It seems the FM plans to manage devolution for another five years

We are, it seems, to believe that reducing the number of NHS boards and Scottish local authorities will substantially reduce the size of the iceberg. The reduction of the number of chief executives and senior managers is miraculously to save us a fortune and cost next to nothing. READ MORE: SNP leaders 'dangerously diverging from party policy', SNP body warns In the case of the NHS, we are being asked to believe this reduction in boards will also cut the size of waiting lists and A&E waiting times. What our NHS really needs is very simple – more doctors, nurses, support staff and beds. For decades, politicians of all political parties have chosen to ignore this fact and they appear to be continuing to do so. In the case of Scottish local government, again bigger is now said to be better. The story we are being told is that chief executives and heads of service are to go, workforces are to be merged and huge savings will be achieved. No doubt the number of councillors will remain as it is! Glasgow City Council is facing a deficit of around £100 million. Even if it were to absorb smaller surrounding councils like East Renfrewshire, with a rather more affluent population, the £100m deficit will not disappear – it will simply be shared over a greater number of Council Tax payers. Very substantial rises in council tax will still be required. READ MORE: John Swinney rejects claim SNP plans are 'about centralisation' On Thursday the voters of two Edinburgh wards had their democratic say in by-elections caused by the 'elevation' of two SNP councillors to the Scottish Parliament. In one the turnout was 22.9% and the SNP achieved 23.8% of that vote; in the other the turnout was 27.3% and the SNP vote was 11.1% of it. This equates to 3% of the ward's electorate. These results speak for themselves. Saturday brought the now regular All Under One Banner march to the streets of Edinburgh. It was a much reduced event. Noticeable by their apparent absence were any senior SNP members – unlike in similar events just before the May election. Perhaps this was just as well, as a number of homemade signs reading 'Swinney must go' were evident. All in all it was not a great week for the independence movement. Things can only get better? Dr Iain Evans Edinburgh HAVE you noticed that the BBC apologist no longer writes in rebuffing readers' complaints? He probably resigned in embarrassment having to constantly defend falsehoods. Many years ago, when I realised that the BBC noddy news was manipulated, distorted, deceitful, and selective, I just stopped watching or listening to it altogether. The final straw was absolutely no mention on the 6pm news about 30,000 people demonstrating in Edinburgh in 1992, while much time was devoted to the remarriage of a divorcee at Balmoral. READ MORE: Reform UK documentary on Channel 4 shows up BBC big time I'm surprised some people in Scotland still watch the BBC. I concluded that if BBC news output was so dire, then even dramas, documentaries and comedy shows would be equally censored. Channel 4 is now my main source of news – and they have the ethics to still report Israel's genocide. Another good source is Al Jazeera English. The majority of UK media is very biased and right-wing, with apologies deceitfully obscure when they are caught getting it wrong. But that's the way propaganda works in the UK; make the correction difficult to find so the original lie sticks. At least The National always prints corrections in the same prominent space. It is pointless writing an indy-supporting letter to London-based newspapers which local newspapers would more likely print. But I'm beginning to suspect that route is also being cut off, as local titles are taken over by bigger publishers. Each time the BBC broadcasts something like the recent 'documentary' about Glasgow (I didn't see it), more people join the thousands who refuse to pay the licence fee. I believe the UK is one of the few states where we have to buy a licence to be fed government propaganda. With so many other sources of news and entertainment, the BBC is making itself irrelevant. Richard Walthew Duns IS the kind of tougher regulation of media in the UK wanted by the people even possible? The newspapers are owned by a handful of people and companies with a significant level of influence over what appears and does not appear in them, and commercial television is owned by a multitude of people and companies too numerous to monitor and regulate. The BBC is unique by already possibly being the most highly regulated of all, from the chairperson heading its 14-member board to the Scottish newsreader for whom every day is a bad news day. READ MORE: BBC News presenter reveals incurable cancer diagnosis The so-called independent BBC board chair and four non-exec directors representing the four Union nations are appointed by the King on the recommendations from government ministers. They in turn directly appoint five more non-executive board members. The board then selects and appoints four more members, the executive directors who actually run the BBC – the director-general and three divisional heads. Presumably the three divisional heads will have a major involvement in the selection and appointment of the heads of their various departments and so on down through the ranks. What other reason can their be for having a BBC board with four board members running broadcasting and ten members setting corporation policy? John Jamieson South Queensferry Policing of masked mobs is far too lax OVER the weekend we saw masked men blocking access to the Port of Dover. Apparently police 'engaged' with them and they were permitted to leave, accompanied by the cheers of local people. One cannot help comparing their treatment by the police with that meted out to Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action protesters who were detained, often with undue force, charged and, in far too many instances, jailed. Yet it is the right-wing who claim there is 'two-tier policing.' READ MORE: Far-right group funding Scottish vigilantes selling swords and daggers Sadly, Scotland is not exempt from this masked-men phenomenon, with the authorities far too lax. We have seen photos of masked men, apparently also in para-military uniform, parading at Holyrood and in George Square. They appear to 'patrol' the streets of Glasgow during the night. Masked men attend far-right rallies and indulge in violence afterwards. This behaviour is simply unacceptable, especially in a country that seeks its independence in order to become a progressive, tolerant democracy and to divert from the path that England is increasingly taking. Gavin Brown Linlithgow