Letters to The National II: Massive spikes in the price of oil in the pipeline

The current low oil price is not the same thing as net energy, which is what’s left over after you expend energy to get a fossil fuel like oil out of the ground.

As soon as the world economy tries to grow rapidly again, oil will quickly go through two to possibly three complete doublings in price due to supply issues. And those oil price spikes will collide with that tower of outstanding debt, making the economic growth required to inflate them away a lot more expensive – both cost-wise and energetically – to come by.

The deepening sell-off, and the seeming inability of central banks to formulate any coherent response to the panic, have triggered a general crisis of confidence, not only in the health of the financial system, but in the ability of central banks and governments to offset the crisis.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

SINCE 2008, Scotland has had nine years of consecutive council tax freezes that have saved the average Scottish family £1,500 over this time period. The equivalent English, and Scottish family resident in England, has had piecemeal council tax freezes and now faces additional council tax increases.

The “devolution deficit” that exists in England is penalising low and middle-income families. The English, and Scottish who live in England, now need an English Parliament. The council tax is regressive; it penalises those on fixed incomes; it is bureaucratically expensive to collect. Limits should now be placed upon council tax rises and this new poll tax should be abolished. Scottish and English voters want this tax abolished.

I believe it is not progressive to tax people into the ground, especially families and pensioners. Be they English or Scottish we should all be equal because we are all equal.

We need equal devolution for Scotland and equal devolution for England.

Oliver Healey, 
Leicester

LEON Brittan’s wife is apparently to receive an apology of some kind from Sir Bernard Hogan Howe, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

While one can understand the feelings of Lady Brittan, this should be balanced against the overall realities of the situation.

In July of last year Cabinet papers consigned to be destroyed at Kew were found which linked Lord Brittan, along with others, to child sexual abuse. The papers had, possibly conveniently, escaped the search previously conducted by the Cabinet Secretary and we are, for whatever reason, not allowed to see the papers, but are assured they have been passed to the police, the Goddard Inquiry and the Judicial Review of Abuse in Northern Ireland, as links to the notorious Kincora Boys’ Home were found among the papers.

There are some 50 allegations of the cover-up of child sexual abuse made to the Independent Police Complaints Commission of “high-level corruption of a very serious nature” involving MPs, police officers, and prominent persons. These allegations are made by former senior police officers who have testified to these complaints in full knowledge of their serious nature.

The conspiracy of silence, the unanswered legitimate questions, and deference to the establishment by the press have fostered an increasing suspicion in the public mind. Sir Jimmy Savile, Sir Cyril Smith, Victor Montague and Lord Janner are proof positive that cover-up occurred, the full extent of which we still need to learn.

Apologies from a police force having to finally question establishment individuals whose sense of entitlement and whose undoubted privilege is so great as to be able to torpedo previous inquiries are self-evidently premature. But who will apologise to the victims?

Steve Williams, 
Aberdeen