DOES the Scottish Government not appreciate that its actions promote equal and opposite reactions ("massive drop in number of second homes", The Herald, January 22)?

The SNP strives to unbalance the Scottish taxation system, either through this second homes tax, Land & Buildings Transaction Tax or personal taxation. Few might have a second home, but the everyday housing market has yet to recover from pre-LBTT levels so any increase in available housing stock will not have the desired effect if there is a logjam in sales at the top. The new income tax levels due in April will also negatively impinge on the already critical shortage of middle to high earning professionals in many fields.

The SNP has been fixated on independence and closing the attainment gap. With current policies it will achieve neither. The truth is housing, transport, education, the economy and the health service are all suffering. The SNP has had 12 years to fix this. Throwing a new problem of Indyref2 into this mix will only result in more negativity. The SNP saw that in 2014, the popularity of independence (with a lot of help from some unrealistic claims) rose from 25 per cent to 45 per cent. These were the easily persuaded voters. The 55 per cent left will be far more difficult to shift. These SNP policies are liable to lose support, not gain it. The SNP has simply not understood the real effects of its actions, but the voters have.

Dr Gerald Edwards,

Broom Road, Glasgow.

IT is a pleasant if surprising experience to find some of Mark Smith’s selection of “facts” more or less agreeable ("Four facts about the SNP we can all (hopefully) agree on", The Herald, January 21), even if despite his discoveries he still finds it so hard to absorb the different identities of the Yes Movement and the SNP.

His acquaintance with Walter Macfarlane and the revelation that – only 60 years after the infamous Act of Union in 1707– Scotland was revolting against it has apparently astonished him. Delving further, however, he might have come across the fact that within five years, not 60, after broken promises and betrayals, Scottish signatories tried to have the entire treaty revoked. The fact is that it had been imposed on, not accepted by, the Scottish people and the argument for the reinstatement of our own independent Parliament has persisted for more than 300 years.

His second fact – that there are divisions within the SNP – is also one we can surely all accept because all political parties are gatherings of ordinary human beings, as the wise Mr Macfarlane pointed out, and have divisions. We might be allowed to smile a little about the importance Mr Smith places on this “fact” at a time of grotesquely embarrassing civil war – apparently to the “death” according to some Brexiters – within the Tory Party and the general chaos of divisions, sub-divisions within all parties, Remainers, Brexiters and ERGs within Westminster itself.

Which, as Mr Smith says himself, takes us to his third fact, that support for independence according to polls, stands steady at about 45 per cent. From the perspective of the Yes movement, which every member of the SNP by definition supports, this is a very positive starting point to argue for Scotland to have her own place and voice in the EU and the world in general. It might be worth reminding him too about that long-term unity of purpose in the SNP which tends to deflate the importance of other internal “divisions” – however much external commentators might relish gossip.

It is Mr Smith’s fourth “fact”, however, which melts away into the fog of wishful thinking. There is most certainly going to be a referendum on Scottish independence within the next year. This will happen because the Scottish Parliament has the right, and an electoral mandate, to proceed with it no matter what happens to Section 30 at Westminster. The right is recognised, internationally, in both relevant sections of the United Nations Charter.

The initial fog of Brexit – out, nearly out, in or nearly in, bits in and bits out, will surely clear on March 29. Scotland, we must hope, will have the nerve and take the chance to emerge to a clearer, more positive and internationalist future as an independent member of the EU. As Mr Smith says, the alternative of Tory Government Brexit-induced fog up to and beyond 2021 does not bear thinking about.

That’s a fact.

Frances McKie,

20 Ash Hill, Evanton, Ross-shire.