Herald letter: Plan B Could Not Happen.

TOM Gordon hits the nail squarely on the head in his account of some the hurdles faced by the SNP’s Plan B for an unauthorised independence referendum (“Sturgeon’s Indyref Plan B is even worse than it looks”, The Herald, January 28). However, neither he nor his journalistic colleagues have addressed the practical issues which would be faced. In particular, there has been no mention of the fact that the Scottish Government does not run polls, which are in the hands of local Returning Officers, who are usually local authority chief executives.

An independence referendum without the transfer of powers from Westminster to Holyrood (by means of a S30 Order) would not be lawful. Therefore those Returning Officers could not be instructed or compelled to incur expenditure on the preparation for, conduct or counting of such a poll. It simply could not and would not happen.

Peter A Russell, Glasgow G13.

Herald Letter: The Judgement Of Solomon.

SNP COULD HAVE SOUGHT CONSENSUS

YOUR correspondent Ken MacVicar (Letters, January 15) claims that the SNP and its Trumpian Yes Movement followers accepted the outcome of the 2014 referendum ­– in which case he must have missed Alex Salmond on the This Week programme within days of the vote comparing the outcome to a game of golf where the ball has been driven from the tee to the green and only needed a tap-in “next time” to complete the job. This was the start of a never-ending campaign to overturn the biggest vote ever cast for anything or anybody in Scotland.

There was of course another way for the SNP and especially Nicola Sturgeon to go. This would have been to reluctantly accept the No vote and to seek to build on it a consensus going forward for the good of Scotland and the UK, which was after all what she had accepted as a condition of holding the referendum as set out in the Edinburgh Agreement. On the contrary, Ms Sturgeon told us that independence was a cause that transcended all other considerations and led Scotland into deeper and deeper division, and has generally acted as if the 2014 referendum had never happened.

We can only wonder how in all of her prodigious amount of reading the First Minister has managed to avoid the story of the Wisdom of Solomon. It seems to me that she loves her party and its cause more than she loves Scotland, and that she wants independence more than she wants a Scotland at ease with itself. If that was not the case, she would surely have let it go.

Peter A Russell, Glasgow G13.

The Ballad Of Brian Jones

 Ballad of Brian Jones.
 Peter Russell
  
 Brian was the original Rolling Stone
 His head’s halo blond and cool
 An evil virtuoso who drowned alone
 In Mr Milne’s fogbound pool
  
 Poor Bob Johnson howled like a hound
 When Satan reclaimed his soul
 Brian too was always hellward-bound 
 It’s not only Rock n Roll
  
 Brian wrote the letters to Jazz Times
 He hustled for their gigs
 When they shared girls, drugs, and petty crime
 In filthy World’s End digs
  
 Mick and Keith broke the spell
 Took away Brian’s band
 Getting satisfaction from songs to sell
 For which he couldn’t give a damn
  
 Mick took Marianne, Keith took Anita too
 Brian was left stranded
 Sacked from what he started in 62,
 Broken hearted, empty handed
  
 When Brian drowned at home in 69
 Keith was thieving Cooder’s licks
 Marianne was in her rock princess prime
 Mick and Anita shooting flicks  
  
 Marianne miscarried, took 150 Tuinal
 And went over to a far place
 Silent, grey, and unmusical
 To meet Brian face to face
  
 Her stomach  pumped, her life saved
 She didn’t slip through Mick’s hands
 But she’d been in Brian’s 12 foot grave
 Where his revenge was planned
  
 In 76, Brian bid Anita come,
 While she was spaced on smack
 Took her away with Keith’s baby son -
 She alone came back
  
 Rape, murder, RFK, Altamont
 Addictions, deaths and fires 
 You can’t always get what you want:
 And Brian never tires
  
 Brian was the original Rolling Stone; 
 Mick and Keith live in doubt and pain
 And when tragedy brings their blues down
 Brian’s been back again