It’s now time to collect tax from the firms that dodged it

There is surely one way of solving this situation at a stroke.

We have frequently been told that the combined wealth of all the top millionaires and billionaires is enough to have cancelled the debt of every single country in the world before this crisis hit. We also know, from the Panama Papers and other sources, that most, perhaps all, of this enormous wealth has been acquired by devious tax avoidance/evasion and is now stashed safely in tax havens around the world.

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Now must surely be the time for governments retrospectively to collect the full amount of unpaid tax from the owners of these funds, with interest and penalty fees, as they would from a pensioner who may have paid a few pence too little to HMRC by mistake, or been late in filing returns and paying their dues.

The income so generated would almost certainly be sufficient to offset the current financial support schemes and could even turn the loans into grants. If there were a grain of real humanity left in these people, instead of throwing money at luxury yachts etc while some in the world starve on a few dollars a day, they would be offering the millions or even billions that they morally owe to help save the world from a global financial disaster. Instead, some are even asking for support for their operations instead of supporting them with their own tax-free funds.

I suspect, however, that they are still worrying about whether the crisis will affect the value of their hidden treasure, while at the same time gloating over how it will enable them to buy up bankrupt companies for a song and thereby in time hoard even more wealth. But then, we know that some of our own politicians are in this group, and perhaps the desire to avoid being caught by the measures the EU is due to bring in on tax havens and offshored profits was a major factor in their enthusiasm to leave that Union.

L McGregor
Falkirk

THANK you for publishing Martin Hannan’s article on the RAF bombing of the prisoner ships in the Bay of Lubeck on May 3 1945 (Tragedy of the prison ships sunk by the RAF, May 2).

Hannan’s article did not mention that allied fighters were amongst the prisoners. My father was one of those who narrowly escaped the carnage. He was one of many Dutch and other resistance fighters incarcerated on the ships. His story and that of the resistance group he led is recorded in my book Letters from Tasmania, which tells of their post-war migration to Australia.

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Hannan’s article reports some of the findings of the investigation by British Major Till, but does not mention that the SS officers were guards, and that Till was a war crime investigator whose investigation was hindered and eventually stopped by superiors. Significantly, relevant files are covered by the maximum level of security, which is a hundred years.

Unless Whitehall decides to come clean, I will never know who decided to disregard the information that allied prisoners were on board, to withhold this information from the pilots, and to proceed with the destruction of thousands of lives on the day that the formal surrender of Germany was being arranged.

I hope that The National will have the information and the courage to write a full report on the tragedy in 2045.

Kusha Bolt
Aberfeldy

IT’S understandable that Kevin Pringle, as an ally of the SNP, does not think that there should be a new independence party in Scotland before independence.

However, for many of us not in the SNP and wanting independence, now is precisely when we should have and need another independence-seeking party.

Having only one significant independence-seeking party leaves use in an extremely weak position. It means that at all elections there is no real choice for the voters – it’s the SNP or a Unionist party.

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Much better to have two strong independence-seeking parties. Giving the voters a choice and resulting in more independence votes in the process. Competition is good. As a nation we need more than one big party that is interested in what’s best for Scotland and we need these parties to be competing with each other to be the best choice.

Totalitarianism is not good. We should not be imagining a newly independent Scotland with only one dominant political party.

Creating and succeeding with a new independence party would not be easy. The SNP are seasoned campaigners and winners. They will not move aside willingly or with ease. But that’s no excuse, there are plenty of seasoned veterans for independence waiting in the sidelines. Bring them on.

Chris Sagan
Isle of Bute

THE new normal has an eery similarity to the old normal if you go back far enough. The quiet roads are similar to those of my childhood when most of our games were played across the street. When I was young the habits of hugging and kissing which have been stopped by social distancing were not indulged in at all except in youthful passion.

Many of the businesses which we take for granted were few and far between. In our district there were no bars at all due to a Victorian prohibition. Those round the perimeter still had jug bars where ale could be bought on draught. We never ate out and coffee bars were future novelties of the swinging sixties. Thus many of the types of business we take for granted did not exist and there is no guarantee they will exist in the future.

As our society adjusts to the exigencies of a more green way of life, it will be interesting what else changes. All our local shops once had delivery boys, from grocers to butchers, chemists, dairies and newsagents. This is being counterparted due to the present crisis. Could supermarkets which once did not exist disappear again to be replaced by depots served by hydrogen-fueled vans? Will off-licences, DIY shops, garden centres and fast-food shops which once did not appear on the high streets perhaps be replaced home brewing, home crafts, seed merchants and home cooking?

Iain WD Forde
Scotlandwell

THERE is no greater admirer of Ruth Wishart than me. Regularly I email her articles to my Democratic friends in the US to give them hope.

But I was physically shocked when I read her words “ That we spent four of the six war years not fighting the principal enemy at all.......”. I ask us all to remember the more than 75,000 RAF aircrew ( from many nations) killed between September 1939 and May 1945 who waged war mainly in the dark. They included my 19-year-old cousin, Donald Kennedy.

Ruth rightly emphasised the horrors of the civilians killed in air raids ( on both sides)but she failed to mention the munition factories. How many readers know, for example, of the factory building periscopes for U-boats in Dresden?

In carrying the fight to Germany, the Allied Air Forces forced Germany to switch from bombers to fighters and to Ack-Ack defences. Otherwise the Luftwaffe might have maintained its assault on us. So it’s an undeniable fact that the air war on Germany was an important factor in winning the war.

Ian Gilbert
Pitlochry