With a political lifetime spent in bullying, name-calling and complaint, it is small wonder Alex Salmond should attract precious little public sympathy save from his core vote in the debacle over Donald Trump's golf course (The Herald, December 15).

I hold no brief on this planning application. I suspect the last First Minister just as readily would have welcomed Mr Trump's bulldozers to our shores. But we have built up checks and balances over the years so that planning law and policy are not wholly subject to political whim.

I was privileged to have worked with the late Donald Dewar. When matters like this came up (as inevitably they do in any administration) Mr Dewar acted to protect the reputation of the minister concerned and the planning system by ensuring the decision-making was removed from the minister with a party or constituency interest and that all dealings on the application were transparent. The current incumbent is either very dim about how planning decisions are reached or mistakenly thinks that of the rest of us. Mr Salmond squeals at the pedestrian efforts of Nicol Stephen to charge him with sleaze (charges that even Mr Stephen must know are unfounded) but his squeals must not be allowed to drown out the more serious questions raised by this affair.

That Mr Trump's satraps were in the very room while the chief planning officer made phone calls on the application sounds just a bit more like Georgia than Gordon. Just who was impressing whom and to what ends? Was Mr Salmond's "constituency" meeting with the same men notified to the Permanent Secretary? Was the diary appointment made through the party staff in his constituency office (and if so, in what circumstances) or timetabled and recorded by the First Minister's diary secretary at St Andrew's House? Why did he not prospectively seek advice on the propriety of such a unilateral meeting from the officials whose job it is to maintain an independent planning system?

Despite the evident relish demonstrated by Mr Stephen for sleaze, I doubt many thinking Scots interested in our country would expect or welcome evidence of any cash trail running from Trump Towers to SNP HQ. But aside from the damage already done to Scotland's reputation by Mr Salmond's cack-handedness, the saddest outcome may prove to be that in his anxiety to best his LibDem rivals in claims for constituency loyalty, it is in fact he who has perilled the success of this application more than anyone.

Brian Fitzpatrick, 24 Dalziel Drive, Glasgow.

Bafflingly, Ian Bell asks: "Are we to be a knowledge economy, or a let-me-take-your-bag, sir, economy?" (December 15). As if it were a straight choice. Is this the Scottish cringe, equating service with servility? Scotland not for sale? Some (very grateful, apparently) developers of malls and industrial estates might beg to differ.

American money? Who needs it? Wasteland tours, anyone?

J M Stevenson, 4 Kenmore Avenue, Prestwick.