SNP business record worrying for ScotRail - your views

"There is no better time than now for the vision thing and for ScotRail becoming a people's railway”

Passengers board a ScotRail train at Glasgow Central Station

SNP business record worrying for ScotRail

You report that SNP HQ are proposing to take over the Abelio/ScotRail franchise through an arms length company (‘ScotRail will return to public ownership next year’, March 18). Costs/business plan please?

Everyone considering voting SNP on May 6, I am sure, do not need reminding that they have been rather cack-handed when foraying in to the commercial world, whether it be airports, shipbuilding, fabrications and more.

Overseeing the building of a new hospital is not rocket science, except under various SNP ministers.

It is clear the SNP do not walk their own talk, never let facts get in the way of a good press release or TV appearance.

Post-Covid and post-Brexit surely it is time for politicians to be looking beyond the end of their noses. There is no better time than now for the vision thing and for ScotRail becoming a people's railway. It's not old fashioned dogma, it makes sense in these extraordinary times. You could even call it a once in a life opportunity.

I shall be voting for parties (Co-operative and Labour) who have big ideas, respect the people living in Scotland and will deliver on their promises. Of course, I am partisan!

Douglas McBean, West Pilton Way, Edinburgh.

Lockdown measures prove baffling

The relaxation of lockdown measures will no doubt please those who want to sit outside in a beer garden of an evening. But there seems little logic behind some of the provisions.

I have seen no evidenceto show that restaurants have been transmitters of the virus, yet proprietors have been punished disproportionately.

It is hard to understand why 50 people can sit down together at a wedding feast but restaurants cannot open. After all the expense restaurateurs went to last year to make their premises Covid safe, this is another slap in the face for them.

As last year, restaurants have to close at an unsocially early hour. Why? What is so special about 8pm that 10pm doesn’t meet? Having a glass of wine indoors is not permitted. Why?

This reminds me of a colleague who described the old Scottish licensing laws as ‘The Misery of Scotland Act’.

Jill Stephenson, Glenlockhart Valley, Edinburgh.

Standards slipping in political behaviour

If even only some of the latest allegations concerning inappropriate behaviour in Westminster by an SNP minister and the reaction or lack of it by those in charge are true, it is beyond concerning.

It would seem the decision-makers and leaders of the Scottish nationalists are operating to standards more akin to the early 18 or 1900s than the 2000s. The Salmond Committee’s leaked conclusions merely endorse this conception.

This I am afraid is the behaviour of a party drunk on power and fast reaching the stage where those in charge feel that they are untouchable and all normal patterns of integrity and decent behaviour do not apply to them.

The tendrils of what can only be called this abuse of power seem to be everywhere. Thank the Lord an English MP has used parliamentary privilege to expose at least some of the wrongdoing; why could it not have been a Scot?

There has been, it would seem, deep party political, influential incursions into business, the arts, the law, the civil service and the media in Scotland.

I would venture no country or region in the civilised western world has seen the abuse of power that we see have seen recently wielded almost as a norm in Scotland.

Alexander McKay, New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh.