Letters: Scottish Government should get to grips with fight for local services

ON Wednesday (December 18) North Ayrshire Council was presented with a report which showed the financial sustainability of the council was in question in the face of continued cuts from Westminster and Holyrood. According to the Scottish Parliament's own statistics, the bulk of the cuts came from the SNP at Holyrood. You can be assured that similar concerns are being expressed in Council chambers across Scotland.

On Thursday Nicola Sturgeon made it clear that the cuts and the crisis in local service delivery were nowhere on her list of priorities. It seems it is not for the First Minister to worry about education or housing or social care or the state of our roads or bus or ferry services. Instead she returned, like the proverbial dog to its regurgitated breakfast, to the Nationalists obsession with independence.

Ms Surgeon is frequently photographed behind a podium proclaiming that her party is "Stronger for Scotland". If only that were true. If only the people of Scotland could depend on a government that understood what they needed and fought for better education and health care instead of always obsessing on the constitution while mismanaging the economy and their own ministerial portfolios and continually blaming Westminster for their own incompetence. Meanwhile they are cutting Council allocations and denuding our council and social care budgets of the resources they so badly need. Ironically, the resources are needed at local level precisely because Holyrood is messing up so monumentally.

The SNP fought and won seats at the recent election on a platform of stopping Brexit and stopping Boris Johnson, neither of which it could ever achieve. Now it has flipped back to "independence", which is the only thing it really cares about. Will the day ever come w

Test,