A report from the Scottish Funding Council attributes the University of Dundee’s financial crisis to poor financial judgment and weak governance. The Scottish Government has now provided a total of £62 million to bail the university out (“Dundee Uni gets £40m bailout using ‘unprecedented’ powers’,” 25 June). As a result, a significant number of senior managers have been held accountable and have left the organisation through dismissal or resignation The cost of procuring the two ferries, MV Glen Sannox and MV Glen Rosa, has increased from £97m to more than £460m. That increase has resulted in an injection of public funds sixfold greater than that provided to the University of Dundee. There is also the significant indirect economic impact on island communities caused by years of delay. Yet nobody has been held accountable and there have been no resignations or dismissals from the management at either the Scottish Government (at political or directorate level) or at its agencies, Transport Scotland and CMAL. Why is such a different approach to mismanagement of public funds considered acceptable? George Rennie, Inverness Feel free It seems Alan Woodcock is alarmed at the proscribing of Palestine Action as a terrorist group (Letters, 26 June). He worries that soon “Scottish independence campaigners” will also be banned. But Mr Woodcock needn’t worry. The spectacle of few thousand demonstrators shambling along the Royal Mile waving saltires while dressed up as Jacobites, New Age travellers or peace activists doesn’t really do that much harm. To qualify for this cherished illegal status, they’d need to try forcing their way into defence establishments in an attempt to vandalise military equipment which keeps them and everyone else safe from external aggression. It’s strange indeed that we rarely hear these champions of liberty criticise hostile totalitarian powers or subversive groups who threaten the West’s security. Besides, for some mysterious reason there haven’t been that many “freedom” marches recently so there would be nobody to arrest. Martin O’Gorman, Edinburgh Leaving time Presenting the SNP’s seventh Medium-term Financial Strategy and first Fiscal Sustainability Delivery Plan on Wednesday, Finance Secretary Shona Robison deployed the ubiquitous “levers” excuse thus: “The levers that are available to us to stimulate economic growth are limited.” Economic models allow assumptions and estimates to be tweaked to produce different scenarios so I thought I’d do an orthographic tweak to the word “levers” by adding an “a”. The results were astounding: the upcoming Scottish elections give Scotland at least 22 more “leavers” – SNP MSPs who are standing down – plus up to 20 “leaving” by being voted out. So hopefully a government will be voted in that uses the current levers to repair the years of SNP failure and transform Scotland. In the meantime we just have to leave ’er – Ms Robison – to get on with it. Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire No excuse Whenever SNP supporters feel on the defensive about their party’s dire record in government, they say, “What about Wales”? (Letters, 26 June). To which I imagine most of us in Scotland say, “Wales? So what?” But Wales, with its own dysfunctional devolved administration, provides an alibi for the failings of the SNP in Scotland. These are, as we know, legion, and those in the NHS have been highlighted particularly recently, including by correspondents David Millar and Alexander McKay (Letters, same day), following the damning judgment of the BMA Scotland Chair, Dr Iain Kennedy, who claims that the NHS in Scotland is “dying”. The NHS in England has its problems, but in many respects it performs better than the Scottish and Welsh varieties, and UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting is addressing issues that require reform. No sign of that in Scotland. So it suits SNP apologists to emphasise that poorly performing Wales is ruled by a Labour administration, as if that somehow excuses the SNP’s incompetence. It seems to me that all it shows is that the problem in both Scotland and Wales is that we have devolved rule. Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh Never forget We are regularly told by UK ministers that Israel “has a right to defend itself”. Fair enough. And does that right extend to other peoples – the Palestinians, for example. Apparently not. While Israeli forces have murdered almost 50,000 civilians – many of them children – and used starvation of an entire population as a weapon they are not terrorists. But Palestine Action, which has defended Palestinian rights for a generation is, in the eyes of a “Labour” government, a terrorist organisation. Well, it is quite clear where Labour stands in relation to the Gaza genocide and we must not ever forget the complicity of Labour MPs and ministers. History will judge them. David Currie, Tarland, Aberdeenshire Unlikely boast In a Sustainable Scotland article of 25 June by Emily Beament there is a claim made by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) that “by mid-century British households would save around £700 a year on heating bills by shifting to electric heating”. Just do the maths. According to Ofgem the average UK householder uses 15,000 units of energy a year, comprising 12,000 units of gas (6.3p/unit) and 3,000 units of electricity (currently 25.8p/unit). That means the annual gas bill is about £756 (excluding standing charges as subject to Ofgem review). Assuming households spend £56 running their gas cooker, that indicates a yearly cost of £700 to operate their central heating. An annual CCC saving of £700 implies that whether in Altnaharra or Braemar, Oban or Kelso consumers will be able to heat their homes to 20 degrees Centigrade, in spite of -10 Centigrade degrees of air temperature, at zero cost. The numbers do not stack up, especially as wind farm operators have a guaranteed strike price of around £75 per megawatt-hour via the Contract for Difference provided by Ofgem on behalf of the consumer. Perhaps Piers Forster, interim chair of the CCC, could provide an explanation to Scottish consumers over the £700 saving by 2045, especially when the SNP have scrapped the decarbonisation of homes project in Scotland after the initial cost of £33 billion faced a massive hike to £130bn. Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries & Galloway Heated debate Hugh Pennington refers to “massive amounts of greenhouse gas, a far more dangerous pollutant than nuclear waste” (Letters, 17 June). Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. The sun and plants use carbon dioxide to produce all of our food and oxygen. And, the higher the carbon dioxide level, the better, because plants grow much better at higher levels than the current 420 parts per million (ppm). That is why commercial greenhouses control carbon dioxide at about 1,200 ppm. With no carbon dioxide, we would die. Satellite photos of the Earth show it is “greening” in response to higher levels of carbon dioxide, which promotes food security. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) promotes the false concept that increasing levels of carbon dioxide can cause dangerous warming. The IPCC overlooks the robust cooling system that maintains the Earth’s temperature within the range necessary for current life forms to flourish. The sun sends as much heat to Earth in two hours as the world consumes in one year. It is the storms, such as thunderstorms and hurricanes, that release heat to space, which remove the excess heat from the sun. H Douglas Lightfoot, Baie-D’Urfe, Quebec, Canada Timely convert How fortuitous Ian Murray MP should undergo his Damascene conversion into a fervent advocate of nuclear weapons (Comment, 3 June) at the very time Keir Starmer announced his intention to ramp up defence spending even further. I suspect that if the Scottish Secretary had remained a committed unilateralist he would find himself gracing the Labour back benches in the very near future! Alan Woodcock, Dundee Pay Scots back The government scrabbles around trying to reduce our public expenditure and thereby our National Debt by sums ranging upwards from a few million to billions, while also committing itself, quite rightly, to increasing our defence budget due to Putin’s war. So why has it accepted that we taxpayers should bear a £10 billion loss on our £45bn bail-out in 2008 of RBS (now NatWest), as reported in The Scotsman of 31 May, which prevented its descent into total bankruptcy due to the incompetence, vanity and greed of its then directors led by Fred Goodwin? Presumably the justification is that this loss is the price we must all pay for having avoided far worse potential consequences throughout the whole UK economy. But does the current board of the restored private enterprise feel no moral obligation to pay that liability effectively incurred by its culpable predecessor? And why has there been so little debate, let alone condemnation, by MPs and financial journalists? John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife Write to The Scotsman We welcome your thoughts – NO letters submitted elsewhere, please. Write to lettersts@scotsman.com including name, address and phone number – we won’t print full details. 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