IF, as seems probable, the UK is to go cashless, the Scottish Treasury should provide every citizen with a personal Scottish Treasury Cashless Account (STCA).This account would garner no interest and have no overdraft facilities. The only “money” in your STCA would have been deposited there by you. You would treat it exactly as you do your wallet.
Your STCA would come with a plastic card, which you would treat exactly like cash in your wallet. This card would incur no cost to a vendor. At present, credit card companies charge vendors (and so ultimately you) for the privilege of allowing you to spend your own money.
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One enormous advantage of this STCA system would be privacy. Only under clearly defined circumstances would the government have access to STCA data. At present, private card providers know precisely what, when, where and how much you spend on every purchase. More seriously, it is not generally known that card companies have the power to deny someone access to a credit card and even rescind an extant card, all without giving reasons. What would a cardless person do at present in a cashless society?
Urgent action is required before the private banks and card companies take complete control of our UK financial system. The government must take the initiative, and wrestle back control over our legal tender.
Doug Clark
Currie, Midlothian
ONE of Shirley-Anne Summerville’s early announcements was that “school children will get the results that their teachers decide. If your teacher thinks you should get a Grade A then you will get a Grade A.”
Now that school “assessment” results are starting to be shared with pupils and we find that they are being noted as percentage scores, can we be sure that the SQA will not be insisting that grade results are allocated according to grade boundaries that they have yet to announce? This seems to be a question that teachers and pulpits cannot answer just now.
Perhaps the SQA or the government could advise us all?
Donald McGregor
Edinburgh
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