THE Tory government is desperately trying to distance itself from Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), the company that owns Cambridge Analytica. This is particularly problematic for them considering the Tories and Tory backers among its directors.

Cambridge Analytica is in everything but name a digital psy-ops organisation, a digital mercenary that has in its covert role attempted to sway elections and referenda by targetting political parties, individuals and groups using information from social media.

They are also quite happy to import prostitutes in blackmail attempts and orchestrate fake news. We know that in 2014 SCL held a contract from the UK Government to form and test Project Duco. Its stated aim was “the deployment of psychological and anthropological principles and assess how these could contribute to the government’s strategic communications”.

In a heavily redacted freedom of information request the locations of data collections were blacked out. If Project Duco was approved, it could be operating now and be used for any purpose. Significantly, the government’s most pressing concern in 2013/2014 was of course the Scottish independence referendum. It doesn’t take much to connect the two. Prior to 2014 SCL had List X security status, meaning they were cleared to view classified documents. Channel 4 blew Cambridge Analytica out of the water with revelations about employing dirty tricks. The big question is: did SCL’s Project Duco and Cambridge Analytica interfere in the Scottish referendum? They were certainly capable of discrediting individuals and groups, using fake information or setting up shadow groups opposed to independence.

At the time conspiracy theories spread like wildfire about how active Britain’s secret intelligence services were in Scotland. There would have been no need for them to get involved. The British Government could claim plausible deniability by using SCL’s Cambridge Analytica.

Mike Herd
Highland

WELL done to Lesley Riddoch for yesterday’s column (Our remote areas do not need to be doomed to die, The National, March 22) and her valuable view on the path future progress in Scotland should take.

In an independent Scotland all sorts of agencies and government offices should be given a local presence and staff who could operate at an accessible local level, which would have the double benefit of maintaining local populations but also letting people have their problems dealt with near where they live, avoiding long and costly journeys or phone calls to some allegedly state-of-the-art headquarters possibly hundreds of miles away.

I can give you one existing example. Here, we used to have local offices dealing with motor vehicle registration, licensing and ownership. Now we have a situation where all the local offices have been closed down and all control vested in the DVLA in Wales. In Germany they have, for many years, operated a system whereby every local authority has its own local office. You can recognise it on their vehicle number plates. A single letter is used by the largest authorities, while smaller ones use a two- or three-letter prefix. This can apply down to, in some cases, an authority not much larger than a parish council. This means that everyone can get instant service locally, while police and vehicle tracking requirements only require an internet connection to a central national computer.

Changes of this nature would take a certain amount of time, but would surely help to expand our population base over all the country. We need to be “Nordic” Europeans, and take our place eventually amongst that small band of happy nations, well away from the dead hand of Westminster.

George M Mitchell
Dunblane

THERE is hardly a regular TV programme which cannot be commented upon adversely or criticised positively by the varied sections of the public. Regrettably, the rights of free expression and action are inexcusably not to be extended to Mr Alex Salmond and his management of The Alex Salmond Show. The reasons are blatantly political and as such are unworthy of serious examination.

I have viewed the output regularly since its inception and have not witnessed a single pro-Russian or anti-UK opinion expressed by Mr Salmond. Furthermore, he allows his interviewees to speak lucidly and uninterrupted about their particular subjects, a practice which could be borrowed to advantage by others gracing our screens.

I suppose the objection to Mr Salmond by many who should know better will be offered similarly to Mr Jose Mourinho, Mr Stan Collymore, and even perhaps to Mr Rory Suchet, not to mention the English FA, for daring to associate with RT. I think not, but then their political persuasion is unknown.

The transparent hypocrisy of recent criticism of Mr Salmond is noticeably only too common, and is frankly un-British.

J Hamilton
Bearsden

ONE hopes that Alan Riach’s splendid piece on Old Tobias was properly recognised by his grateful students (Scotland’s original Irvine Welsh, The National, March 19)!

The National does much more than provide political sustenance, vital as that is. Seeing photographs of earnest GU students of the 1950s in the award-winning Reading Room at Gilmorehill, I was reminded of my own studies of Scottish Literature under the formidable Alexander Scott and of the need to borrow from said Reading Room the leading comprehensive study of our country’s writers by Kurt Wittig, if my memory serves. Happily, things have moved on, although that book proved invaluable!

Iain Anderson
Langbank