MICHAEL Fry’s plea for governments to dream big is interesting but frustrating (Hammond’s meaningless Budget hasn’t brought an end to austerity, The National , October 30). It is easy to applaud the need for vision and direction and for the nerve to have big dreams and the courage to make them reality. He might want to acknowledge that our own Scottish Government has demonstrated such vision repeatedly: in sustainable energy developments, the Queensferry Crossing, in crime reduction, etc.

He reminded us however that Scotland remains “mired” to a hapless, directionless, incompetent administration in Westminster currently ensuring that they take back control of crucial areas of government after Brexit so that Holyrood’s chances of enacting imaginative courageous initiatives in the future are more or less removed.

He referred to the 2008 financial crisis as a further cause of continuing austerity and mediocre governance. And that can only be an underestimate of the real bankruptcy of public and private debt – engineered by corrupt banking practices and cynical smoke-and-mirror tactics of desperately deceitful so-called first Lords of the Treasury. Tactics which expertly load the costs of untrammelled greed and corruption, courtesy of Thatcher’s “Big Bang” in the 1980s, on to the poorest and most vulnerable throughout the UK.

Mr Fry has made me think again about the importance of a government having a positive vision and philosophy, not to mention human empathy and – with only a few reservations – the relief and pride we can feel because Holyrood demonstrates these things in abundance.

There is huge frustration and dread however from the prospect of the the post-Brexit power grab which places our Parliament under the heel of such alien politic – those who dreamed “big enough” to invent and impose the “hostile environment”, the”rape clause” and the unmitigated cruelties of “Universal Credit” in order to rescue dishonest bankers and fund the newly announced tax relief for those who earn £50,000 or more.

My only caveat to Mr Fry is to reconsider his dreams of bridges and yet more heavy lorries through my old beautiful home of the Rhinns in Wigtownshire: dream big but dream green of sustainable growth. Dream of an independent Scottish Parliament in the EU being granted help to reinstate the railway to Dumfries and upgrade the railway to Glasgow. That’s my own big dream: the re-opening – by Michel Barnier perhaps – of Stranraer Town Railway Station and Cairnryan Rail Freight Terminal.
Frances Mickie
Evanton, Easter Ross

ONCE again the Budget brings the usual comments from elected politicians who all just quibble over details.

However none of them ever looks at the bigger questions because it might mean doing something decisive and even threaten their comfortable position in the top 7% of the population as far as income is concerned. There’s been no austerity for the growth of the main companies’ profits, just the working poor.

When will we talk about the importance of paying for better health, housing and education as well as the most important issue that is our environment.

It would be a simple start to say we have to pay more. Therefore, tax will need to be raised fairly so the rich will pay more because they earn more – even the sacred company profits are produced by ordinary workers.

Then we could also debate VAT which hits the poorest hardest, or even establish a national basic living wage since the sacred free market cannot do it.
Norman Lockhart
Innerleithen