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Readers’ letters: Parties must work together for the common good

2 October 1965 - A last glimpse of the Buchan train as it rounds the bend at Ellon Station on its final journey.
2 October 1965 - A last glimpse of the Buchan train as it rounds the bend at Ellon Station on its final journey.

Sir, – At the first Peterhead Scottish Week in 1962, 10 years before I was born at Craigtoun Maternity Hospital in St Andrews, you could travel to the event by train.

Fast forward to the 60th Peterhead Scottish Week and you can travel to neither Peterhead nor St Andrews by train.

The Conservatives will point to a U-turn by the SNP and Scottish Green Party, with the failure to bring about a rail link to Peterhead, and it is a fair point as far as it goes.

However, a bit like the lack of a UK sovereign oil wealth fund for a town twinned with Aalesund in Norway and the politicking around that, surely if you had not got rid of the rail link in the past it would not be an issue to be solved in the future. A bit like if you had an oil fund you could use it to help people of today.

I remember watching in the chemistry class a list of things invented or discovered in the UK which we did not take full advantage of because of self-interest or our failure to plan long-term or failure to foresee the future.

Surely it is time for this to end and for representatives of all political parties, once the local elections are finished, to work together to bring about things such as rail links to Peterhead and St Andrews.

Peter Ovenstone, Orchard Grove, Peterhead.

SNP make me feel guilty to be proud

Sir, – My wife and I were in a restaurant in Essen, Germany, on Saturday night. Our waiter moved there from the horrors of Kosovo in the 1990s.

He asked where I came from, and when I said Scotland his face lit up and he talked of his love of Braveheart, the romance, heroism, scenery and Mel Gibson’s acting.

I couldn’t help telling him of the factual inaccuracy, and, thinking of the pictures I’d just seen on social media of the several hundred William Wallace and Flora MacDonald wannabes marching in Arbroath, how it had been weaponised by nationalists to the point where it just made people like me angry.

Then I thought of how, as schoolkids in the 60s, we loved the tales of Wallace and Bruce, Livingstone, Watt and Logie Baird and felt bad that I’d downplayed all this to the waiter.

So when he came back I tried to explain all that but my ramshackle German wasn’t up to the job of describing the complex process of why and how people like me have lost our pride and confidence in our country to the incompetence, jingoism fantasies and knuckledragging core of the SNP.

Allan Sutherland, Willow Row, Stonehaven.

Democracy is a thing to value

Sir – I observe with interest Mike Hannan’s reply to my claims about the prime minister’s ability and Chris Deerin’s article.

It makes me glad we live in a democratic society where we can have different views on leaders and their influence on our lives.

We should respect the opinions of others as I do those of this correspondent but not always agree with them. In a democracy many have quite opposite views but no one is ever right or wrong.

Governments are formed when the opinions of a party on how the country functions are accepted by the electorate over the views of their opponents.

It is worth remembering for those who think democracy is a bad form of government that all the others are so much worse.

Ivan W Reid, Kirkburn, Laurencekirk.

Warning to our gullible friends

I hope that you, Mr and Mrs Herring Gull, will reconsider the proposal to ship you and
many of your troublesome friends to St Kilda as refugees.

We, the bird population of this remote island, most certainly disapprove of this policy.  Our nesting sites are already over-populated by a wide variety of gulls, kittiwakes, gannets, puffins and more.

Since the human population left St Kilda in the 1930s, our eggs have not been taken for their consumption and so the bird population has increased, so we do not want you here at all.

If your luxury liner does attempt to transport you here you will not be welcome and you will find it very difficult to return to Aberdeen unless a careless tourist has abandoned a sat nav or similar aid.

You will have to wait for the next gale-force westerly to assist your flight to the mainland, which hopefully will be as soon as possible.

Please heed this warning, Best of luck, Mr Alf Gannet.

E Lancaster (On behalf of the St Kilda birds).