Readers' letters: Britain’s stock has fallen post-Brexit

News that London has lost its crown as Europe’s largest stock market to Paris should hardly come as a surprise.

The French capital has successfully closed a trillion-dollar gap since the 2016 vote on Brexit. This was further hastened by recent currency movements following former prime minister Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget, which saw the pound sink to its lowest ever value against the US dollar.

Former Bank of England policy maker Michael Saunders recently reinforced this, restating what we already knew, that the UK economy has been “permanently damaged by Brexit” and had this act of economic self-sabotage not taken place we wouldn’t be talking about an austerity Budget this week.

The UK economy is now the weakest performer of the G7 economies, with Brexit significantly reducing the economy’s potential output, and the only one not to have recovered to pre-Covid levels.

Leaving the EU has been an unmitigated disaster for the UK and by fundamentally weakening the economy the Brexit chickens are simply coming home to roost as we enter a new era of austerity.

Alex Orr, Edinburgh.

Ban public sale and use of fireworks

The public sale and use of fireworks should be banned. However, Scotland cannot take the lead on this as we do not have the power to ban fireworks.

In a knee jerk reaction to serious misuse of fireworks in her constituency, the First Minister announced she would do something about it and held a lengthy and no doubt expensive consultation which resulted in yet more tinkering with existing legislation.

This has left Scotland with a mess of rules, regulations and restrictions which are at best extremely difficult for our overstretched police force to apply.

Animal Concern has urged the Scottish Government and all MPs for Scotland to lobby Westminster for a UK-wide ban or to devolve the power to ban the public sale and use of fireworks.

Until that happens the annual terrorising of animals and vulnerable people and the weaponisation of fireworks by thugs will continue.

For those that still want aerial displays we can have licensed, organised events using either silent fireworks or multi-colour synchronised drones accompanied by music.

John F Robins, Animal Concern.

Scotland has great energy potential

Unionists Ian Murray MP and Alex Cole Hamilton MSP are frantically trying to talk down Scotland’s offshore wind potential to deter inward investment into Scotland (News, November 9 and 10).

They dispute the oft-repeated statistic that Scotland has 25 per cent of Europe’s offshore wind potential.So naturally they don’t want people to know that this is an underestimate.

An EU Commission report reveals that based on current projected installation capacity, Scotland is on course to deliver nearly half of Europe’s offshore grid supply by 2035. This represents over 55 per cent of the entire offshore grid potential in the Mediterranean Basin.Unionists are in a panic because they know if the truth were widely known, their hollow arguments that Scotland can’t prosper outside the UK would literally be blown away.

With Scotland’s natural resources owned by the Scottish people, not Westminster, Scotland could lead the world in offshore wind energy production.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh.

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