It’s time to get out of oil investments - your views

Intro

It’s time to get out of oil investments

The non-profit organisation, Platform, commissioned Transition Economics to conduct an analysis, which showed that the combined investments by 10 Scottish local government pension funds into leading oil companies, including BP and Royal Dutch Shell, collapsed between April 2017 and November 2020 losing £194 million.

This happened despite lobbying of councils by groups like 'Divest Scotland' to get rid of fossil fuel investments. I took part in this lobbying and couldn't help noticing my colleagues were fobbed off by the 'investment professionals' who 'knew' better.

It may not have escaped the notice of readers that our very own prime minister, Boris Johnson, was indulging in the same antics last year, pooh-poohing the Extinction Rebellion protesters.

Mrs Thatcher did organise a seminar on global warming to enlighten her cabinet, but this failed as most of them fell asleep.

She gave up any 'fight' when someone convinced her that global warming was a 'left-wing conspiracy'.

So are we to stand idly by and let the Brexit Party supporters keep drawing on their Russian oil investments as post-Brexit Britain crashes through the floor? Can we not bring them along to the COP26 conference next year to show them pictures of what suffering their greed causes and what "Let’s make Britain Great again" slogansreally mean?

Henryk Belda, Kirkton Bank, Penicuik.

Stop me and buy a Covid vaccine

At First Minister's Questions on Thursday Ruth Davidson asked how the Pfizer vaccine, requiring storage in very low temperatures, can be delivered in the huge quantities required.

Why not mobilise Scotland's fleet of ice cream vans in a Dunkirk-style response? Their freezer containers can reach temperatures as low as -25c and many owners are experienced in delivering "pharmaceuticals" to the public.

The sound of a jaunty tune like Camptown Races or Turkey in The Straw heralding the arrival of another batch of vaccinations might just be the thing to cheer the nation up. As the boys said on the immortal Chewin the Fat ice cream sketch, "gies a swatch o' yer Pfizer mister."

Allan Sutherland, Willow Row, Stonehaven

Nicola confuses the colour of money

Nicola Sturgeon claims a separate Scotland would have the powers to borrow, just as the UK has done to finance victims of the Covid crisis.

She evidently does not understand that iScotland would either use the UK’s currency informally, and therefore have no lender of last resort to guarantee loans, or else have a new currency that did not have a track record of stability which would mean that loans were less available and very expensive - and still have no lender of last resort.

Any attempt to repudiate a Scottish share of UK historic debt, as SNP hotheads threaten, would scare off potential lenders who would steer clear of a defaulter.

It is downright cruelty for Ms Sturgeon to use her huge public profile to delude Scots into supporting a course of action that would at best be fraught with problems and at worst result in bankruptcy for Scotland.

Why anyone thinks that is preferable to remaining part of a country whose currency is the fourth most traded in the world and the world's fourth most held as a reserve currency, and also one of the basket of five world currencies used to calculate the value of IMF special drawing rights, is a complete mystery to me.

Jill Stephenson, Glenlockhart Valley, Edinburgh.