WELL, there it is – out in plain sight for all to see. An increase in National Insurance for all instead of income tax for high earners. Cuts to welfare benefits and cruel and inhumane treatment of immigrants and refugees. Divide and rule rhetoric on class, race, sexuality, nationality, accents and anything else that works.
Food shortages, energy shortages, climate change, arms race, spats with Europe, law changes scuppering Scotland’s food and drink industry and attacks on the devolved governments.
Tampering with the electoral system in an attempt to disenfranchise those least likely to vote Tory and ensure Putin-style rule for the foreseeable future.
READ MORE: Speaker scolds Dominic Raab for rambling response to SNP MP
A UK Government rife with cronyism, bleeding public services and squandering taxpayers’ money, further enriching themselves and their pals and plunging millions into poverty and many into further poverty. This is not incompetence, this is the right-wing Tory playbook in action actively supported by 90% of the Tory-owned media. It is total anathema to the values and principles of the traditional Labour Party who should have been screaming about it long before now.
However, in the midst of it all, the potential of a TV drama to call into question the competence of the custodians of the nuclear arsenal is far more important to Jackie Baillie. And so Labour plunges deeper into the abyss and continues on its journey towards electoral annihilation.
Noirin Blackie
Haddington
CONGRATULATIONS to the four elected members who supported the day of action (Letters, September 22). Where were the other 562?
Name and address supplied
IT has been said that the true retail price of energy is about half of what the consumer pays. The inflated price is partly because of the green levies of course, but also because of the margins made by suppliers for the benefit of their shareholders. A third factor is the effect of the commodity market speculators, who drive prices up for their own benefit.
The public are simply being financially harvested. Captive consumers with no escape or alternative, exploited by cartels who fix prices and markets, just like those who manipulate the stock market.
It is ridiculous that the supply of an essential service should be in private commercial hands. In an independent Scotland one hopes that energy will be a nationalised state enterprise, delivered to homes at the lowest possible cost.
Malcolm Parkin
Kinross
I WATCHED Scotland Tonight on Tuesday and was struck by the difference in the two interviews shown.
One was with Humza Yousaf in the Holyrood foyer with Colin Mackay interviewing – he started off calmly but as the interview progressed he became more and more aggressive, interrupting and repeating the same questions again and again and hardly allowing an answer from Yousaf. The tone of the interview was outrageous, the body language aggressive and the volume increasing as it went along.
Compare this with the interview with the Conservative MSP Dr Gulhane – in the studio with John MacKay seated, calm and uninterrupted, no aggression and no questions asked again and again. He says the NHS Louisa Jordan in Glasgow should not have been dismantled – can someone explain to him this was done to allow for COP26? But of course he has been an MSP for five minutes and does not seem to know what has been happening.
This doctor is so concerned about his patients he has jumped ship from the surgery to be in Holyrood or in TV studios – another multiple-job tory. The only thing you can say is that he is a vast improvement on Annie Wells who just like Carlaw resigned before being pushed.
Winifred McCartney
Paisley
NOW that Boris Johnson has failed to secure the post Brexit trade deal with the USA we can have a very clear understanding of his competence and that of the government in London that is running our country for us.
A few years ago Nicola Sturgeon held off moving to a second referendum until we saw the impact of Brexit on Scotland. Now we know and next week is not too soon for us to start taking control of our own destiny.
Ni Holmes
St Andrews
I CANNOT help but think that Boris Johnson’s use of some odd kind of Franglais is not really helping the situation and is not designed to achieve rapprochement with the French but to appeal to the Sun readership (Boris Johnson tells France to ‘prenez un grip’ amid fury over security pact, September 22).
If he was really struggling with the French he could at least have tried Google translate – and let’s be honest, Macron’s English is better than Johnson’s English, never mind Johnson’s French.
Alan Thompson
Posted online
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