Letters: Scotland has paid a heavy price for Sturgeon’s independence obsession

SIR – During Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation speech yesterday, she admitted that she had devoted her political life to Scottish independence.

What a pity she appeared to have no spare capacity to deal with Scotland’s health service, its declining education system and its appalling record on drug deaths, all of which deserved far more attention. Had she done this she would have been supported by the majority of the Scottish population.

Andrew Waterfield
St Albans, Hertfordshire

SIR – Nicola Sturgeon took the English pound and squandered millions trying to fulfil her dream. Had she taken the righteous path and used that money to improve the country, she might actually have achieved her goal.

Mike Forlan
Hayling Island, Hampshire

SIR – Why is Ms Sturgeon stepping down as First Minister? Simple: she lost the trust of the Scottish people over the transgender issue.

Michael Edwards
Haslemere, Surrey

SIR – I suspect I was not the only proud exiled Scot doing the Highland fling round my kitchen yesterday morning.

Kirsty Blunt
Sedgeford, Norfolk

SIR – At last, something positive has come out of wokeism.

Max Ingram
Emneth, Norfolk

SIR – How typical that, in her long overdue, self-aggrandising resignation speech, Nicola Sturgeon should have lamented the “brutality” of politics.

This from a politician whose own supporters are among the worst offenders, and who herself said only recently that she “detest[s] the Tories and everything they stand for”. One hopes there will now be a few rays of sunshine and a lot less grievance.

Guy Bargery
Edinburgh

SIR – The SNP could now become a responsible partner of the UK and contribute to the success of the whole nation. Will it seize this chance?

Stephen Bartlett
Kirk Ella, East Yorkshire

SIR – David Cameron: seven minutes.

Theresa May: six and a half minutes.

Boris Johnson: six minutes.

Liz Truss: three minutes.

Nicola Sturgeon: 18 minutes.

Could it be that Ms Sturgeon is just a little too self-indulgent?

Keith Barron
Tring, Hertfordshire

SIR – Even in the manner of her resignation Nicola Sturgeon got it wrong.

Surely the correct order of words would have been “right for the country, for my party, and for me” – not the reverse.

Ian Smart
Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire

SIR – Whatever people think of Nicola Sturgeon and her policies, it was a great speech.

Jack Marriott
Churt, Surrey

SIR – When the Conservatives changed prime minister they were criticised by many, including the SNP, for not having an election. Can we expect one in Scotland?

William Ballantine
Bo’ness, West Lothian

Motorway snooker

SIR – The scarcity of brightly coloured cars (Letters, February 15) is a continuing source of disappointment for those wishing to play a proper game of “motorway snooker”.

While scoring eight (red followed by black) is achievable – but not as common as some years ago – making a good break is now almost impossible.

Jeremy Hamilton-Miller
Twickenham, Middlesex

SIR – When I bought my Ford Mondeo many years ago the salesman complimented me on my choice of colour. I had opted for a rather nice shade of blue.

When, a few years later, I came to part exchange my car for another model, I was dismayed at the quoted price. I was informed by the salesman that this was because of the colour, which was known in the trade as “doom blue”.

Richard Acland
Chepstow, Monmouthshire

SIR – In the mid-1980s I asked a salesman if the car I wanted came in bright yellow or orange. The predominant car colour in those days was red. I have never been à la mode, whatever the trend (clothes, interior decorations), and I wanted a car I could find in a car park.

The sales agent offered me yellow “go faster” stripes. I declined and picked a brownish colour that, inexplicably, the marketing material described as “antelope beige”.

Anne Jappie
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

SIR – My objection is not so much to cars’ grey bodywork but rather their uniformly funereal black interiors.

Dr Steven R Hopkins
Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire

Corbyn and Starmer

SIR – Sir Keir Starmer has barred Jeremy Corbyn from standing as a Labour candidate at the next election.

Yet for four years Sir Keir campaigned for a party with widespread anti-Semitic sentiments, and asked us to elect Mr Corbyn – whom he now states is unfit to be a Labour MP – to the highest office.

Peter Hopper
Stevenage, Hertfordshire

Elusive energy refund

SIR – I closed my account with Scottish Power (Letters, February 14) when I moved out of a rented house in September last year. It was quick to arrange a final bill, and assured me that the £140 credit on my account would be refunded automatically via direct debit. This never happened.

My attempts to contact the company went unanswered. I was unable to get past the online chat robot. Five months and four formal letters of complaint later, I have still not received my refund. Only one of the letters of complaint has even received a proper reply, telling me that the refund had been initiated and would be paid via direct debit, yet it never came.

Scottish Power’s strategy seems to be to make itself as difficult as possible to contact, admitting that it owes me money but hoping I’ll give up.

Thomas Harrison
Oxford

SIR – The hypocrisy of deeming Sizewell C to be “green” beggars belief (“Nuclear projects granted eco-friendly status”, report, February 15).

Suffolk will have 15 years of construction traffic hell, with hundreds of heavy lorries every day on our inadequate roads. Minsmere nature reserve and its surrounding biodiversity will be fatally compromised by noise, light and damage to the water table. The sea will be affected by the warm water outflow from the cooling system. The tourist industry will be crippled, with accommodation taken up by the itinerant workforce. And that’s all before an amp of power is produced.

Never mind the implications of the post-operational clean-up – a problem conveniently left to our great-grandchildren. Sizewell C will join HS2 in that great graveyard for overpriced government-backed projects, the tombstone for which will also record the extinction of the Tory party.

Charles Barrington
Woodbridge, Suffolk

Waiting for probate

SIR – When my husband died during lockdown in March 2021, it took me eight weeks to get probate. My mother died in September 2022 and I have now been advised that probate will take at least 16 weeks. If this example of productivity halving is typical, no wonder the country is stagnating.

Margaret Clark
Preston, Lancashire

Sandwich divide

SIR – I recently spent a wild camping (no tents) weekend with friends on the south coast. Over the past 35 years the sandwiches for our increasingly short walks have stayed the same: extremely strong cheddar with a well-known brand of pickle on brown bread, together with roast beef, horseradish sauce and lettuce on white bread.

It turns out that I alone in a group of six spread butter only on the bottom slice of a two-slice sandwich. The others spread both slices. Is this a public-school issue, a class issue, or a North-South divide issue?

James Brosnan
Rochester, Kent

How policing lost sight of its primary principles

SIR – Philip Johnston (Comment, February 15) makes astute observations regarding confidence in the police and the increase in crime.

In 1829, Sir Richard Mayne, the joint first Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said: “The primary object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime; the next that of detection and punishment of offenders.” He added: “The protection of life and property, the preservation of public tranquillity and the absence of crime will alone prove whether these efforts have been successful.”

When I joined the Metropolitan Police in 1980, every officer was required to learn and understand this. However, in the following 32 years of my service, policing was made more difficult by poor leadership, conflicting demands and complexities arising from the inadequacies of other public services. In my experience, public confidence is gained by a visible police presence, with officers speaking personally to victims of crime and sensitively managing their expectations, as well as dealing robustly with anti-social behaviour.

Policing has never been perfect and it is unrealistic to expect that it ever will be. However, the combination of a reduction in budgets, the loss of tens of thousands of experienced officers, and increased demands such as dealing with mental health issues and work that should be done by the social services has resulted in police often failing to provide an adequate service that meets the primary objects, as defined by Sir Richard Mayne. A Royal Commission is long overdue.

Clifford Baxter
Wareham, Dorset

When the Ulez charge is a tax on patients

SIR – I live in the borough of Reigate and Banstead, so our local hospitals are in Epsom and St Helier. Epsom is a short drive away but appointments are often at St Helier, which is twice the distance and means paying the ultra-low emission zone charge (Letters, February 15), thus taxing health. Public transport can take well over an hour.

Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has not thought his proposals through.

Roger Dring
Tadworth, Surrey

SIR – As an asthmatic, I find construction pollution to be worse than that of traffic. It travels, doesn’t easily disperse, and even comes down with rain. The problem has grown with the use of modern materials and tools. I suspect that, for a variety of reasons, this kind of pollution will never really be taken seriously.

Jenny Papworth
Luton, Bedfordshire

SIR – Sadiq Khan is not alone in monetising environmental concerns. People travelling to Bristol Airport via the signed route from the M5 are funnelled into the Bristol clean air zone and must pay £9, without alternative routing being offered.

However, the main road is actually outside the zone as a whole, like the tail of the letter Q, making this a blatant cash cow.

Huw Baumgartner
Bridell, Pembrokeshire

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