' letters: Recall petition for failed MSPs overdue

A consultation has been launched in the Scottish Parliament on a new law that would allow MSPs to be removed from office.

Long overdue, but is to be welcomed after the Derek Mackay scandal, where he was paid over £150,000 plus pension contributions while hiding away for 14 months.

This bill will also ensure the automatic removal from office of any MSP given a prison term regardless of the length of sentence.

In England and Wales the sentence has to be over a year. This should be changed immediately to the Scottish proposal.

This Scottish bill will also establish a system of recall for MSPs, allowing voters to trigger a special election to remove a politician who has breached the rules. This happened in 2019 to MP Fiona Onasanya.

Christian Wakeford MP has just left the Tories for Labour. The UK and Scotland should now jointly consider that politicians who change parties should also be subject to a recall petition.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow.

Met investigation into Downing Street

Regarding the Met investigation into Downing Street parties, didn’t the police security at Downing Street know what was going on while they were posted there and why didn’t they report it?

So what can a long-winded investigation discover that the police, who were actually there at the time of the parties, failed to?

Second, when innocent people were walking in empty fields or on clifftops with a socially distanced friend, they were fined or arrested. Can someone explain why no one who attended the parties has yet been charged and arrested, having admitted their participation?

Elaine Pomeransky, Edinburgh.

Time is not fit for an indyref2 campaign

Imagine an overweight, totally unfit neighbour tells you that he is going to run a marathon.

You would try to dissuade him, wouldn't you, and you would ask if he was really properly prepared for such a challenging event.

That is the situation here in Scotland. The SNP are pushing for independence even though we have a flabby economy with low levels of exports, a shrinking manufacturing sector and a massive gap between taxes raised and total public expenditure.

We used to be a great manufacturing nation and a world-class ship-builder, but now we cannot even build two ferries and the latest Scottish Government ferry contract has been given to Poland.

Our education system has slid down in the international PISA ratings and the SNP scrapped our own literacy and numeracy annual survey because of poor results.

Run a marathon? With our fitness level we would struggle to walk to the end of the street!

It could turn out to be a massive shock to the system if the SNP blarney their way to secession and we are suddenly confronted with the reality.

Les Reid, Edinburgh.

Conversion therapy

It seems The Christian Institute are again in the vanguard of opposition to the proposed ban on so-called LGBT “conversion therapy”.

Its deputy director Simon Calvert has said that it would “outlaw innocent, everyday church activities, including people praying for their friends.”

While supportive counselling could be exactly what some people might need at a difficult time, is this really what the CI has in mind? More likely their message will be “Have you tried asking god to make you not gay?”

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