Secretive SNP not helping voters - your views

Intro

Government secrecy does not help voters

The SNP administration is a secretive one. We need only look at its determination to suppress written and oral evidence about the Alex Salmond case to divine that.

But in addition, at the start of the Covid crisis it considered suspending the freedom of information laws to save officials’ time for more pressing issues - allegedly. And among these more pressing issues is preparation for a new referendum, which Ms Sturgeon has confirmed is being actively considered. So - a referendum is more of a priority than freedom of information.

Perhaps it was wise to consider suppressing FOI, given that it was thanks to FOI requests that the scandal of infected patients being transferred to care homes from hospital was revealed.

Now it appears that, while the government in Westminster has been liberal in publishing the minutes of Sage committee meetings, Ms Sturgeon has been economical with the truth about what her own group of experts has advised.

No-one who has observed her government will be surprised by this. For example, publication of detailed information about pupil performance and progress in schools has, in recent years, been suppressed.

We have a secretive government that talks a lot about democracy but doesn’t trust voters sufficiently to give them the information they need to make a considered choice.

Jill Stephenson,

Glenlockhart Valley, Edinburgh.

Politicians know less than virus clinicians

Martin Redfern (letters, November 25) should study the research published by Stirling University on August 30 which found that care homes in England had the greatest increase in excess deaths at the height of the Covid 19-pandemic.

Also, Public Health investigations in Scotland and Wales reached the same conclusion that analysis does not find evidence that hospital discharges of any kind were associated with care home outbreaks.

As Dr Macaskill, of Scottish Care, said “people going home to die is an exceptional circumstance, clinical flexibility is critical along with family and care home input, we need to be mindful of the distress for all in such circumstances”.

I am appalled and astounded but not surprised that some politicians think they know better than experienced clinicians when it comes to discharging hospital patients into care homes which, for many, is their home.

Mary Thomas,

Watson Crescent, Edinburgh.

Hodge is attacking the wrong target

Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who was verbally insulted by online trolls who posted anti-Semitic abuse, told her Twitter followers: "This abuse is not normal. This is why zero tolerance matters”.

I agree and would add this is why the SNP's Hate Crime Bill needed input from across the political divide, not nit-picking from the party political sidelines.

I nearly hit the ceiling though, when Margaret Hodge, an unelected Dame who supported Labour's wrongful invasion of Iraq - which Mr. Corbyn opposed - in which thousands of innocent Iraqis lost their lives, attempted to link her dreadful anti-Semitic abuse to Jeremy Corbyn, who she said should not be allowed to return to the Labour party.

Not for a minute do I believe Mr Corbyn is racist and I also do not believe these racist trolls are genuine Labour supporters. Historically he and others on the left have been anti-Zionist, which is different.

Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer and others on the right are now trying to change the narrative by implying anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

Dame Margaret dislikes Mr Corbyn, not because he is anti-Semitic - which he is not - but because he is a socialist. To quote Dame Margaret: 'This type of abuse is not normal. This is why zero tolerance matters.'

Maybe Mr Corbyn could have been more critical if there was racism within his party, but tell me a party that is entirely free from this hatred. Instead of further dividing the Labour party, perhaps she should turn her ire towards the Tory party faithful who seem to be able to ignore racist comments from Boris Johnson when he said Muslim women look like letterboxes, black people have water melon smiles and their children are piccaninnies.

Not to leave the Scots out, Mr Johnson, while editor of the right-wing magazine The Spectator, published a poem calling the Scottish people a verminous race.

How Dame Margaret can ignore such blatant racism and attack Mr Corbyn doesn't feel right to me.

Jack Fraser, Musselburgh.