SO the unit price of alcohol is to go up to 65p ("Holyrood backs 30% hike in Scotland’s minimum unit price for alcohol", The Herald, April 18). Politicians continue to be, wrongly in my view, convinced by dubious reports of X number of deaths prevented. Yet the death rate has gone up, the heaviest drinkers are still drinking as much as ever, and the alcohol industry is doing everything it can to thwart any changes that will impact on any plans to reduce Scotland's biggest drug problem: alcoholism.

I checked at my local Morrisons supermarket the other day and found that there was 151 metres of shelves loaded with hundreds of different drinks, to suit all taste buds. Interestingly, Aldi and Lidl have only around 40 metres of alcohol on their shelves, and neither sells tobacco or vapes, and are still highly profitable.

Politicians tinkering at the edges of our biggest drug problem need to get real and dare to address the problems of too many businesses selling alcohol. We should learn from Denmark, where only government-controlled shops can sell alcohol, so they have a good control of who and how much alcohol is drunk, by every age group and levels of drinkers.

Clearly we cannot ever again trust the big supermarkets to stop selling this powerful and addictive drug as if it were no more dangerous than Irn-Bru. We must also use the unearned bonus of millions of pounds from the higher unit of alcohol income to fund improved alcohol and drug treatment services.

Max Cruickshank, Glasgow.

Appearance before reality

WHEN Drugs and Alcohol Policy minister Christina McKelvie told Holyrood that a vote in favour of a further MUP rise would “show that Scotland continues to be world-leading, with policies to improve the health of people”, she perhaps revealed more about her party's methodological approach to politics than she might have intended. What really matters, she might well have said, is the show.

This focus on the appearance rather than the reality, the superficial rather than the substantive, is nothing that we haven't witnessed many times before. Having imbibed the lessons of spin from Tony Blair, the Sturgeon regime raised post-modern performative politics to the level of an art form until what might be described as an optics approach to leadership lay at the heart of her politicking. Christina McKelvie's statement clearly shows that it has no sign of abating under the hapless and worse than useless continuity candidate.

Yet, despite the self-righteousness of SNP ministers, the technologies of their performative politics are, somewhat ironically, transparently obvious: the transfiguration of achievement by announcement such that the announcement is the achievement; the creation of legal rights that cannot be legally enforced; consultations which fail to consult and reviews which fail to address an issue but which promise to review how to address the issue. The list goes on: the throwing of funding at an issue without any perceivable strategy for achieving any long-term change; the meritless reiteration of self-praise; and the pièce de résistance of performative SNP nationalism: the affirmation of identity with all its threadbare rituals of resentment.

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It is however an odd situation. Having repeatedly run up against reality, and seen their fantasies unravel, you'd think that someone with a brain and/or a spine in the Holyrood administration would suggest doing something different. But that's not how optics-led politics work. The SNP administration's entire approach is designed solely to make the SNP feel good about themselves, and it bears little, if any relationship, to doing good in the real world.

Their equally useless partners in incompetence last week learned a hard lesson about SNP priorities. It's not about their agreement, it's not about Scotland and it's not about serving the Scottish people. It's all about them; and how they look to themselves. Narcissism has replaced nationalism.

Graeme Arnott, Stewarton.

Unions should fight RBS

DAVID Patrick (Letters, April 19) clearly expresses the sentiments of many with his condemnation of the Royal Bank of Scotland's latest announcement on branch closures. Surprisingly, on this issue there appears to be a deafening silence on the part of the trade unions representing the employees. Surely this is a golden opportunity for the unions to prosper by acting in the joint interests of employees and the local communities involved? Collectively, stand and deliver, otherwise submit to closure.

Allan C Steele, Giffnock.

The Herald: Christina McKelvieChristina McKelvie (Image: PA)

Golden memories

FIFTY years ago, Glasgow-based Strathclyde Theatre Group created a landmark theatrical production that is to be celebrated this year with an exhibition at the Edinburgh Festival.

The organisers are looking for memories and memorabilia from the more than 100 actors, musicians and technical crew who took part in The Golden City.

The epic production was a pioneering example of what is now known as immersive theatre and was lauded by the Herald critic as: "Always absorbing, often deeply moving and at moments can without hyperbole be called stupendous…Brilliantly justifies the time and work put into it."

After a week-long run in August 1974 in Glasgow Cathedral, the production transferred to St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh where the Guardian declared The Golden City to be "the Festival’s single dramatic sensation".

Strathclyde Theatre Group was an offshoot of the University of Strathclyde whose members also included students from Glasgow University, Glasgow School of Art and other colleges from around the city.

Many of its alumni went on to work in film, theatre and television. I am writing on behalf of the organisers of the Golden City 50 event who want to hear from anyone who was involved in creating or taking part in The Golden City, or who wishes to assist with the celebration.

They can be contacted at this email address: stg@goldencity50.info.

Roger Green, London.

How dumb is that?

I'M grateful to Ian W Thomson (Letters, April 18) for mentioning Mrs Robertson in Paisley as the progenitor of marmalade.

I'd been reared on the tale of Mrs Keiller in Dundee receiving a boatload of Seville oranges too bitter to sell, so she added sugar, and came up with marmalade.

Or was it one of the ladies-in-waiting of Mary, Queen of Scots, who, on noticing that her royal mistress wasn't too well, boiled up a few oranges into a medicinal potion on the grounds that "Marie est malade"?

As for Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, entering the marmalade scene, I wouldn't attach too much weight to that. A friend in the good ol' US of A informs me that she doesn't use her subsidiary title Countess of Dumbarton because of what the town's first four letters spell.

Gordon Casely, Crathes.