Scotland’s choices under attack by Westminster - your views

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The debating chamber of the Scottish Parliament at HolyroodThe debating chamber of the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood
The debating chamber of the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood

Scotland’s choices under attack

The real reason for referring Scottish Parliament legislation to the Supreme Court on two uncontroversial pieces of legislation that received unanimous support at Holyrood is down to Westminster’s post-Brexit taking back control agenda.

The only previous occasion of Scotland’s law-making powers being referred to the Supreme Court was on the continuity of European Union law after Brexit and a reminder that Cyrus and Malta had more say over Boris Johnson’s flawed Brexit deal, also supported by Labour, than Scotland.

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The current Scottish government has done more to give our children the best start in life than anywhere else in the UK thanks to the baby box, doubling the provision of nursery education and the Scottish Child Payment, which the Joseph Rowntree Foundation described as “a beacon of progressive policy for the rest of the UK” and “the most progressive policy brought in since devolution 20 years ago”.

These are the kind of policies the UK government is attacking when it challenges the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into Scots law and what exactly is wrong with Scotland adopting the European Charter of Local Self-Government other than it goes against Westminster’s centralising instincts?

Mary Thomas, Watson Crescent, Edinburgh.

Greta own goal

The University of Winchester commissioned a bronze statue of Greta Thunberg in recognition of her fight against climate change. They scored a spectacular own goal. Did their chemistry department not warn then that the smelting process to create bronze is environmentally harmful? It is to be hoped Greta will demand her statue is thrown into the nearest harbour.

Clark Cross, Springfield Road, Linlithgow.

Toytown managers

I have always found the workers at the Craigmillar household waste site to be extremely helpful, friendly and very professional.

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What made a visit to the site interesting was the discarded soft toys the staff had arranged into various scenes on the embankment. It made the site one of the few that children would enjoy accompanying their parents and grandparents to and brightened up what would otherwise be a mundane task.

However, on my recent visit I saw that all the toys had been taken away. Apparently, the staff had been told by the management to remove them as they were "unprofessional".

In my opinion what is more "unprofessional" is a jobsworth management who cannot see the benefits in allowing a little humour and humanity.

Paul Lewis, Guardwell Crescent, Edinburgh.

Name List names

In the forthcoming Scottish Parliamentary elections we are supposed to cast two votes. The first is to elect an MSP who will be chosen on the majority of votes cast. But we do have a second vote for a party or an individual to elect as a regional MSP.

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Of the eight Scottish regions, every region is supposed to elect seven candidates. I find it strange that we know the individual we are sending as constituency candidate, we do not know anything of the seven regional candidates.

No name, no past history, no character and no right to choose. It is thus important that political parties should declare their regional candidates so that we can avoid a party with a bad seed.

Hasan Beg, Harcourt Road, Kirkcaldy.

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