FIRSTLY, what a great compliment to all the staff at The National being sent to Coventry by the increasingly panicky Maybot and her nasty pals.

They must be avid readers in Downing Street and Tory Party HQ, to be so clear about the democratic threat from good journalism in Scotland!!

You even got a fleeting mention on national ITV News from London (and I believe on Press Preview ITV). I detected amusement mixed with a certain alarm in the voice and body language of the newscaster. May, “doing a Donald” on the free press, is steadily progressing towards a controlled right-wing extremist state.

Secondly, a wee reminder that the constant references to the Irish border, in all the media, are not accurate. It is a BRITISH border which was imposed on Ireland (and we all know why).

Good newspapers and broadcasting, with a liberal/democratic objectivity, are becoming a rarity. The BBC and BBC Scotland in particular cannot be included as fair and objective as far as Scotland’s identity and future is concerned, and one has to feel sorry for a few of the good journalists who still work there!

It has been with some interest that I have been reading The Irish Times (as well as The Herald/Herald on Sunday and The National) and the excellent articles and comments by the Irish writer Fintan O’Toole. O’Toole has been very clear recently in pointing out that Brexit is a disaster on many fronts. In his newly published book, Heroic Failure! Brexit and The Politics of Pain, he focuses on the (mainly) English obsession of feeling sorry for itself. Sorry for itself, because of Europe bullying Britain, and not giving us our sweeties, and all the perks that we have always deserved.

Brexiteers and in particular the English establishment are beside themselves with self-loathing because of the fundamental failure of British influence across Europe and the wider world.

I wonder if in part that it is a deep unconscious nostalgic emotion and awareness that these are the final days of the dismemberment of the empire project that began after WW1 and speeded up after WW2.

Graham Noble
Fort William

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon: National ban shows May is running scared​

I MUST commend you on your excellent report on the Prime Minister’s “visit” to Scotland. I particularly liked the questions which you put to her, which are relayed to us in paragraphs two and three!

In all honesty however it must be obvious to anyone reading this that it has been a colossal waste of time for the people involved, as the opportunity for her to influence the House of Commons vote when it comes will be absolutely nil.

Perhaps somewhere down the auditing line the cost of all this parading about, which must be hundreds of thousands of pounds, should be totted up and deducted from the salaries of these involved.

It would have been much better spent in getting long-overdue benefit payments to the thousands of claimants facing hardship every day, who desperately need the money.

George M Mitchell
Dunblane

READ MORE: Can Theresa save the day for Brexit Britain? Oh yes she can!

I APPLAUD your front page and the following analysis “not by Andrew Learmonth”. They both cogently summarise everything that Mrs May said on Wednesday (and has always said) to the people of Scotland.

Alan Jardine
Kintore, Aberdeenshire

ARE the Tories the living embodiment of the words “hypocrisy” and “stupidity”? (Answer – “Yes”!)

I yet again find myself choking over my tea when I read your article ‘Tories “use indy to avoid Brexit”’. How can Jackson Carlaw even contemplate standing up in our noble parliament (with a straight face) to accuse the SNP of exploiting the Brexit chaos to further the independence agenda? In the words of the playground: “Who started it?”

This is the Tory gift – that of blaming everyone else for the fallout of their own shameful, incompetent, ill-considered and suicidal initiatives. His idiot poshboy mucker Cameron is the epicentre of this appalling and embarrassing midden. His idiot colleagues Johnson, Davies, Fox, Gove and cheerleader Farage took Cameron’s fatal error and weaved it through lies and dissemblance into a recipe for xenophobia and revolt. That, and that only, brought about this stinking political cesspit.

So, Jackson, that’s who is responsible and why we’re in the appalling mess “we” find ourselves in.

Then he has the effrontery to accuse the SNP of exploitation!

Just to remind him – for Tories have very selective and short memories – Nicola Sturgeon has maintained, virtually FROM DAY 1, that Scotland would reserve to right to call a second independence referendum in the event that there was a material change in circumstance (then for the benefit of the super-thick she qualified this with the very clear statement “such as pulling us out of the European Union against our wishes”).

Carlaw was presumably one of the ones banging the Unionist drum the loudest which told us that the only way we could guarantee staying in Europe was to vote No. He and his colleagues must have the thickest of skins and the thinnest of intelligence that they can dare to try to transfer blame. They are first-rate allies in the independence cause.

My own advice to him and Richard Leonard would be to take what’s left of their political representatives and credibility into darkened rooms somewhere and, having accepted the inevitability of independence, work out how their own political parties and futures, if any, should be shaped. Perhaps a more humane conservatism, if that’s not a total oxymoron? Otherwise they’ll face well-merited oblivion.

Jim Finnie
Piltochry

READ MORE: Sturgeon: Tories talk about Scottish independence to avoid tough Brexit talk​