Grave concerns about why the RAF might be spending £195m on deadly drones

So what is the point? UK Forces (RAF) already have three of these drone systems already, so many of the controlling staff can be trained to support these “tools of war”, if that is simply the need.

I can recall that training is critical, else missing the target can result in collateral damage (to civilians) or friendly fire on UK troops on the ground.

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I wonder if any reader can advise what hostile forces the UK are currently in conflict with that requires this costly weaponry? Can any reader advise what future conflict the UK is likely to engage in?

The only “hostiles” that the UK Government have identified in recent years are “illegal asylum seekers” and “benefit scroungers”.

Are these drones to be used to deter asylum seekers from taking to their inflatables on the north coast of France? I could envisage the Home Office asking the RAF to monitor the French coastline, watching from afar using night vision systems. No, not really likely, as the UK have just given the French government an additional £50 million to action the asylum problem in France.

You could imagine what the £50m would do to disrupt the people trafficking industry in northern France if there was a UK Government clearing centre, with a legal, steady and robust process, for selecting and validating those permitted to enter the UK.

I would propose us canny Scots should be given control of this asylum process. The 8,400 asylum seekers who have arrived in Dover area in the first half of this year could be transported to Scotland to replace some of the European farm workers, blocked by Brexit. No, not forced labour, but an offer. If they wish to move to a location in the UK where they have friends and family, that is fine.

When survival is the driving force, borders mean nothing. If you are short of food and dying and another country has food, migration will occur.

The driving force is genetically imbedded in our reptilian brain, it’s not avarice or greed.

Alistair Ballantyne
Birkhill, Angus

BRITAIN’S financial position is worrying. With interest rates at their lowest – six-month London Interbank Offer Rate (Libor) at 0.15%, overnight money at 2%, and Bank of England base rate at 0.1% – Britain pays about £73 billion a year as interest on the £2.3 trillion national debt. In 1981, the Bank of England base rate was 15%, so you can see the catastrophic position we could be in if rates rise.

Unbeknown to the public, the Bank of England has been quietly pursuing a policy of continuous quantitative easing. Since 2009, they have issued £900 billion. It is “narrow money”, so does not get directly into circulation, but it is driving up asset prices – including houses – and sustaining the stock market during what has actually been a decade of recession. Totally misleading. Comfort is being given where there is danger.

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The gilts market is now really a Ponzi scheme, where maturities are being paid with the money from new investors.

If Scotland ever became independent, the remains of the UK would immediately get a lower international credit rating, which would of course drive up government bond and other interest rates to a huge extent, in order to finance their now increased deficit economy.

Having finally lost their nerve, some of the national debt investors might even want their money back, causing a huge recession.

The UK is on a tightrope really...

Malcolm Parkin
Kinross

GEORGE Gourley’s lovely letter “Debates matched the boiling weather” (Jul 26), not only entertained me but reminded me, when he wrote of Ben Elton’s Stark, of Douglas Adams’s solution for the people like the Tory MPs.

A plan to counter the impending doom for the Earth was to colonise other, identified earth-like planets far far away, in other galaxies.

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Ark ships were assembled in space which could carry hundreds of thousands of people. The wise people of planet Earth decided that it would be sensible to have each of the arks populated by like-skilled people.

That part of his story explains that the particular arks populated with telephone-sanitisers, politicians, advertising executives etc, having spent several thousand years zooming through space, are still waiting to be told their destination!

We should do that! Perhaps keep the telephone-sanitisers though!

Christopher Bruce
Taynuilt

I WOULD refer Monday’s Long Letter writers to the motion brought to the Westminster parliament on July 4 2018 by Mr Ian Blackford of the SNP. The motion was on the sovereignty of the Scottish people, which was passed. Read it for yourselves on Hansard.

William Purves
Galashiels