A GROUP of MPs have concluded that Boris Johnson’s handling of the Covid-19 outbreak was “one of the worst public health failures in UK history”. This will be a surprise to nobody who knows even a little about Boris Johnson. An inept, lazy buffoon and liar.

His response to such accusations of social murder was silence. Instead he preferred to go on holiday to a villa reportedly owned by a millionaire Tory donor. Sunning himself while millions are plunged into poverty is exactly what Boris Johnson does.

His apologists will say that he “deserves” a holiday as he is at risk of “burnout”. How exactly this slothful imbecile will be “burnt-out” is something of a mystery; he does little work as it is.

The Tory tribalists at the Daily Mail even compared Johnson to Churchill due to the fact he was painting. A more apt comparison would have been to Idi Amin.

READ MORE: SNP urge UK Government to accelerate public Covid inquiry

Every time some British Unionist “leftist” demands the Scottish Government use powers it doesn’t have to ameliorate Tory government cuts, they implicitly accept the Union has failed.

The British “left” are Boris Johnson’s complicit enablers. Everyone including the Trident renewer “Saint” Jeremy Corbyn supported Johnson by supporting the Union.

It seems that Sturgeon will finally decide to attempt to have an independence referendum in late 2023. This is too late and gives the British state two years to fabricate false scare stories. All aided and abetted by the British Unionist Labour Party. All in exchange for peerages.

A short campaign is preferable, as two winters without fuel for many is too much for millions of Scottish voters.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

AS usual, when a difficult situation kicks off our fantastic, world-beating prime minister slopes off.

John Jamieson
South Queensferry

WITH reportedly 60% of those receiving benefits in full-time work but too poor to properly warm their homes and feed themselves and their families, and a Tory MP who is unable apparently to live on £81,000 plus astronomical expenses voting to remove £20/week from their already frugal, inadequate budget, how does this end?

After myriad Tory, asset-stripping years, and now a catastrophic Johnson Brexit, the UK feels broken. Not just politically split – which, as an ardent Scottish independence supporter, I surely believe – but operationally broken too, like never before.

READ MORE: Changes to Universal Credit payment dates for Christmas 2021 confirmed

Rising fuel prices, commodity shortages, rampant inflation (well beyond public-sector pay increases), widening discrepancies between rich and poor regarding health outcomes and life expectancy (although we have it on good authority that we should ignore that metric), the empty slaughter of thousands and thousands of animals reared for food (as part of the Johnson “plan” and again while people go hungry), businesses going under unable to export their produce, businesses going under unable to import reliable supplies, unharvested food rotting in the fields – the list goes on and on.

On and on and out of our control. In this case, if the polls are to be believed, the English electorate care little, while we seem to be watching helplessly from the sidelines as people suffer and our economy tanks.

So if Scotland can’t or won’t make concrete moves to get out of this soon, well...? This is now make or break, for we are surely out of time.

I Easton
Glasgow

THE phrase “Let them eat cake” is often attributed to French queen Marie Antoinette, but there is no evidence that she ever uttered it, and it is now generally regarded as a journalistic cliche. However she was eventually executed on October 16 1793 by guillotine, on the Place de la Revolution. During the revolution, she became known as Madame Déficit because the country’s financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to the social and financial reforms of the time.

Almost exactly 228 years later her moral values, lifestyle and political beliefs are alive and well in the UK Tory Party. Rees-Mogg, Ross, Johnson and their supporters are no longer able to send our children up chimneys or down mines, but they are happy to see them go hungry and live in cold homes their parents cannot afford to heat properly.

READ MORE: Food bank donations are needed now more than ever as benefit cuts bite

In September 2017 during an interview on LBC radio, Rees-Mogg said that the rise in the usage of food banks in the UK was “rather uplifting”. Given that the recent cut of £20 in Universal Credit will result in a corresponding, and predictable, increase in food bank usage, Jacob will no doubt be well uplifted.

Billions of pounds have been handed over to Tory donors for Covid-related contracts in the past two years, some of them dubious in nature. A small part of this could have been used to maintain the £20 Universal Credit uplift. Increases in gas and electricity prices, food, National Insurance and probably council tax are soon about to drive many more families into debt and misery.

These days, mes amis, clearly we need a little more liberty, equality, and fraternity and un référendum sur l’indépendance de l’Écosse.

Brian Lawson
Paisley

THE rise in gas prices is entirely the wholesalers upping their profits. The gas still comes from the same well heads as before. There has been no rise in production COSTS.

William Purvis
via email

SATURDAY’S crossword in the I newspaper. Three down: Worthless matter. Answer: Dross. Have they been reading The National?

Paul Gillon
Leven