BRITISH Tory Unionism is a giant Ponzi scheme that would put Bernie Madoff and Robert Maxwell to shame. Yet instead of ignoring it “Scottish” Unionists have handed over their financial details.

This racket promises the gullible nothing. Instead they come up with fantastical fairy stories about how Scotland can’t possibility be independent. These absurdities are then lapped up by the laughably uneducated and hard of thinking.

GERS is a case in point. These are not neutral figures. They are a Tory propaganda trick designed to make Scotland think they are unable to govern themselves. Unionists use them to rubbish independence. What the GERS do show is how badly Scotland is doing as part of the Union and make the case for breaking away.

They also say nothing about the economics of a free Scotland. Yet Unionists salivate over them. They even bring out a failed dog food salesman with no economic qualifications as a “expert” to pontificate. All with the usual smug oblivious ignorance and vile putrescence.

READ MORE: The 2022 GERS report will be nonsense, and it should be the last ever published

Unionist MSPs are worse than useless. They are nothing but wage thieves whose sole purpose is to do their Westminster masters bidding. They want to create an image of Scotland as a post-industrial backwater requiring Westminster stipends and parenting in order to survive.

Echoing the “Better Together” campaign five MSPs from the Unionist parties got together to demand the Scottish Government intervene in the Edinburgh bin strike.

It is these three parties who govern Edinburgh in coalition. It is the Westminster Tories who control the purse strings. The Scottish Government simply does not have any more money. The Unionist parties support this position. These Unionists are literally asking the Scottish Government to use powers they don’t possess and that the Unionists do not want them to have. This is beyond absurd parody. The stupidity and arrogance of the Unionists is off the scale. Anyone who thinks the Tories are on the side of striking workers should have their sanity questioned.

Last year, down south, the Tories passed a law that allowed water companies to pump raw sewage into the sea. Previously, these companies would have been fined millions. But now, thanks to Boris Johnson and the Tories, they get away with it. No such immunity was allowed in Scotland. For “Scottish” Unionists this and any number of other vile acts are forgivable all because the Tories want to maintain the Union. So all immorality is permissible. The Union is a toxic poison that needs to be ended immediately.

Alan Hinnrichs

Dundee

WOULDN’T it be refreshing if we could have an end to all the nonsense spoken and written about Scotland’s budget deficit that reappears annually when the GERS figures are released? The devolution settlement that established the Scottish Parliament made it illegal for Holyrood to spend more than it receives each year from the Westminster Government. The Government at Holyrood – by law – must live within its means, so that it cannot have a “deficit”.

The budget deficit referred to by many people is in fact Scotland’s notional population share of the UK’s deficit, but Scotland has contributed not a penny to this because the Scottish Government was not allowed to borrow, and thus cannot have a deficit. The Scottish Government has recently been given very limited borrowing powers, but these only allow it to borrow a tiny amount compared to the figures commonly bandied about by Unionists for the “deficit”.

Peter Swain

Dunbar

SO, it has been revealed that Scotland contributes £77.8 billion to the UK Treasury in tax revenues, some £7bn more than independent New Zealand takes in tax revenue annually.

Answer me this: if Scotland only gets back 55p in every pound of tax revenue, just how is Scotland “subsidised”?

Surely if we are “subsidised” we would get back more than the £77.8bn we contribute?

Since we are clearly in surplus with the UK Treasury, just how can Scotland be running a deficit of any size as the devolved government in Scotland has to have a balanced budget and has limited borrowing powers?

READ MORE: Richard Murphy: Why this year's GERS should be the last ever published

Maybe Mr Ross needs to take off his socks and shoes, have a good chew on the end of his pencil, a quick fiddle with his abacus before any attempt to prove his case that Scotland is an economic basket case when all the objective evidence says otherwise.

Peter Thomson via email ONE might have thought that, given their disastrous election results in Scotland, a wee hit of humble thinking might not go amiss in the Scottish Labour Party. But, oh no. Here we have Ian Smart, Labour wannabe, former president of The Law Society of Scotland, pronouncing that advocacy of the Scots language is racist. Jing. Haud ma breeks.

There is something that is seriously ill with a political movement which tries to deny the veracity of its indigenous language. He must have read the Acts of the old Scots Parliament and examined titles around Paisley, all of them in pure Scots as the language of the Courts.

The racism is that of Imperial England for which I was belted for Scots words at school and which rendered my grandmother ashamed of her “inferior peasant” Gaelic. No wonder Mhairi Black holds the respect of the electors of Paisley, unlike Smart’s fellow Alumni of Paisley Schools, Andrew Neil and Liz Truss. See them? They couldnae tell a puddock frae an ell, so they couldnae.

Ian is, of course, a victim of cultural imperialism and has my sympathy.

KM Campbell

Doune