LAST Thursday evening on BBC Drivetime, Sir Tom Farmer was thankful that Rishi Sunak has done something to address the end of furlough, but he says it is not enough.

He characterises this pandemic as akin to a war, pointing out that the UK finally paid off the cost of the World War Two in 2008. That’s 60+ years after the end, and in the intervening years taking on this debt did not stop the UK from creating the NHS, nationalising the railways, and carry out many other strategic projects.

Tom Farmer advises that the cost of borrowing is at an all-time low, and interestingly some mega-rich folks would buy into these government bonds as it costs them more keeping their money in the bank or “uninvested”. So the money is out there.

READ MORE: SNP accuse Tories of plan to inflict ‘bitter winter’ on millions

Commenting on Rishi’s want to support only “viable” jobs and changing the funding model, Sir Tom advises that this will create a huge set of redundancies in October as the furlough scheme ends.

He explained that “non-viable” jobs now could be viable in six months, and non-existent jobs are more difficult to resurrect, as the capital investment required is lost by closure.

Approximately 60,000 jobs could be lost. If the UK Government does not want to take on this additional risk, transferring it onto the Scottish Government would be a good risk management strategy.

Alistair Ballantyne
Birkhill, Angus

ALREADY pensions is resurfacing as an issue in the independence referendum and again, lies will be told.

Of course Tom Crozier (Website Comments, September 26) is correct that assurances were given in 2014. Significantly, that was before we were dragged out if the safety net of the European Community and the European Court of Justice.

This should be irrelevant, but in order to have the strongest possible rebuttal, last year Dumfries and Galloway Pensioners for Independence asked our local MSP if there was a clear statement on the future of pensions.

She advised us to write to the then Finance Secretary, Derek Mackay. We didn’t get a straight reply. So we wrote to the First Minister. She didn’t reply. Instead someone called Ria Robertson gave us a load of faff.

So we wrote to The First Minister again and said look, all we want is a clear unequivocal statement “your pension will continue to be paid after independence”. Again Nicola did not reply but Ria Robertson wrote back and told us to stop bothering her! So we don’t want false promises.

We don’t want an increase (well we do, but we are prepared to wait). All we want is a reassurance that we can put in a leaflet from someone who will be in power after the referendum that “your pension will continue to be paid after independence”. Why is that so difficult?

Ian Richmond
Dumfries & Galloway

ALLAN Anderson (Letters, September 24), having reminded us of the ways old people are responsible for all the world’s ills, writes: “come indyref2, it does not seem to me to be fair for older folk, who would not have long to live with the result, to have a vote at all”. May I suggest the following way of carrying out this idea in proportion to the amount of time left to the various prospective voters?

For people aged 16-34, each vote would count as a whole vote; for people aged 35-54, it would count as half a vote; for people aged 55-74, a quarter of a vote; and over that age there would be no vote at all.

And in furtherance of the “demographic change” which seems to be the current great hope of the independence movement, similar proportions of entitlement could be applied to NHS treatment and welfare benefits; of course these proportions would be reversed for entitlement to voluntary euthanasia.

Katherine Perlo
Forfar

JIM Lynch is timely in his letter in Monday’s National “Selection battles do not always turn out as planned”. Jim refers to the Scottish Parliament election in Edinburgh Western – a contest which was marred by dirty tricks including the smearing of the resident MSP in the newspapers. As a consequence several long-time activists left the branch. The result was that the seat in Edinburgh with the largest SNP majority was lost to the LibDems by Toni Giugliano, with a reduction in the SNP vote share over the ousted incumbent SNP MSP Colin Keir.

READ MORE: Selection battles do not always turn out as planned

In fact the situation then got worse, as Toni stood in the subsequent Westminster election and the SNP share of the vote reduced by a whopping 10.4%. Of course, part of the disastrous election performance was down to having a candidate from outside the constituency – the LibDems make a big play of that – and part was down to the loss of hard-working activists, some of whom had been in the branch for many many years and left in disgust.

Jim Lynch is a seasoned and long-time campaigner. A winner of the SNP President’s Prize. Members would do well to listen to his sage advice when selecting candidates.

Tony Grahame
Edinburgh