EDUCATION down south is so chronically underfunded that schools are having to close one day per week. Each day commuters (thanks to crumbling infrastructure) endure overcrowded and cancelled trains, potholed and congested roads, and capacity-choked airports. Victorian-era diseases such as malnutrition, gout, scurvy, scarlet fever and rickets are all on the rise. Since 2008 wages in the UK have collapsed at the same rate as Greece.

UK personal debt stands at over £1 trillion. Hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of having their benefits cut in the name of welfare “reform”. Foodbank use stands at over two million.

READ MORE: Brexit: SNP's Pete Wishart calls on Scots Tories to oppose No Deal

This is a snapshot of life in the UK under Tory ideological austerity. It does not even begin to articulate the actual experience of the vast majority of the population. Tory austerity serves an agenda that makes those already wealthy richer at the expense of the rest of society. The Tories have steadfastly refused to provide any money to alleviate any of the problems of crumbling infrastructure, failing schools, lack of care facilities or any of the multiplicity of problems.

Now Boris Johnson has suddenly found £6 billion for a No-Deal scenario that bumbling blockheaded buffoon says won’t happen. This is the politics of the madhouse. Bozo Johnson and the Tories are following the same nativist strategy the Trump is in the USA. Johnson knows that his No-Deal scenario will be economic suicide. So, like other proto-fascists he is seeking to scapegoat “the other” namely the EU, citizens of the EU living in the UK, the Scottish Government and the Irish government.

Johnson and his cabal are banking on a “free-trade deal” with Trump to offset the damage done by any No-Deal scenario. However, the US Congress has warned that they could hold-up any deal indefinitely if there was a hard-border in Ireland.

Boris Johnson and his clique of hard-right oddballs see Brexit as an opportunity to turn Britain into a giant Asiatic-style sweatshop. They want a population who are in low-wage transitory and fleeting jobs. They want to strip away all employment protections, they want no pensions, no sick pay, no maternity leave, no minimum wage, no NHS. The hard-right Brexit faction even have desires to bring back the workhouse and debtors’ prisons.

The only silver lining is that out of this chaos will be the end of the United Kingdom.

Alan Hinnrichs
via email

CRAIG Cairns’ report “Boris wasn’t booed due to being English” (July 30) included no fewer than six statements saying Boris Johnson is “English”.

READ MORE: English Scots for Yes: Boris Johnson wasn't booed for being English

Unless Boris’ New York City birthplace has had a major inter-continental re-alignment, I’m sure it’s still in the USA, so statements saying he’s English are potentially misleading. Boris is (or was) an American and was happy to be an American from 1964 to 2016.

Is it a coincidence or is it a delicious irony that Boris only chose to renounce American citizenship immediately before Trump became president and commander-in-chief?

I wasn’t aware that if someone acquires UK citizenship, there’s an option to choose which of the four home nations or other various territories they can claim to be from. If they can, where is it written – on their passport perhaps? If there isn’t a formal document, then he must be equally English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, etc.

And finally, if Boris can claim to be English without it being stated on an official document, surely he must accept the right of others to state they are Scottish and not British – whatever “British” means!

Roddy MacNeill
East Kilbride

LIKE his predecessor, the new Prime Minister should stop his obsession about British Unionism and explain why he is at the same time delighted about the destruction of European Unionism, backing a separatist Britain to the hilt. I have still to hear a credible explanation why this Unionism is such a panacea when two-wage families have to attend food and clothing banks. Mr Johnson would be better employed answering the United Nations’ criticism of Westminster about the widespread poverty throughout the UK than giving us all earache about Unionism.

Robert Gritton
Newmachar, Aberdeenshire

THE principal Toxic Tory has completed his Tudor-style progress to the Capitals of “his” United Kingdom and, as accurately predicted, the Westminster-controlled media, printed and broadcast, have been as kind to him as instructed.

Nevertheless the hostile, unforgiving reception he and his courtiers received, particularly in our country, established just how unwelcome and unsupported he and his predictions are. No amount of flattery, attempted bonhomie to our First Minister, nor to his erstwhile puppet, Ruth Davidson, will disguise the absolute contempt which he and the Westminster clique have for Scotland.

READ MORE: Has Scotland’s media fallen out of love with Ruth Davidson?

He will not outlive his support for his journal’s infamous description of all who live north of the Tweed as “verminous Scots”, nor should we ever let him forget it. Prime Minister and Minister of the Union? The holder of such grand titles would be expected to demonstrate savoir faire and “a bit of class”. He has neither. Scotland, and incidentally the other devolved administrations, can expect carefully rehearsed, choreographed outpourings of goodwill from the talk-sick Tories disguising their true intentions of continued special support to, as described by him, London and the south east. To plagiarise, you cannot fool all the people all the time. That man has spent more time in the toilet than in Scotland, Wales or N Ireland, since volunteering to be the UK Trumpeter.

Scotland has its answer to him as it was to his predecessor. Let him hear it loud and clear!

J Hamilton
Bearsden