Smarmy smiles and doublespeak cannot bury the Tories’ failures

If we wish to exercise our democratic will, if we demand the freedom to exercise that will, then first we must be diligent in our campaign. With no doubt, the Westminster beast would prefer us to go away.

In all its long history of dealing with colonies, protectorates or so-called equal partners, the UK has never conducted business honourably. Charles de Gaulle, then president of France, vetoed UK enrolment in the then Common Market.

Some say he did so in the knowledge that allowing an insular and egotistical country membership would not be a good move.

And of course, he was correct and whereas our businesses embraced membership, the UK leadership did not. They are so stuck in days of empire and world domination that they orchestrated the single worst case of self-inflicted trade dismantlement of the modern era.

Yet the administration in Downing Street still insists everything is great and what wonderful opportunities we all have trading with Putin or North Korea. Part of the trouble, no, a giant chunk of the trouble is that the Downing Street administration keeps churning out the world view according to UK neoliberalism. It is a view not shared by many on this archipelago.

Certainly, few here in Scotland are listening to the hyperbole.

All the propaganda produced by the administration cannot disguise the chasms that have opened in UK politics.

All the smarmy smiles and doublespeak cannot bury the abject failure of their policies. We believe not one statement they make on equality of the nations. They are the architects of their demise.

Cliff Purvis

Veterans for Scottish Independence 2.0

SNP Armed Forces and Veterans

BARONESS Kennedy stated clearly on Friday what we all, already suspected or knew –that the UK Home office is a dysfunctional organisation and has been for some years.

In the summation before the full report is available, she stated that the cause of the 2020 knife attack at a Glasgow hotel housing asylum seekers – which injured six people before the perpetrator was being shot dead by police – included the Home Office contractor Mears being guided by commercial interest rather than the primary requirement to look after the asylum seekers.

Badreddin Abdalla Adam has told loved ones a week before the incident, which happened during coronavirus restrictions, that he was being treated badly and being locked in his room.

These seekers of asylum, having experienced several difficult and dangerous passages to get to the UK, are being treated as people of no value, a drag on UK society.

Their previous accommodation was more suited. The hotel rooms were smaller and people had no facilities to cook the food they are usually accustomed to, all adding to the existing stress of arriving in a new, allegedly modern caring and safe country.

Added to this, these seekers of refuge are not permitted to work, even though some are skilled, multi-lingual, and valuable.

How many times have we heard the likes of Iain Duncan Smith and others in the UK talk about getting people into work being “good for their mental health and good for our economy”.

But those seeking asylum are not permitted to do so. When they could be contributing to our local economy and de-stressing their own lives.

In Scotland at least, we could do with their help to fill the gaps generated by Brexit.

All of the structures and processes required to allow migrant workers to return have been “beefed” up to prevent “unwanted” types getting in.

That and the fact that when you get to the UK living is made hard and unpleasant for asylum seekers, is a planned strategy. This a UK Home Office decision.

Alistair Ballantyne

Birkhill, Angus

DIRECT UK austerity is often deceptively portrayed, rather simplistically. As the reduction of wages for the lower paid, and/or the general reduction of services for the lower paid.

As such, it drives popular acclaim across ConDemSlab voters, albeit to different degrees. Sometimes direct UK Austerity is deceptively portrayed as a perfectly sensible balance between tax on the public and public expenditure on their behalf.

As such, it drives popular acclaim across ConDemSlab, support albeit to different degrees. Brexit was deceptively portrayed as a reduction in tax demand from the EU, and/or increased public expenditure on the NHS. As such, it defines Brexit as direct UK austerity.

Indirect UK austerity can be promoted by generating a housing bubble, which reduces the access to housing to the lower paid and enables the better paid, owning housing assets, to borrow on the assets to facilitate a higher income.

Differential UK austerity can be where wages are enabled to reflect the sex or age of the employee. Socialist Labour (remember them?) pushed forward with equal wages across the sexes more than four decades ago, yet embedded, in excess of £770 million of wage inequality in Glasgow.

Ad hoc UK austerity, however, is a particularly Tory speciality, targeting a reduction in demand for support from women who have been and who have more than one child, and those who live within more than the absolute minimum living space.

Some of these forms of austerity are being dealt with by the Scottish SNP/Green Government, as far as currently permitted by the UK Government. Others, ie removing the targeting of the lower paid, in terms of wages and services, and removing the impact of Brexit, require Scotland to be an Independent EU nation state, with its own central bank and with its own currency.

The choice is really that simple, end ConDemSlab austerity – or secure our independence.

Stephen Tingle

Greater Glasgow