I FIND myself, for the first time, in agreement with Tory branch manager Douglas Ross when he said, in his recent conference speech, Scotland is becoming “smaller every day”.
However, it is Mr Ross and his cronies who have metaphorically shrunk our land. He went on to say “the nation I grew up in was confident and outward-looking, yet the nation my children grow up in today is far more bitter and inward-facing”. If that is indeed the case, perhaps a glance in the nearest mirror would answer the question – and who is to blame?
The Tory Party, aided and abetted by the odious Nigel Farage, managed to persuade the majority of UK voters, and a fair number of Scottish voters, that immigration was the root cause of poverty. As a result, many of our European friends and neighbours decided they were no longer welcome in our land, packed their bags and left. Scotland is smaller as a result. Two of my Dutch friends who had lived and worked in Scotland for nearly 30 years decided to retire to France. The final straw was the “registration” process which reminded them both of the darkest times in their European history when their parents had to go through a rather similar process.
Mr Ross’s children will indeed have to grow up in a far more inward-facing nation. They will no longer be able to easily study, live, love, and work or even retire to a European country. The Scottish Government, the SNP or the First Minister are not to blame for that. Mr Ross has only himself to blame. In more recent times, Covid has left the very population of our nation smaller. More than 10,000 of our friends, workmates, relatives and neighbours are no longer with us.
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In the coming months, rising fuel and food prices will leave all but the very rich a fair bit poorer. Mr Ross and his party will stand by as the waistlines of our poorest get smaller.
If Mr Ross wants a more confident and outward-looking nation, he needs to embrace the concept of an independent nation.
Brian Lawson
Paisley
IT seems to me, after reading the report on UK austerity and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the National, that there is something seriously wrong with successive UK governments.
The fact that small EU countries, such as Latvia and Estonia and other Baltic states, have the highest percentage pay growth rate in Europe and leaving the UK well behind by up to £4000 pa over the last 15 years, poses some real pertinent questions. The one fundamental thought that comes to mind is the background education of most of the parliamentary ministers and perhaps ordinary members, particularly those of the Conservative Party.
I can remember, back in the day, when Labour Party contestants were of working-class and understood the people whose vote they needed. So much so, that if the likes of my granny and grandparents needed a lift to the polling station they were given a lift in an available car. So, getting back to the Tory classes and education, it is becoming more common that, such as the current government, most are from the same public schooling and follow up university, namely the Oxford University.
This has created an incestuous clique consisting of what has turned out to be a gang of insolent, self-centred, money-grabbing fortune hunters who have used the political system to furnish their own selfish needs.
The public schooling of the likes found in Eton produces students taught with the skills of an acute selfish means of survival in a world where everything is provided with the least effort of gain. This is the Tories, this is Johnson, this is his UK Government.
But this is not, and never will be, Scotland!
Alan Magnus-Bennett
Fife
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