Readers' letters: SNP special advisers not finding answers

Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP have hired the largest number ever of special advisers, funded from the public purse who, unlike civil servants, are unaccountable.

Given the SNPs famed iron-like grasp on "events" I am sure her attention will have been drawn to Evening News October 5 piece by the Labour Party council leader, Cllr Cammy Day.

I can only recoil in horror at the news in that piece that the City of Edinburgh council is planning to introduce "warm and welcoming spaces" where "citizens can keep warm and comfortable in the coming months.”

That's what homes are for; that's what living in a decent civilised society is about; that's why the growth in the number of people having to revert to food banks is a human and political tragedy.

I hold no brief for Cllr Day but it seems to me the Labour administration is doing its best with the limited powers the Scottish Government devolves to councils, while greetin' about independence.

The SNP Scottish Government continually awards an annual grant per head to Edinburgh lower than any of the 32 councils across Scotland.

It's a pity Cllr Adam McVey, the SNP leader, did not use his powers while Edinburgh council leader to effectively lobby his cronies in Holyrood. If he did his efforts abysmally failed.

Perhaps the number of SNP spin doctors could be trimmed back and money made available to the city to stave off what, for me, is a proposal akin to asking the homeless stigmatised during the Thatcher years to crowd round braziers in empty railway arches.

The council will begin its budget deliberations in February 2023, get your say in now before unacceptable proposals come forward. It does not have to be this way.

Douglas McBean, Edinburgh.

Seeing the light on conversion therapy

We welcome that the Scottish Government’s expert advisory group recommends there be no privileged religious exemptions from a ban on so-called LGBT “conversion therapy.”

In an angry response, the Christian Institute’s Let Us Pray spokesman, Simon Calvert laments, what he calls the “criminalisation of LGBT theology” and, apparently without irony, claims that in its eschewing of “Biblical ethics”, the report is “entirely divorced from reality”.

Genuinely supportive and non-directive counselling is one thing,.

But few will imagine that “LGBT theology” amounts to anything more than ‘Don’t Do It!’ or that the Christian Institute’s “conversation around sex and gender” isn’t simply: “Have you tried asking god to make you straight?”

Neil Barber, Edinburgh Secular Society.

Why is Covid Inquiry team quitting?

Five legal experts have stood down from the Covid inquiry. Each states that they are standing down for ‘’personal reasons.’’

This is unprecedented, even in present day Scotland where the tentacles of the SNP appear everywhere and in every major function of state, even those where they most certainly should not appear.

I am not a subscriber to conspiracy theories, but surely to allay fears we could have clear explanations for these resignations in non-legalese language.

We, the people whose taxes pay all their salaries and expenses, deserve to know more than any other over a matter of literally life and death that affected so many of us.

The longer the delay, the more conspiracy theories grow and become more feasible by the day.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh.

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