Letters to the National, October 31, 2015: Nazi parallel shows us risk of the Tories

Too often we have read about the ill-treatment of people of all ages who are put into Social Services care homes.

And now we have the the likes of senior government staff and civil servants from Iain Duncan Smith down to counter staff in employment offices who create further misery for unemployed people, disabled people or people on enforced low incomes, often placing them in situations of having to rely on food banks to keep themselves and their family alive.

We now read of such people in the latter category committing suicide and of one actually cited by the [coroner] as being the responsibility of Iain Duncan Smith’s own employment benefit regime.

Of course, David Cameron would not recognise this as a Government problem, actually stating that he is quite happy with the current welfare and employment arrangements within the DWP.

After all, one more benefit claimant’s demise is one less person to give financial benefit to.

I just hope the 25 per cent of the UK population who voted the Tories back into power are quite satisfied with the result.

But then, I suppose 25 per cent of the population are also members of the Conservative Party.

Alan Magnus-Bennett
North East Fife

RARELY if ever have I come across a more trenchant and moving piece of journalism than the article by Fiona Robertson linking the actions of the British Government to those of the Nazi government in 1930s and 40s Germany.

The point that if we do not learn from our history we are condemned to repeat it is particularly apposite at a time when so many of our fellow humans are suffering under the vicious ideology of the metrovincial sociopaths of the Bullingdon Crew.

This heartfelt and incisive piece portrays exactly exactly why we need The National.

Stuart McHardy
Edinburgh

Everyone’s out of step but Labour  

IT’S the Labour Party’s Scottish branch conference this week. It seems they have had more managers of late than Aston Villa. However I don’t want Kezia Dugdale to follow suit and go: that helps no one. I hope Kezia will finally stop rebelling against her father and realise that her parties only hope of a renaissance is by them rethinking their whole policy on independence.

Her party needs to grow some. Stop playing at politics, stop thinking of themselves, stop ignoring what the Scots silent majority told them on BBC Question time last night. Stop ignoring what they’re telling them on the doorstep. Accept what the evidence of the last six months of Tory rule at Westminster means for your people.

Recognise it’s not the Scottish people that are wrong, it’s you!

Stop kidding on that anyone south of Berwick gives a monkey’s about Scottish Labour: they only care about the 59 Westminster seats.

Recognise that the only way for this fetid Union is downhill. Recognise that our wee country would be fabulously wealthy on its own (see Thursday’s Wings over Scotland if you need confirmation). Stop making everyone in the Yes movement a Nationalist enemy and recognise that independence, not devolution, is getting very close to replacing Donald Dewar’s “settled will” of the Scottish people and that your Party should climb aboard the Independence train.

Realise the alternative for you is the continued road to hell. Personally I don’t want their oblivion, I just want my country to be free again. They can help.

Brian Macfarlane
Dunfermline

NOVEMBER is upon us tomorrow and the long, dark nights seem to permeate our inner selves. Time is calculated from Longitude Zero, or the Prime Meridian, which runs through the Greenwich Observatory in London. Hence the definition Greenwich Mean Time.

It is another timely reminder that the British capital is at the epicentre of the earth, if not the universe. In the 1970s the Labour government of Harold Wilson attempted to abolish Greenwich Mean Time, but this was seen as a dastardly plot to Europeanise Britain and was defeated after a year of pleasant light winter evenings.

So as the darkness closes around us let us all retire to the light and warmth of the pub and bellow out Rule Britannia with all our strength.

Alan Clayton
Strachur

NOW that our friends in England are taking an interest in their constitutional position, with English Votes for English Legislation, I wonder when they will request the creation of a new post of Secretary of State for England. After all, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have one each.

As the newly established Grand Committee for English affairs begins to flex its muscles it will surely need someone in government to represent it and also to explain any of the UK Government’s actions that affect it. This seems to be an odd omission from the recent Evel legislation.

Peter Craigie
Edinburgh

BRENDA Mitchell (Letters, The National, October 28) and her friends never miss a chance to promote the “presumed liability” of motorists in accidents with cyclists. There may be merit in this but only if legal requirements are imposed on cyclists.

For example: high visibility outer garments, specified lighting and warning devices, under-taking of HGVs and buses not allowed, no cycling on pavements or through pedestrian areas (except for children under ten years old), insurance mandatory and road tax paid to fund cycle routes.

Gary Wallace (Letters, October 29) also mentions “proficiency permits for adults”.

Motorists contribute billions to the Treasury through road tax, car tax, fuel tax and VAT and there is no reason why cyclists should not pay to use the roads and also make a contribution towards the construction of cycle routes.

Thousands of miles of roads have been built or improved since 1945 but very few of them have provision for cyclists.

It has been a cop-out by Governments and local authorities to push for road and footpath sharing. If they think cycling is healthy (which is debatable) and will help to save the planet it is time they took it seriously.

Mike Underwood
Linlithgow

AT last, someone who tells it as it really is. In response to Gary Wallace,with reference to cycling, I live in Wemyss Bay and I am constantly taken aback by the attitudes of cyclists who use the Wemyss Bay to Inverkip road and dual carriageway on up to Greenock.

The road they travel is poorly lit yet they still insist on riding without suitable reflective lighting and adequate front and rear lights. We motorists have to take due care and attention when driving and it is time something was done to educate and license these highway dangers.

Brian Westmacott
Wemyss Bay

SOME decades ago I was employed by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Taxes.

At that time, the Revenue operated on the entirely fair principle, that the more money made, the more tax was paid. Sadly this has been completely turned on its head.

Nowadays the “high rollers”, via skilled accountants and financial advisors, can utilise a multitude of loopholes in the system to avoid paying large chunks of tax, and in some cases pay no tax at all.

I do not blame the individuals for taking this advantage for the guilt lies with the series of Westminster governments, which throughout the years have allowed the explosion in tax loopholes to go unchecked.

If someone, or some company, makes money in this country, it is in this country they should pay their tax, and, if they are making a lot of money, they should pay a lot of tax, not piddling amounts.

It is obscene that in a society where tens of thousands of pounds are squandered on the vanity of a personalised number plate, queues are forming at more and more food banks but it is even more obscene for the mega rich to escape their legitimate burden of income tax.

Joseph G Miller
Dunfermline

THE very idea of anybody connected with Iain Duncan Smith and his by-now notorious Department of Work and Pensions being officially present at foodbanks (as is being proposed) is almost an incentive to voluntarily starve to death.

The further away foodbanks stays from the very notion of this, the more comforting for anybody with an iota of fair-mindedness in them.

It isn’t at all hard to imagine the role of any such DWP input into this, and any self-respecting foodbank provider should spurn this proposal outright.

When those who have been, and are, instrumental in generating misery offer themselves in any way as alleviators of misery it is time to adhere resolutely to present practices, and, not least, some principles.

Ian Johnstone
Peterhead

ONE proposal to ensure that the Conservative government (with the backing of less than 25 per cent of the electorate) is not defeated again by the unelected House of Lords is to ennoble another 100 Tories!

Given that this whole debacle was created over a measure to reduce government expenditure, might I suggest that not creating more peers would save at least £300 per day for each peer not created, saving £30,000 per day.

A prize could be offered for calculating the savings from halving the number of those already sitting in the House of Lords. Given that that House already has more members than the democratic House of Commons that might not be a bad thing.

But imagine the saving if the upper house were abolished altogether.

Any suggestions for a new second chamber?

Catherine Gilchrist
Bowmore, Islay.