Letters: Are Scots votes not equal to English ones?

These letters appear in the 24 April edition of The Independent

I cannot understand the continuing “project fear” attitude relating to a stronger Scottish voice in Parliament. After all, we were assured we were better together, and we were love-bombed to stay. The majority spoke through the democratic process and we stayed. Nine months later, there is a very strong possibility that the majority of Scottish voters will vote democratically, not for the three unionist parties, but for the SNP.

Strange, then, when in 1989 a Tory government with minority, nay minimal, representation in Scotland introduced the poll tax here first, that was “democratic”.

Stranger still that no Tory government since then has had a majority and therefore no mandate here to impose, nay govern. But that too is deemed democratic within the UK context of one person, one vote.

Should we wake up to find that, democratically, Scotland has voted for a majority of SNP MPs, are the unionist politicians implying my vote, and all the others of the same ilk, are of lesser importance, and somehow… undemocratic?

Selma Rahman
Edinburgh

Dr Morris (letters, 23 April) is, I’m sure, a very busy person, but if he looked again at the cartoon of Nicola Sturgeon as the head of the Loch Ness monster, he would have seen a flabby John Major paddling underneath. I read this as Dave Brown deriding John Major’s scaremongering invention of the admirable Nicola as an apocryphal monster. Maybe the decoding of political cartoons as part of much-derided media studies courses is more useful than generally thought.

Sarah Macrae
Petersfield, Hampshire

Your editorial of 23 April makes a change from the conventional wisdom that at all costs you must not be a single-issue party, to which the Greens have listened too hard. The decision to become a general left-wing party contains an obvious long-term danger. In the short-term there may be left-wing voters looking for a home, but in 10 to 20 years’ time it is likely the Greens will simply be another far-left fringe group, standing forlornly on street corners selling the party newspaper, jostling members of Socialist Worker et al. They should look upon the example of CND and tremble.

Roger Schafir
London N21

The notion of the Greens “moving to the centre ground” had this keen reader of politics choking on his cornflakes (“Greens accused by scientists of ignoring climate change in election”, 23 April).

And speaking boldly of a “Green betrayal” on the environment is premature. Just this week at the Evening Standard hustings, the quality of the capital’s environment was at the centre of Natalie Bennett’s pitch to Londoners. To criticise the Greens – as scientists seem to be doing – for talking about the NHS and unemployment is nonsensical. How can a party with aspirations to become a significant force not discuss these critical issues? Issues that are of course, not at all divorced from the environment.

Charlie King
London SE23

Rumour has it that David Cameron’s heart is not in the Tory general election campaign. I’m not surprised. If he wins he could go down in history as the Prime Minister who took the UK out of the EU and Scotland out of the UK. What’s left for Conservatism then?

John Haran
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

With the election fast approaching, the words of CS Lewis seem more apt than ever: “Their threats are terrible enough, but we could bear / All that; it is their promises that bring despair.”

Sue Edwards
Sherborne, Dorset

Boat people: first, save lives

I don’t know which is more depressing in the overwhelmingly hostile reaction to the boat people from Libya – the basic lack of compassion and humanity of the send ’em all back/not our problem brigade (letters, 23 April), or European politicians’ ignorance or shameful denial of the chaos and violence in that country.

Both the sub-Saharan economic migrants and refugees are coming from Libya, which is a failed country with two governments, umpteen militias and widespread violence and from which the West and international organisations have withdrawn, considering it not safe. Yet we’d send the boat people back there?

The first priority must be to save lives. The second is to forge an international agreement on immediate and longer-term solutions, by involving not just Europe but the US, other Western countries, Arab allies and China. The international community solved the problem of the Vietnamese boat people by agreeing on swift resettlement in other Asian countries followed by more permanent resettlement in the US and Europe and repatriation agreements.

Ironically, and hypocritically, the European countries least willing to take in the boat people are those making the most negative noise – and spreading the big lie: that African/Muslim countries are not playing their part. In fact, countries including Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq have taken in over 90 per cent of more than three million Syrian refugees, while African countries have taken in both refugees and economic migrants: Tunisia has camps, South Africa has some three million migrants. Britain, on the other hand, has accepted 143 Syrians, France 500.

Rod Chapman
Sarlat, France

Whatever happened to the word “refugee” for those fleeing war and violence?

Venetia Caine
Glastonbury, Somerset

Rogue trader, or standard practice?

In the week that Tesco posts a historic loss (report, 22 April), we need to ask ourselves serious questions about the way that we do business these days. Navinder Singh Sarao, the alleged “flash crash trader” (23 April), appears to have done nothing more than is now seen as clever business practice. Had he done this as a business or economics student, he would have been awarded an A*.

It is now the norm for sellers to be economical with the truth, withhold information from buyers about the product they are buying, attract clients with promises that can never be kept, cold call people to get them to part with their money, etc.

In other words, it is all right to do anything, say anything, promise anything, to get the client to part with his or her money.

It is so much the norm that we do not believe anything we are told by anyone trying to sell us something. Why is this happening? Our education system educates youngsters purely for work and for the job market rather than educating them with the aim of becoming good, well-rounded, whole persons. There is little joy in learning, less joy in questioning, least joy in reflecting and great joy in conning cash out of others. It is called clever business tactics. And those who taught us these superb market practices now want to extradite and punish Sarao for apparently excelling in using these tactics to his advantage.

Dr Faysal Mikdadi
Dorchester, Dorset

Free schools are draining the budget

If the Education Secretary is concerned about the pressure immigration is supposedly putting on schools, all she has to do is U-turn on Michael Gove’s policies. New money should have been ploughed into all schools instead of free schools, many of which are under capacity but shouted the loudest about labelling all fire escapes in Latin or timetabling three hours a day of medieval German literature.

Nor would she face a shortage of teachers and low morale if teachers weren’t continually denigrated in public or found their pensions raided to pay for the banker-induced deficit.

Ian McKenzie
Lincoln

Tax second homes to cool property market

There is huge fundraising potential in a more penal rate of, say, council tax on all second homes and any home owned by non-residents, or owned by an offshore company.

Subject to the level of the tax, this could cool down the property market, make more houses available to people wanting to live where they work and bring residents back to some parts of London that have turned into ghost villages where there is no resident population to support local businesses.

Charles Oglethorpe
Guildford, Surrey

Humiliated by airport security

Simon Calder has written about how one can be made to feel like a criminal at airport security; I have found this has got much worse now that I have a replacement (metal) knee. I tell the staff clearly that this is what has set off the alarm, but at Heathrow I have been confronted by hard-faced security people who are over-familiar in their searches, and put me through a full body scanner. It makes for a distressing start to a holiday.

By contrast, on returning from abroad I have been believed by the security staff, and not made to feel humiliated as I have here.

Jane Gregory
Emsworth, Hampshire