The extension of the furlough scheme is just too little too late

It will be no coincidence they waited until the England rugby game was over before they decided to make the announcement last Saturday night.

Then a couple of days later it dawned on the Tories that the self-employed had been forgotten so there was a last minute change to that scheme. And still they couldn’t confirm whether the devolved nations would be able to access the same support as England.

Apart from the fact that thousands of people are falling through the net and businesses are going bust throwing more workers on the unemployment pile, what kind of a shambles of a government is so incapable of forward planning?

Kate Forbes is right in saying their haphazard policy making has added months of unnecessary confusion. It means that some employers had already made workers redundant because Westminster refused to make a commitment that support would continue.

She is also right to point out that the support that does exist is poorly targeted. The Chancellor needs to heed her call for help to be given to those who so far have been excluded from the schemes, and there are many of them.

The Resolution Foundation has agreed that too much is being wasted on those who don’t need help but nothing is being given to hundreds of thousands of self-employed people who have no work at all.

Other countries have put in place better targeted schemes from the start, giving the assurance that businesses and workers need, that these will continue for as long as is necessary. Yet it seems Westminster has no vision for the future and lurches from one mess to another.

The UK is not the only place where the national debt is growing but the lack of foresight means that once the pandemic is under control, economies where there has been better support will be able to recover more quickly while the UK continues to flounder and sink in a mire of its own making. And still they continue blindly on with Brexit despite all the warnings that this will land the UK in an even bigger mess.

Scotland we need out of this and soon! We need independence before we are dragged even further down by the bunch of incompetents in charge at Westminster.

Jean MacFarland

Inverness

While we’re all looking at the undemocratic practices of former President Trump, the current Tory Secretary of State for Scotland – Alister Jack MP – has shown that the Tories are never far behind US fascists when it comes to denying democracy!

As more polls signify support for Scottish independence as the majority opinion in Scotland, the Tories are doubling down on their refusal to listen to the public. To now declare that a vote in 2014 is fixed in stone for 25 to 40 years merely underlies the Tories hatred of democracy. How can we hold the Scottish public of the future to a decision taken back in 2014?

This is absolute nonsense from the Tories but if does highlight that our independence won’t be given to us – we have to take it. And sitting back waiting for any Tory Prime Minister to say OK to a section 30 agreement is absolute nonsense. We – the people of Scotland – should be setting the timetable and the terms of our independence, not the Tories nor the UK Government.

Cllr Kenny MacLaren

Paisley

REDUNDANCIES are going up by the thousand all over the UK yet still Boris and his cronies are pressing ahead with Brexit despite all the warnings that this will make matters worse, deal or no deal.

It was daft to think Brexit could end well for the UK even in normal circumstances but to keep blindly plugging on with it in the middle of a pandemic beggars belief.

Scotland’s food and drink industry is the latest to beg Westminster to change course and at the very least grant a six month “grace period” for any new rules currently due to come into effect on January 1. These will mean businesses will need export licences and other certification to send goods to Europe.

Industry leaders have pointed out that the damage already caused by the pandemic has put them in a perilous position and the fallout if the UK crashes out on December 31 will be catastrophic. Their words, not mine.

The Covid-19 crisis has already caused an expected loss of £3bn in revenue for an industry that employs 120,000 people across Scotland and is worth £15bn a year to the economy.

That’s just one sector that will be badly hit.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has now confirmed UK trade with the EU will face significant disruption, whether or not there is a deal by the end of December. Preparations for new border controls which were already lacking and have been rated “high risk” have been set back further, according to the NAO.

Unbelievably, or perhaps all too believably given the track record of the Tory Government, key IT systems have not even been tested yet! Transit areas for lorries are not nearly ready and there are not enough customs agents to ensure the system, for what it is, works.

Perhaps even more concerning is that the NAO has gone on to warn that contingency plans to maintain the supply of medicines and other essentials have been proving to be even more difficult to establish because of the pandemic.

Rod McKenzie of the Road Haulage Association has raised concerns over what he said were the unpleasant conditions hauliers would be expected to endure in the lorry parks if there are, as expected, lengthy customs delays. He has also said there is still a lack of permits available to let drivers transport goods internationally and said the “plans” for the movement of HGVs across borders were a shambles and, indeed, “bonkers”.

There are also concerns over safety – concerns growing after the terrorist attacks in mainland Europe last week – because the UK may lose its access to European security data. The UK makes checks on the Schengen Information System around 600 million times a year. Laughably, the Tories have said the UK’s more limited datbases could be used instead. Talk about burying your head in the sand.

To add to the Tories’ problems, Joe Biden is on record as saying he will favour trade deals with the EU over any with the UK, putting paid to Boris’s hopes of a helping hand from Uncle Sam.

New data is now predicting a double dip recession which will be even worse than what we suffered in the first decade of this century and all that will remain at the end will be a low wage economy and a disintegration of UK society.

Meanwhile the Tories sing Rule Britannia, keep their fingers crossed and Andrew Neil has the effrontery to berate the SNP, accusing them of a lack of a support for the “left behind” when in fact the Scottish Government is firefighting the effects of the inhumane policies perpetrated by the Tories and using money that could be used to stimulate the economy on schemes to mitigate their worst effects. Let’s hope Neil’s new far-right broadcasting project fails to have any influence on anyone that has the misfortune to tune in.

It is high time for Scotland to break free from this shower of arrogant, tunnel-visioned bunch of incompetents.

The Etonians “running” the country claim Scotland has not co-operated in the Brexit fiasco when the truth is that they have refused to hear our voice. We need to sing our own tune.

Callum McDonald

Edinburgh

Surely the BBC made an amazing own goal inviting anti-SNP (meant to be neutral) political commentator stalwart of political programmes, the one and only Andrew Neil loose on TV. He was asked about America but chose to unleash an amazing tirade against the SNP! Thus exposing the institutional bias of the so called impartial EBC!

As we get closer to Holyrood’s election brace ourselves to expect more of the same.

Robin MacLean

Fort Augustus

Even although he has been associated in some shape or form with the politics of British Conservatism and with the party of the same name for some time now, it was still irritating to read that Andrew Neil took such unbridled pleasure in “speaking his mind” on the Politics Live programme.

There is no doubt that Neil is a gifted and vastly experienced broadcaster, but it would appear that he is now pinning his political colours firmly to the mast prior to embarking on his new TV news channel, GB news, in 2021.

Andrew “Brillo” Neil can now give full rein to his radical far right wing views that have been evident but tempered in the mainstream media previously. His new channel, which on the face of it looks like the UK equivalent of Fox News, will doubtless be a perfect environment for fellow radicals like Julia Harley- Brewer and Darren Grimes to spew forth their reactionary opinions on everything from Scottish nationalism to the wonders of Brexit and the horrors of immigration.

The political gloves will certainly be off for a man who has been long associated with the publications and political leanings of Rupert Murdoch and who sees himself as a climate change denier and hawk in Western foreign policy. Despite his historical connections to the Conservative party and somewhat chequered career, (as editor of the Times, he employed the holocaust denier, David Irving, to translate the Goebbels’ diaries) the BBC, an allegedly impartial state broadcaster, is rumoured to have tried to persuade him to become its chairman.

Andrew Neil will continue to attack the independence movement in Scotland whilst he has breath in his body. He is an ally of libertarian capitalist and rarely a proponent of social, political or economic justice both at home and abroad. His relevance to Scotland and its people is negligible or non existent. We will speak our minds at next year’s elections and Mr Neil and his associates will find themselves, again, on the wrong side of history.

Owen Kelly

Stirling

It is more than likely that Boris Johnson has noticed that the Tory campaign in Scotland led by Douglas Ross (on loan from the House of Commons) and Ruth Davidson (on loan from the House of Lords) is not going well and there will not be a Tory revival before the Holyrood elections in May (Johnson to be told to stay away from campaign - The National, November 6).

Douglas Ross is not even going to take the risk of defeat by standing for Holyrood in his own Moray constituency, which leaves him with the easy option of quietly resigning his anticipated seat as a Highland Region MSP in Holyrood and returning to his part time MP/Linesman posts.

With Douglas Ross and Ruth Davidson gone Boris Johnson can stand apart, untainted by the failure, until the new intake of Tory MSPs in Holyrood have drawn straws for their leader before launching into his role as super defender of the Union to head the UK Government’s referendum campaign.

John Jamieson

South Queensferry