Johnson’s judgement a symptom of his lack of beliefs

Even in making his initial decision on Brexit, Johnson wrote two speeches, one pro staying in the EU , one pro leaving and only decided which to go for at the last minute. He is not a man with deeply held political beliefs, he was more an opportunist, looking to damage Prime Minister David Cameron, and open his own way to the top.

Johnson has mooted that Paul Dacre, hugely controversial former editor of the Daily Mail, should head up Ofcom, the body that oversees the press. (Johnson is desperate to staunch the haemorrhage of negative headlines from even the right wing press.) Yet Dacre has history. Lord Leverson, in his major press inquiry in 2012, specifically singled out Dacre “as a man incapable or simply unwilling to understand that printing false information about people is both hurtful and damaging”. Yet Johnson thinks this is the right person to head Ofcom...?

Dido Harding failed as the head of the vital Track and Trace programme but then Johnson used his failing judgement to promote her!

Ministers repeatedly fail, and Johnson remarkably meekly accepts that. The schools issues, first examinations, now restriction of free school meals for the most deprived children, add to a picture of a prime minister blundering uncaringly from one crisis to another.

But Johnson’s biggest failure of judgement was not to sack Dominic Cummings after his infected political advisor trailed coronavirus all the way up to Durham. Numerous other people have been fined for breaching lockdown, but not Cummings, who notoriously had also driven to Castle Barnard just to “test his eyesight” before driving home.

This drove a cart and horses through the credibility of the government’s entire lockdown strategy.

Johnson’s poor judgement has been further highlighted by the remarkable number of u-turns in government decision making – he almost appears to change his mind on policy, more often than his underwear!

Johnson’s failures in judgement could be his Achilles’ Heel; within his inner political circle there could lurk a potentially fatal pitfall. Michael Gove notoriously plunged a knife into Johnson’s leadership bid in 2016. Cummings has been a long standing very close colleague of Gove and now has gone back to work with Gove....

The suspicion must be that Gove and Cummings are using the weak, gullible Johnson as a human shield, to absorb blame and criticism. He can then can be discarded once he outlives his usefulness. However, Gove effectively giving Kent to France, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, strongly suggests he too has his own problems...

Andy Milroy Trowbridge WHY does the SNP leadership allow Andrew Wilson to muddy the waters on a Scottish currency when the members voted at the Spring 2019 conference to introduce one as soon as practicable after independence?

It’s simple. Scotland cannot be an independent country if we can’t control our economy. For that, we need our own sovereign currency and reserve bank. Using sterling post-independence means continuing our dependence upon the Bank of England and its fiscal and monetary policies, which have been, forgive the pun, less than sterling. Without a Scottish currency, we can’t have our own monetary policy – the ability to create and borrow the money we need for investment and full employment.

Since the 1990s, three European countries – Estonia, Slovakia and Croatia – have quickly and successfully introduced their own currencies under far more challenging circumstances than Scotland would face leaving the UK amidst the fallout of Brexit. As a result, all three countries have experienced steady growth, economic stability and low inflation.

If we are serious about restoring our independence, a Scottish currency is the only way we can begin to manage our economy to benefit Scotland, and not London.

Leah Gunn Barrett Edinburgh Andrew Wilson, the “brain of the Yes Movement” according to the unionist press, made some ridiculous and outrageous pronouncements on the subject of currency then, in typical form, went into hiding again. I am sure that I am not the only independence supporter who was angered by this and who wrote to The National about it. The two letters I have written on this have not been printed, nor have any others.

This currency issue is vitally important in the independence campaign, and it will be an important issue at the SNP conference, therefore The National, as the only newspaper supporting independence, has a duty to ensure that this important issue is properly debated in public.

If Wilson has a case to put let’s hear it from him, let him explain it clearly, and let us debate it.

Wilson can’t be allowed to make pronouncements, which are damaging to our cause, and then go into hiding without defending his position, or with his pronouncements being unchallenged. Democracy demands that we should have open debate on important matters.

Andy Anderson Saltcoats I usually agree with much of what Michael Fry writes. His honesty and insight into Scotland’s economy is an asset to The National, even though he might ruffle a few of your readers’ feathers each week. But when he says that big estates are the way forward for Scottish agriculture (October 27) then I have to disagree with him on this.

The family farm is where real agricultural productivity mostly takes place rather than on big estates (with some notable exceptions). In my experience large estates in Scotland have typically become the plaything of wealthy non-agricultural people. Easy money is often made by suffocating and permanently destroying huge acreages of farm land with sterile, impenetrable blanket sitka spruce forests.

Then there are the vast deserts created by estates in our hills and glens where there used to be an abundance of tenanted family farms producing valuable livestock for lowland farms. Just look at the tragic emptiness of much of the Highland areas of Banffshire, Morayshire and Aberdeenshire for example _ or huge swathes of Strathallan to the north of Stirling. Wildernesses created where there used to be a healthy population of food-producing rural communities.

A family farm that is owned can invest and diversify and become profitable. On the other hand, tenanted farms on estates are so often hamstrung by under-investment, decay and lack of security for the tenants.

And as for the criticism that farmers receive generous subsidies – well, just watch your food bills rocket in the event of farm subsidies being stopped, especially after Brexit and import tariffs kick in. Farm subsidies are the reason we can all enjoy good quality, safely produced cheap food.

My hope is that in an independent Scotland family-owned farms will be encouraged so that we can safeguard both our important food and drinks industry and our irreplaceable landscape that has been carefully managed by generations of our Scottish farmers and crofters.

William Forbes Farr, Strathnairn Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh is absolutely right to welcome the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It’s a major achievement for the international peace movement and a sign that world opinion does not support a small number of states possessing such dangerous and deadly weapons. An important part of the debate about independence is the question of how Scotland can and should act on the world stage.

Successive UK governments have had a long and shameful history of inflicting and fuelling atrocities and abuses around the world. Whether it is through the maintenance of Trident, the aggressive foreign policy and interventionism or the arming and supporting of despots, dictators and human rights abusers. People around the world have paid a terrible price for the policies of Boris Johnson and his predecessors.

Right now, Saudi forces trained by the RAF are using UK-made fighter jets to fire UK-made missiles and drop UK-made bombs. The results have been devastating. The policies which have allowed this to happen are part of the same aggressive and pro-military mindset that has seen Trident kept for so long. As we try to build a world without Trident, it is vitally important that we look to build a more positive and peaceful foreign policy to go with it. The Scottish Parliament and Scottish people have an important role to play in shaping that alternative vision, it is vital we seize it.

Emma Cockburn Campaign Against Arms Trade I HAVE just come across a report that HSBC are considering ending free banking and imposing charges for transactions and current accounts. The report advises that HSBC are being driven towards this by a dip in their profits caused by the coronavirus pandemic. No doubt other banks are likely to follow suit. Nice to have it confirmed that we are all in this together. In this case all in this together means having to bail the banks out again following the financial crisis of 2008 – a crisis created by the banks and our political masters.

I suppose we were warned. Some perceptive financial commentators predicted that if interest rates dipped towards zero or minus the banks and other financial institutions would look to recoup losses from their ordinary customers.

All this is in line with suggestions that Rishi Sunak intends to recoup Covid-19 expenditure by taxing the rest of us while introducing tax breaks to benefit himself and his mates. Every cloud has a silver lining for some.

I look forward to the opportunity to contributing to keeping the privileged few in the lap of luxury.

Melvyn Gibson Fenwick The recent disgraceful actions of the Tories, including sadly all their Scottish grouping, in voting against free school meals for English school kids during this pandemic has shown the Tories’ true colours.

So I would like to suggest a paper plate protest. This would involve posting a paper plate with the words “feed the bairns and stop subsidising MP’s meals” to either Boris in Downing Street, Tory party HQ in London or in Scotland, and inundating the six Tories in Scotland who are apparently happy to see hungry bairns in one of the world’s richest countries. Addresses can be found on the internet and some are freepost!

Bill Golden
Forfar