WELL, well, well. Tory MSP Margaret Mitchell is disturbed, nay, even outraged, at the overcrowding in the Bar-L (Barlinnie’s conditions slated after MSPs’ visit, November 6). We should be ashamed! Something must be done! How could such a thing have been allowed to occur?

I have a wee bit of news for her. As a branch secretary in the Scottish Prison Officers Association in the 1980s I can tell her that Barlinnie was two’d up then, ie cells designed, even by Victorian standards, to accommodate one prisoner had two or even three occupants.

READ MORE: MSPs criticise HMP Barlinnie for overcrowding cells

There are several reasons for the situation. For example, during the mad rush to close mental hospitals without adequate community care provision to replace them, I was able to tell the SPOA conference at Dunblane that Barlinnie Prison was using more phenothiazine anti-psychotic drugs than Carstairs State Hospital because people who should have been in hospital receiving treatment were being jailed instead. Who was responsible for this? Thatcher!

The Tories have always advocated longer sentencing, although they did, for a while, have a twofer offer where if you were a good boy you only served half your tariff, but they didn’t shout too much about that unless they were having a go at the judiciary for implementing their policy. They have also always failed to maintain, update and replace the prison estate, failed to recruit and train sufficient prison officers, failed to fund successful innovation such as the Barlinnie Special Unit, and failed utterly to adequately protect and remunerate prison officers.

We have now had a whole lot of years of Tory governments starving public services of money whilst managing to accrue a national debt which is positively terrifying (I wonder what they actually spent it on) and Ms Mitchell has the brass neck to express concern at the legacy her party has left, albeit the Labour party did pretty much nothing to correct the situation.

I think it would be a marvellous idea if the lady donned a peaked bunnet and spent some time standing on a landing wondering whether the prisoners, the management or the politicians are her biggest enemy.

I know which one frightened me most!

Les Hunter

DURING the dark days of Thatcher’s reign of destruction I wrote many letters to the press pointing out that after Scotland gained independence, political parties would emerge which reflected Scottish culture, values and ethics. My own preference is to vote for the Green party, but as I know it’s unlikely it will form a government either in Edinburgh or Westminster any time soon, I will vote SNP until independence is achieved.

What correspondents who criticise the Green party have not factored into their letters is that firstly, Greens have every democratic right to stand in any constituency they wish. And secondly, that Green party members are intelligent people who also want independence, and like me and many of my acquaintances will vote SNP especially in an undemocratic first-past-the-post General Election.

So please, SNP supporters, treat our Green party friends with respect and concentrate on getting independence voters into the polling booths.

Richard Walthew
via email

THE Greens’ position on this election is crucial for Scotland, and I would assert that they need to put country before party on this one occasion.

While I accept the contention from Eleanor Scott (Lettersm November 6) that had the SNP accepted Labour’s argument in the 60s – that a vote for the SNP increased the chances of a Tory government – they, the SNP, would not be the party they are today, I take issue with a direct comparison with this specific election.

Many supporters of independence have been frustrated by the endless statements from our independence-supporting politicians that Scotland should be an independent nation, without any accompanying action from them to make it so. But now we have a UK election that, for the first time that I can remember, has the goal of independence so explicitly stated, front and centre, by the SNP. As independence supporters this is the action we have waited for. This election is the one.

The converted prize of this election is an unequivocal endorsement of the right to hold indyref2 from the electorate of Scotland. We need a response that is so strong that no Westminster politician will be able to spin it away. This is undoubtedly the first step in the move to make Scotland an independent nation.

The Greens, if they are honest, know they will win none of these Scottish constituencies in a first-past-the-post election. They know they will split the independence vote unnecessarily. They also know that for this one election only, if they truly support independence, they should not run against the SNP.

So should the Greens follow the SNP lead and ignore the arguments of the dominant party as Eleanor Scott maintains? I would suggest not. I believe their decision will be the true test of the Scottish Greens’ commitment to Scotland, the ramifications of which may elevate them to the heroes of the day. Only they can decide.

I Easton