DEREK Mackay’s Budget was very smart. The poor and uninformed think he has soaked the rich to pay for a public-sector pay rise, and the media oblige with headlines that he has “hammered” 750,00 Scots earning over £33,000, which he hasn’t.

It was pitched as necessary to deal with Tory austerity and give more to the NHS, schools and broadband, and buys off Patrick Harvie, out-Corbyns Richard Leonard and plants a big “I’m a horrible Tory” stamp on many foreheads.

The truth is, until you get to those earning £75k the maximum effect is plus or minus £90 per year – or four cigarettes a week. The £164m tax increase might cover the pay rises but not £400m for the NHS, £600m for broadband, £400m promised for child care, or the bluster about supporting WASPI women (£800m).

There are only four solutions: grow the economy, borrow, tax more or a lot more cuts. The Scottish economy is forecast to grow 0.7 per cent, half the UK figure – and the SNP can’t borrow, in fact, the UK pays for the £14 billion GERS deficit. So that leaves more taxes and cuts.
Allan Sutherland
Stonehaven

WITH the permanent possibility of another independence referendum, and now with different taxation rates, those organisations who work to attract new business to Scotland – the only way to really expand the economy – have a hard task.

These two negatives also impact on existing businesses, and between them provide a disincentive to expand, and make it difficult to attract specialist expertise from abroad, or from elsewhere in the UK. Any beneficial effect of the SNP budget is therefore overshadowed by the further uncertainty about Scotland it has created.

Also, the independence the SNP pursues, with Scotland as a member of the EU, is merely a change of master – Brussels for Westminster – and even that is highly doubtful, as the membership application process for the breakaway part of a member state doesn’t even exist. Even if it did, such an application would be frowned upon by those member states such as France and Spain, with their own problems in that department. Scotland could go bust while waiting for a EU membership that never came.

But a truly independent Scotland, totally on its own, could have a huge future if it had the management talent to play to the world with attractions such as lower taxes, 100 per cent first year capital allowances for plant and equipment, and – most importantly – its own currency and banking system where government issued the money supply as interest-free investment, instead of the present system where UK banks create the money supply as debt from thin air, and then lend it in any amount, to any person, for whatever purpose that person may choose.

This has led to the house price bubble, and all kinds of market and economic distortions that work against the individual. Freed from the debt slavery of the UK banking system, Scotland could have a creative and balanced economy. It would take time, and it would be a hard journey, but worth some temporary discomfort.

Scotland has perhaps now put itself in the position of having to look over the horizon, and think beyond the conventional and self-serving political box, where grievance has played too big a part for too long.
Malcolm Parkin
Kinross

TWO or three points struck me as I listened to the Budget debate and the reaction to it. First and foremost, at last there seem to be many people quite happy to be paying a little more for improving services in Scotland and helping the most disadvantaged in our society.

Secondly, while Murdo Fraser howls in outrage, as expected, about a broken promise to retain the 20 per cent rate, he forgets – or refuses to acknowledge – that everyone will benefit from the new starter rate of 19 per cent on the first taxable part of their income, though the poorest most of all by being taken out of tax altogether.

Thirdly, only a small proportion of those on 20 per cent, whose income is approaching the higher rate, will actually pay a little more. Would these folk taking a small hit not be prepared to accept this slight variation from the promised 20 per cent freeze to allow a tiny improvement for the very poorest? Even as a pensioner not affected, I would have accepted a small increase to help them and protect our valuable services.

Is this really the “me, me, me” society Fraser’s response indicates, or does scoring points over the SNP weigh more heavily with him than thinking of others and putting the poorest first?
L McGregor
Falkirk

WHILE the Conservatives cry crocodile tears about a “Nat Tax”, Labour say the Government hasn’t gone far enough. This puts the SNP neatly in the middle of the two. Not a bad place to be.

Modestly increasing taxes for higher earners while cutting them for the very lowest will be welcomed by most. No-one earning less than £33,000 will pay any more as a result of the budget. That’s 1.8 million people – 70 per cent of taxpayers – while 1.4 million taxpayers earning less than £26,000 will pay less than if they had lived elsewhere in the UK.

These tax changes will raise £164m, allowing the Government to tackle cuts to Scotland’s budget.

Critics have often decried the lack of use of fiscal powers by the Scottish Government, and its cautious approach to a progressive agenda. We now have significant divergence with the rest of the UK.
Alex Orr
Edinburgh