MICHAEL Fry, in Tuesday’s National, seems most determined to talk Scotland down (Scotland’s tax regime for business is the real hostile environment, November 6). It wasn’t that long ago that the Tories were shouting at the SNP government for not exercising their tax-altering powers and then, when they do, Michael Fry moans about it.
If I were to earn £1000 per week, I wouldn’t be averse to be paying a little more tax. The gap between English and Scottish taxation will need to be very much larger before it will cause higher earners to move away. Considering that they will lose free college education, free bus travel for the over-60s, free prescriptions etc, a move down to the crowded south would not necessarily appeal.
As to the low productivity, that is a function of low government investment in industry for many decades. Westminster has put its eggs into the financial services basket and that benefits the better-off at the expense of the rest of us. Recent studies have shown that the much-vaunted financial sector is a cuckoo in the nest and it has cost our society billions.
Making money out of money is non-productive and it does not increase true wealth.
Michael Fry’s free-market capitalism doesn’t work for the majority of the population, either. Lack of regulation has resulted in financial collapse and the misappropriation of vast sums of money. Think RBS, PFIand Carillion.
Sensible nationalisation of basic essential services, together with a constitutional currency and reasonable government oversight, will give us a more equitablesociety. Independence is the opportunity to carry out this programme for the benefit of all.
Tony Perridge
Inverness
READ MORE: Scotland's tax regime for business is the real hostile environment
NEW polls show the majority of Brits would vote to remain in a new referendum (including Arron Banks!) but that is not going to happen. It is not going to happen because despite banging on about the will of the people, Theresa May wants Brexit. Maybe not the hard Brexit that the rabids in her party want but Brexit nevertheless, and she wanted it even while she was doing as she was told by David Cameron.
If something does not appear to make sense, it is because you haven’t considered the whole picture. May is not the reluctant Brexiteer she painted herself as. Doesn’t that explain the mystery reason she never sacked Boris Johnson over his racist comments and international blunders after she appointed him Foreign Secretary?
The cold, cruel woman who brought us the “hostile environment for immigrants” when she was Home Secretary and birthed the shameful Windrush scandal – and had no qualms bribing 10 homophobic, misogynistic DUP politicians with £1 billion to keep power – always wanted Brexit.
Amanda Baker
Edinburgh
READ MORE: Brexiteers are finally being forced to face up to the facts
FOR the past couple of years Theresa May’s favourite quotes have been that “Brexit is Brexit” and that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”.
Now she and her government are running out of soundbites as they try to avoid the reality of dealing with Brexit becoming a no-deal Brexit.
It has been fairly obvious from the outset that an acceptable Brexit agreement hinged on a solution to the status of the border in Ireland.
These difficult negotiations on the Irish border should have been tackled before moving on to negotiate other matters; instead Theresa May went ahead with a smokescreen of apparently successful negotiations on everything else, reiterating her impossible assurances that there would be no EU/UK border in Ireland or between Northern Ireland and the UK.
This has led to the current position on Brexit, which in reality has stalled with 0% agreed, in spite of the nonsensical, meaningless soundbite “95% of the Brexit deal has been done”.
John Jamieson
South Queensferry
PETER A Bell can interpret Tesco’s response to placing the Union flag (not Jack) on its Scottish (UK) sourced products as a political agenda if he chooses, but then wouldn’t that be for him to have missed the point?
All of the major supermarket retailers strive to avoid politicisation of their business. They are marketers, which means ensuring that they design their offering to their customers in the best way to appeal to them, not antagonise them and drive them to competitors; perhaps the reason why the lower end of the market, allegedly discounting, retailers fail to mark their foreign imported products with thenational flag symbol of their country of origin?
But the real point Mr Bell misses is that it’s irrelevant what symbols are put on products. As it happens they are entirely appropriate for the political situation we are in now; British first, Scottish a poor second.
Isn’t the real challenge that if we dislike the symbols, then it’s because we despise the political situation we’re in, and rather than wasting effort seeking to change the symbols on food, shouldn’t we be using their example to illustrate abuse while working foremost to change the unpalatable system that generates them?
The Union flag gets our backs up? Good. Let’s work to creating the situation to change it.
I have no doubt that Tesco and other retailers will reflect our wishes and match their marketing to the political reality we create. It’s in their commercial interest to do so.
Let’s keep focussed. If the symbols incite us then let’s harness that anger to focus on bringing about the political change as the genesis to commercial change.
Jim Taylor
Edinburgh
READ MORE: Tesco says Scotland is UK region in row over Union Jack on produce
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